Motive vs. Samsara for enterprise fleets: What operators with 1,000+ vehicles should know.

Enterprise fleets face rising costs, labor shortages, and increasing risk. In 2024, per-mile costs to operate a vehicle hit $2.26, with fuel, maintenance, and insurance at generational highs. At the same time, road fatalities and worksite incidents are up, and there’s constant pressure to do more with less.

The right technology partner must offer more than a set of features. The platform must scale, unify data, and deliver measurable ROI — quickly. That’s why the largest and most complex fleets are replacing fragmented systems with Motive’s Integrated Operations Platform.

AI detection scales safety

AI detection is critical to preventing collisions and protecting drivers. The Motive Safety Team watches every safety video and identifies false positives so drivers aren’t penalized for mistakes they didn’t make. Managers, meanwhile, only get notified when it really matters.

That combination helps teams catch risk sooner, reduce false alerts, and prevent collisions.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Motive’s AI Dashcam Plus detects more than 15 unsafe behaviors, including cell phone use, close following, drowsiness, and unsafe lane changes.
• Motive’s in-house Safety Team reviews every safety event, removing false positives so managers aren’t overwhelmed with noise.
• Customers report up to 80% fewer collisions in the first year after deploying Motive AI Dashcams.

Fewer false positives, less coaching noise

At enterprise scale, every minute spent reviewing false alerts is a minute lost. With Motive, customers can avoid spending nearly 10 hours each week reviewing false positives and non-coachable videos compared to legacy systems. It frees them up to focus on more important priorities.

Customized features let you do safety your way

As a safety leader, you’re managing a mix of vehicles, driving environments, and evolving fleet compliance requirements. What works for one part of your fleet might not work for another, which is why having the flexibility to fine-tune your dash cam settings matters.

Now you have even more control. New customization options for the Motive AI Dashcam Plus let you easily adjust in‑cab alerts, LED brightness, recording preferences, and language settings to match the needs of every vehicle and every driver.

And with Motive’s driver coaching tools, you decide which behaviors trigger in‑cab alerts and which events get escalated to managers — helping you reduce video overload and avoid unnecessary liability while still protecting your drivers and your business. 

One platform vs. fragmented tools: Unify safety, fleet, equipment, and spend

Fragmented data and disconnected systems are slowing enterprise fleets down. Instead of working from a single source of truth, teams are forced to re-enter data, reconcile conflicting reports, and react to issues too late, all of which undermines safety, efficiency, and profitability. 

The Motive Integrated Operations Platform unifies driver safety, fleet management, equipment monitoring, spend management, and workforce management in a single system. Here’s how the Motive platform helps enterprise fleets simplify and scale their operations:

• A unified dashboard eliminates data silos and a patchwork of tools, allowing you to manage drivers, vehicles, equipment, and spend in one place.
• Open APIs, an App Marketplace, and no-code customization make Motive scalable for enterprise IT.
• Real-time data streaming, machine learning, and unified reporting provide one source of truth for operations, finance, and safety leaders.

Enterprise time-to-value and ROI: faster results, less risk

For large fleets, time-to-value, the time it takes for your technology investment to start paying off, is a critical metric. According to G2’s Enterprise Grid Report for Fleet Management, Motive enterprise customers achieve ROI at least six months faster than Samsara customers and 12 months faster than Lytx customers.

The same report shows that Motive also leads in implementation speed for large fleets. The table below summarizes the key enterprise implementation and ROI benchmarks from the G2 report.

Metric	Motive	Samsara
Typical setup time	Less than 3 months	3.6 months
ROI achieved after	Within 5 months	11 months

According to the report, Motive earned a satisfaction score of 99 for all segments, 98 for mid-market customers, and 97 for small business customers, outpacing Samsara, Geotab, Lytx, and Verizon.

For large fleets using a single platform, faster time‑to‑value means less risk during rollout, quicker alignment across business units, and earlier savings on safety, fuel, and maintenance costs.

360-degree visibility reduces blind spots and claims exposure

Blind spots are a leading cause of costly incidents and false claims. Pair the AI Dashcam Plus with the AI Omnicam for side, rear, passenger, and cargo coverage to reduce blind spots and claims.

• Exonerate drivers in sideswipes and rear-end collisions with indisputable video evidence.
• Monitor cargo, passenger areas, and job sites for theft, compliance, and safety.
• Customers like Agmark report a 67% reduction in accidents and hundreds of thousands saved in claims after deploying Motive 360-degree cameras.

Security and compliance that satisfy enterprise IT

Enterprise fleets require more than basic security. Motive pairs an integrated operations platform with enterprise‑grade security, compliance, and governance that’s built to pass scrutiny from demanding IT and information security teams. The Motive platform offers:

• Strong, modern authentication and access control: Single Sign-On (SSO) with SAML and OpenID Connect, plus Multi‑Factor Authentication (MFA), help you enforce your existing identity policies instead of creating another login silo.
• Independent assurance for data protection and uptime: Service Organization Control (SOC) 2‑certified systems give security teams third‑party validation of how Motive protects and governs customer data.
• End‑to‑end encryption by default: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)‑256 at rest and Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2+ in transit protect sensitive driver, vehicle, and operations data everywhere it moves or lives in the Motive platform.
• Granular control and operational resilience: Role‑based access controls, detailed audit logs, and highly available infrastructure give IT and security teams the visibility and control they expect from an enterprise platform.

Together, these controls let Motive meet the security and compliance standards of large, regulated fleets while maintaining tight governance over users, vehicles, and data. Motive stands out by baking enterprise‑grade security into a single unified operations platform, so IT gets what it needs without slowing down day‑to‑day operations.

Spend management advantage: A native fleet card

Motive is the only platform that combines Fleet Management and Spend Management, giving finance teams complete control of fleet‑related spend. With the Motive Card, you can control spend, prevent fraud, and gain real-time visibility into every transaction — right from the Motive Dashboard.

Functionality	Motive Card	Traditional Fleet Card
Fuel & maintenance discount network	35,000+ locations nationwide	Varies by issuer
Spend controls and policy enforcement	Granular spend controls by amount, day, time, and merchant	Limited spending limits without detailed rule sets
Fraud detection and prevention	AI-powered fraud detection to automatically decline suspicious transactions and cross-check purchases	Relies on manual reviews or batch reconciliations
IFTA reporting and compliance automation	Automates IFTA reporting by matching fuel purchases to route data, simplifying tax filing and compliance	Requires manual reconciliation of receipts and trip data

Because spend data lives alongside vehicle, driver, and telematics data on a single platform, finance leaders gain real-time visibility into fleet spend, vehicle usage, and driver behavior. AI-powered fraud detection and automated compliance workflows surface risks instantly. All of this happens without the need to stitch together multiple systems.

Services and support at enterprise scale

Motive delivers award-winning enterprise-grade services and support, dedicated customer success, and professional services for deployment, customization, and adoption. 

Dedicated enterprise onboarding and Customer Success representatives partner with your team to accelerate adoption and outcomes, and customers on G2 report faster implementations and time‑to‑value versus other providers. On average, implementations are completed in under three months, compared to 3.7 months for Samsara, per G2 Enterprise data. 

From deployment and integration through ongoing optimization, Motive’s experts help tailor the platform to your operation and keep value growing over time. Training and enablement resources — webinars, guides, and an always‑on Help Center — make it easy to learn and self‑serve at any hour. 

How to run a fair dash cam trial: A 5-step checklist

1. Define success metrics. What behaviors, alert rates, and time-to-value matter most for your operation?
2. Run controlled tests. Use the same vehicles, drivers, and routes for each solution.
3. Compare time-to-alert and false positives. Measure how quickly and accurately each system detects real risk, including time‑to‑alert, true positive rate, and false positives per 100 hours of driving.
4. Validate workflows. Assess how each platform handles coaching, reporting, and integration at scale.
5. Evaluate support and services. Test onboarding, training, and responsiveness for enterprise needs.

The enterprise fleet advantage with Motive

For operators in the physical economy, the difference between Motive and Samsara is about powerful AI processing, unified data, faster ROI, and a partner that scales with your business. 

Motive is the only platform that unifies safety, operations, and spend for the physical economy.  By eliminating silos, it helps 1,000+ vehicle fleets reduce risk, control costs, and operate more safely and profitably at enterprise scale.

Ready to see the Motive difference? Request a demo or read more customer stories to see how the world’s largest fleets are moving forward with Motive.

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