The Future of Fleet Telematics
“Dramatic changes are on the horizon for fleet productivity tools”, says an article published by the Automotive Fleet Magazine. As automation takes over the trucking industry, the importance of integrated telematics will only grow in managing fleets and increasing productivity. Moreover, as the future seems to belong to driverless trucks, software will also diversify into other roles, including recommending fuel stations with best prices. As subject experts predict that most vehicles will be completely autonomous by 2030, the coming years will be crucial in building the infrastructure to support this shift, including the introduction of more sophisticated fleet tracking software.
Improvements in Fleet Management Systems
Data Analytics for Preventive Maintenance: This allows fleet owners to take a preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling, allowing for reduced costs, greater safety and more profits. Moreover, instead of following a generalized replacement date, this will allow fleet managers to replace on a vehicle-to-vehicle basis without being blind sighted by immanent problems.
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Big Data for Boosting Sales: With more data being collected from implementation of fleet maintenance software, it is now becoming possible to trace trends that were hitherto largely ignored. “Trend prediction and forecasting is made easier by facilitating the reproduction of historical data through statistical analysis. This will help real time business decisions”, stated an article published by Fleet Commander. For instance, this will allow the metrics between sales and delivery performance to emerge more clearly and will allow fleet owners to optimize their resources.
Conversion of vehicles into Mobile Offices: While this has already been realized in some cases, through Wi-Fi enabled vehicles, it is expected that this will become the standard in the near future. Telematics will be integral in allowing customers to track the vehicle’s location and properly utilize them. Therefore, it has been predicted that on-board telematics will become ubiquitous between 2020–2025.
The Connected Vehicle Phenomenon: This not only refers to automated vehicles in sync with one another, but also a system where vehicles on the road are communicating with each other, giving real time updates on traffic and allowing for greater productivity by helping each other to take the most efficient service decisions. The Connected Vehicle Program is an ongoing ITS program which is at the research stage in order to create standards of interoperability.
Enhancement of Smartphone Apps: Applications that will assist in finding parking spots, will automatically pick you up at the entrance of the building when you are leaving and control in-vehicle climate system are all going to be realized in the near future. There are a number of app developers that are concentrating their efforts exclusively on vehicle management and it will be interesting to see how they affect fleet management systems.
Evolution of Fleet Telematics: As fleet management software improve standardization of data collected between different providers and their devices, there will be better full-fleet compatibility between different types of vehicles. Moreover, autonomous vehicles like the Daimler’s self-driven truck which has been licensed in Nevada, according to a report published by Engadget will become the norm and as a result, telematics will be integrated with the vehicles instead of being an aftermarket hardware. Most expects foresee telematics becoming a factory installed equipment provided by OEMs in the near future, even for vehicles that are not driven autonomously.
Telematics have already evolved far beyond simple GPS tracking to include advanced features that are becoming increasingly customizable to the fleet’s specific needs. This organic evolution has occurred in order to keep up with the changes in the telematics ecosystem that are moving towards making it a standard requirement. Security and safety services enabled by the intelligent use of software may become mandatory by law, thereby ensuring their widespread implementation. Moreover, market demands to will play a crucial role in the way fleet management develops, allowing for greater profitability and larger supply chains.
