Hitting The Sweet-Spot With CV Telematics

Every new technology follows an S-curve for adoption.

- Pradeep Pandurangi

It starts with innovators and risk-takers who experiment and break new ground. They are followed by the early adopters who give valuable feedback that improves the technology as users grow in number. And then comes the tipping point, where the majority adopts the technology and it becomes mainstream. Are we witnessing such a tipping point for commercial vehicle telematics? How much of the smart/IoT/connected vehicles discussion that goes on in industry conferences is actually being implemented on the ground, and finally what is driving the change?

We are at a point with vehicle telematics in India where the technology has become a standard for large fleet operators and the wave of technology-focused truck owners. Majority of supply chain departments of MNCs demand visibility of vehicles from the transporters, thus creating a strong incentive to add tracking devices in order to stay in business. The latest push for telematics over the past couple of years has been from the smartphone-enabled truck aggregators pushing CV telematics into the mainstream.

More than just tracking

From our experience, we see that telematics is now making the leap from just tracking services to helping the fleet owners to make decisions regarding truck buying, managing fuel expenses and training drivers, among other things. So we see a transition from passive telematics services such as tracking and alerts that only spewed out data, to active or value-added services, where the data is combined with analytics to improve the efficiency of operations, the vehicle efficiency and the possibility to guide the driving behaviour. There are a host of possible value-added services such as predictive maintenance and usage-based insurance. However, since I have been focused on efficiency improvements, we will explore further within that domain.

Using telematics to improve fuel efficiency