Goodbye to the ‘Black Box’

As the situation changes, transport operators with various brand names in their fleet could be faced with different software platforms installed at source in each of the vehicles.

In the not-too-distant future, telematics providers are expected to change from their current status of supplying aftermarket technology to a wholly software-based operation. Instead of directly wiring up the systems, companies will instead major on remotely serving up information sourced from different vehicles, rendering them more data aggregators than hands-on tech specialists.

The rise in vehicles fitted with telematics from new will eventually negate the need for hard-wired systems in their current form, creating a new requirement for software capable of amalgamating information from manufacturers – which will inevitably provide telemetry data in different digital configurations – and presenting it to fleet operators in a single, easy-to-understand format.

With this, telematics providers will see their primary role to shift from supplying, fitting and operating the technology to sourcing, managing and presenting data to fleet operators.

With more and more vehicles becoming ‘connected’ there is no longer a need to have a physical link to the vehicle in order to extract data and, at present, feedback gleaned from the road – such as fuel consumption data, the vehicle’s geographical position and the way it’s being driven – is typically beamed back to base via the physical device; but that is what is set to change in future.

A side benefit also means there is no downtime for the vehicle to be off the road to have the physical unit fitted.

However, this change is not likely to be a rushed process and may yet take several years as manufacturers start incorporating the latest technologies into new vehicles and it is not so much the telematics companies that are driving this change, it is the autonomous vehicles and the way the technology in general is heading.