The transport and fleet management industries are always keen to exploit new technology to make their operations more efficient and cost-effective. Telematics is one of the latest innovations to be making a big impact on the sector.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of aircraft flight recorders used to reconstruct what happened in the event of an incident. In the automotive sector, telematics is similar in that it involves a ‘black box’ installed in the vehicle, but its uses go well beyond worst-case scenarios.
Real-time recording
This technology can be used to record and track vehicle behaviour in real time. This is increasingly being offered by insurance companies to monitor young drivers, for example. For fleets, using telematics in this way has other advantages.
It can be used to monitor fuel consumption and driving habits. For example, it can identify when drivers are leaving their engine idling for long periods or when they’re accelerating and braking harshly. This information can then be fed into driver education and improvement programmes. This, in turn, can deliver savings in fuel use and can help to reduce wear and tear on the vehicle. The technology can also help in ensuring compliance with things like working hours rules or making sure that drivers take the most efficient route.
The vehicle itself can be monitored too. Of course, you can track the mileage, but things like CO2 emissions can also be measured, along with temperatures and fluid levels. This can help with planned servicing and can also identify any latent issues so that they are able to be fixed before they turn into serious problems.
Geo-monitoring
GPS monitoring of the vehicle can help avoid abuse by legitimate users, but it can also be used to locate vehicles in the event of theft. Geofencing can be used to ensure a vehicle sticks to its planned route – or stays within a defined geographic area – alerting base if it strays off route.
It can help to make routes more efficient too, especially if linked to traffic information in real time, allowing controllers to reroute vehicles to avoid congestion, or to inform customers when a delivery isn’t going to be on time.
Linking telematics to other technologies such as dash cams brings additional benefits too. It can help to provide evidence in the event of a collision and can also assist in ensuring driver compliance, spotting bad habits and so on.
Business case
There is a strong business case for using this technology in your vehicle fleet. The obvious benefits are in fuel and maintenance savings, which can be significant. Some users have seen savings of more than 10 percent in their fuel bills alone. But the technology can also deliver less wear and tear on vehicles caused by harsh driving, as well as reduced levels of accidents, thus cutting insurance costs.
While obviously there is some capital cost involved in installing telematics technology, the potential savings to be gained can more than outweigh this. All of this builds up to a strong business case for installing the technology.
