There is no denying that Telematics is one of the biggest automotive trends of recent times. According to Report Linker, it has the potential to hit $ 85.4 billion by 2024 growing at a whopping 19.4% CAGR.

Telematics deals with monitoring a vehicle in a live environment. GPS alongside on-board diagnostics is used to record and map the vehicle’s location, its route, speed, and ensure the safety of the drivers and passengers through various numerous sensors. It is a field that combines telecommunication, vehicle technologies, for instance, road safety, computer science, and electrical engineering to give a connected driving experience

Telematics can also be described as ‘telecommunications + informatics’. It leverages telematics devices in fleet management to capture, store, transmit, and receive information from telecommunication devices to remote objects over a network. It can be classified based on, on-highway / off-highway telematics or based on passive/active system etc.

For technology experts and decision-makers, it is very important to identify emerging trends and the factors driving them to make sure they capitalize on it to stay ahead of their competition.

Trends and Technologies in Telematics:

Telematics industry has been evolving continuously due to growing technology. Hence, there are always some new trends on the horizon that have to explore to get ahead.

Swift Interconnected Network:  Upgradations to 4G and 5G networks provide an altogether different experience in terms of bandwidth, faster data uploads, and feedback downloads resulting in more real-time data sets and gaining real-time driver safety, fleet maintenance and fleet efficiency all at the same time.

Telematics sub-systems are smartly being integrated with mobiles and tablets, which allows the users to monitor and control the parameters through handheld devices from the same or remote locations. It has become easier with location tracking to diagnose all data and make decisions accordingly. Dispatchers and fleet managers can make real-time decisions sitting out of the office with the help of these handheld devices. This ease of access and 24 X 7 connectivity helps the fleet industry to understand and improve fleet efficiency, reducing the costs, and redundancies.

Cloud Enablement: A vehicle has multiple sub-systems with sensors attached. These systems share huge information continuously. These include sensors for tire pressure monitoring, video capture, temperature monitoring among many more. Storing, handling, and utilizing effectively such large data chunks have been made possible by advancements in cloud technology.  AWS / Microsoft and other leading players provide cloud components to enable machine learning, data analytics and remote device tracking and management using real-time data making telematics solutions more effective. Another advantage of the cloud is that the data can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Some of the historical data can be used to further improve operational analysis and workflow in departments outside fleet including customer service, expenses operations and human resources.

Sophisticated Location Data and Artificial Intelligence-based Navigation: Navigation have been around for years, and it is getting far better with time. When it comes to cab services, drivers have to know more than a street address to arrive on time to the specified location. Some sites have multiple entries and exits and the driver needs to be present on the accurate one. Voice-enabled, interactive navigation has been a great boon directing the drivers on the accurate and shortest paths avoiding congestions and jams. This has improved timeliness of deliveries, arrivals reducing the risk of accidents, lost drivers, among others AI-enabled route optimization, ETA projections, and more insightful assistance has changed the face of the industry for good!

Direct Data Access and Intuitive Dashboards: The users have direct access to the data, where decision making becomes easier. This helps a central fleet agency or its local office and franchises as well as individual drivers and dispatch managers.  All the stakeholders are provided with customized role-based dashboards and controlled access to take informed run-time decisions based on respective service needs, time for delivery or arrival, handling exigencies and more. This also helps fleet management companies maintain a behavior-based driver scorecard and finds applications in litigation prevention. Many companies also share the information with shipping and carriage industries to allow for better dock scheduling. This helps in proper planning which keeps the drivers happy and productive.

Video and other Sensor Data for evidence: Telematics technologies have helped companies maintain evidence of the job/deliveries that have been done or any incidents/accidents, which have taken place. Companies have or can demand time-stamped location data to prove the information as correct. This could be through visual data from cameras for reconstructing the incident. Other sensor data helps capture unsafe driving practices like speeding, harsh braking and rapid acceleration. However, these are not the only causes of road accidents.

Various other things like cellphone use and food can also distract the drivers. That is where the dash-cam video streams with analytics can help. The driver can be monitored by the dashboard cameras, which can capture what the driver was doing or not doing at the time of the accident or during an event. This helps the insurance companies to validate claims.

Predictive Analysis and Maintenance: Collecting and monitoring parameters of the engine (and other systems) help run real-time diagnostics to prevent break down is gaining major popularity. Predictive maintenance can help fleets maintain equipment with minor repair costs, almost zero downtime, scheduling the repair based on the priority of the problem and maintaining proper inventory.

Adoption by the small businesses: Another trend that is more on the business front than technical is that Telematics has become not just the fancy but reality for the small players, both in the service providers and the small fleet owners. Due to reducing the cost of technology, many start-ups have emerged providing cheap but effective telematics solutions that can be available in the local market for the smaller fleet owners.

eInfochips is well versed with these trends and technologies and provides deep learning-based driver behavior/condition analytics, complete telematics product development, video enabled fleet monitoring (VMS for transportation), shipping vessel tracking and monitoring, real-time diagnostics and predictive vehicle maintenance for minimum downtime, GPS integration and navigation solutions for fleet monitoring. Connect us today.