Maintenance telematics new battleground for OEMs, aftermarket
Summary
Shiva Bhardwaj, CEO of predictive maintenance software Pitstop, grew up spending time in his father’s mechanic shop in Toronto, where he became fascinated with the electronics that ultimately led him to launch a career as an engineer. “With ELD and maintenance history data and where we are with AI today, thats a lot of information that you can pull and tease out key patterns that help you understand what is trending towards failure, very uniquely specific to each (vehicle). Volvo Truck North America’s factory equipped telematics solution has more than 100,000 users, but subscription retention is “lower than we would like,” said VTNA Product Marketing Manager Chayene De Souza. It could be that we can do a remote programming; we can send software over the air and get this fixed.” De Souza said that solution is very popular with Volvo users, which primarily consist of smaller to mid-size fleets. Navistar’s solution also aims to drive greater uptimes and reduce total cost of ownership; it’s one OEM that does provide a fault code action plan to identify most likely needed parts and service as well as dealer on-hand inventory of needed parts, GPS mapping with nearby service centers and hotels and more beyond vehicle fault code reporting and severity ratings.