What’s Connected Truck Technology?

Today’s heavy-duty trucks can have more than 100 sensors, not to mention radar, lidar and camera systems. These heavy-commercial vehicles account for 57% of the connected truck market, according to a recent report.

Connected truck technology uses these various systems to transmit information from the truck to outside entities to share the location and condition of the truck and to improve operations overall.

Where It Began

In the late 1980s, Qualcomm introduced the first telematics device in the trucking industry: a device that could track a truck’s location. Since then, fleets have many options for telematics systems and other onboard technologies, some of which come directly from the truck makers and others that can be added to the truck once it arrives at the fleet’s location.

The government has even mandated certain technologies including the use of electronic logging devices (ELDs) to track drivers’ hours of service. In addition to ELDs, many of the components on today’s trucks are equipped with control modules and sensors that are continuously transmitting data to telematics devices now capable of much more than just tracking a truck’s location.

Connectivity and Vehicle Health

As telematics devices receive sensor data from the various components, fleets know in real time about the health of their trucks. Fault codes are captured and reported, and this has changed the maintenance and repair landscape. Now, fleet managers get early access to a developing problem and can make decisions — based on the nature and severity of the fault code — about whether the vehicle needs to be brought to the dealership immediately for service, if it can wait until the driver’s next scheduled break, or if the problem can wait until the vehicle’s next scheduled maintenance.

Data from telematics devices can be shared with the truck manufacturer and servicing dealer. Access to this real-time data allows dealers to be better prepared when a truck gets to their lot. They’ll already know what fault codes were active and can pull parts that’ll be needed for the repair as well as assign the repair to the Technician best able to handle it.

This allows the dealer service Technician to begin the repair more quickly and get that truck back on the road faster as well. For example, Volvo says its connected uptime service reduces diagnostic time by 70% and repair time by 20%.

When data from the telematics device is coupled with a fleet maintenance management system, fleets can also spot failure and wear trends and take proactive action to repair or replace a component in an asset class prior to it failing based on the wear trends of similar assets.

Remote diagnostics aren’t the only benefit of a connected truck. Many truck makers are offering over-the-air software updates designed to fix issues and improve a vehicle’s efficiency. In the past, software updates meant taking the truck off the road and having a Technician manually perform the update. Today, drivers receive a notification that an update is needed, and they can perform the update themselves once they’ve parked their vehicle.

Connectivity Helps With Safety

Connectivity also improves efficiency and safety. Advanced driver assistance systems can include automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning, lane keeping and collision mitigation. These systems are designed to intervene automatically if a driver fails to heed audible, visual and haptic warnings that there’s a problem.

The Future of Connectivity

As we move into the future, it’s likely we’ll continue to see connectivity play an even bigger role in trucking as fleets look for ways to improve operational efficiency and safety while reducing costs. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will make the connected data generated by trucks even more actionable, leading to advances in predictive maintenance.

In addition, there have been significant inroads in autonomous trucking, which relies on not only a connected truck but also a connected trucking ecosystem where trucks connect to the infrastructure and to other vehicles. Companies like Kodiak Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Torc Robotics and Gatik AI are all working on autonomous trucks, and there have been successful autonomous truck demonstrations as pilot programs.

It's been less than 40 years since the first telematics device made its way into the trucking industry. In that short time, trucks have added a variety of technology, allowing them to be more connected than ever. It’ll be interesting to see how much more connected we are 40 years from now.