Fleet Maintenance - 25

NEXIQ Technologies provides vehicle telematics
and diagnostic products, software, and services
for the trucking fleet vehicle industries.
"There is a subset of data that is standard, but
in order to do anything close to a decent job of
[diagnosing vehicle issues], you have to have
the proprietary OEM information in your tool,"
adds Robert Vogt, CEO of telematics solutions
provider IoSiX.
The
unavailability of this information
has caused some fleets
to request access, says
Martin Falch, co-owner
of CSS Electronics.
Denmark-based CSS
Electronics is a developer
of CAN bus data logging
devices used to record
raw CAN, J1939, and
OBD-II data from vehicles.
"We increasingly see a
shift towards end-users
demanding transparency and open source solutions," he says. "As such, we
expect open access to the
full protocol data [which]
may become a key negotiation factor in e.g. fleet
procurement settings."
The first challenge is
to decipher the information from the vehicle.
Then, once that information is obtained, f leets
must also verify they
have a holistic view of
all the vehicle systems
working together.
"With proprietary information from component
manufacturers in the
mix, telematics providers and aftermarket tool
manufacturers must
either purchase the data
or reverse engineer it,"
Covington explains. "With
both approaches often
being expensive, the lack
of a true standardized
protocol for diagnostics
drives up the cost of these
tools and services, making
it difficult to pass along
savings to the end user."
Covington says the best
plan of action is to have a
standardized approach to
diagnosing vehicle issues
and ensure the tools and
adapters used by technicians in the shop cover
all these common protocols. This can help fleets
in finding the root cause
of the problem in order to
ensure maximized vehicle uptime.

"You must be able to understand what is wrong
with the entire vehicle before estimating downtime, parts and labor requirements, technician
needs, and more," Covington adds. "Use a diagnostic and repair tool that can read all protocols to ensure you understand the needs of the
entire vehicle, rather than one or two major
components."

Potential security risks

Aside from providing an accurate and thorough
picture of the vehicle's performance, there are
additional issues fleets may face.
The main challenge with standardized communication protocol? Security.
Hacking of vehicle systems is a viable threat
and should be considered.

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Fleet Maintenance

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Fleet Maintenance