This is the first open OEM platform for fleet management.
This enables fleets to access telematics, software solutions, real-time vehicle data, and third-party applications directly from their vehicles. In addition, the platform provides the tools to manage those applications, connectivity, and the mobile devices drivers need to use them. Virtual Vehicle represents a platform-first approach that provides customers greater value and a significantly expanded choice of software-enabled services.
Virtual Vehicle is another example of DTNA’s expanding solutions that go beyond vehicle sales and service. With the platform’s introduction, the company enhances the driver experience by offering nearly limitless software-enabled and ROI-enhancing applications. DTNA is the first OEM to use cloud, edge, and in-dash technology to provide native in-vehicle mobile technology which enables customers to distribute, manage and enable driver applications and connected vehicle services.
The platform gives fleets the ultimate flexibility to choose third-party apps, mix or match telematics service provider (TSP) applications, or bring their own. This allows truck buyers to customize their experiences down to an app-by-app and driver-by-driver level for the first time, and to create in-cab technology experiences that best suit their specific business objectives, then evolve them whenever they choose to do so.
Through its developer toolkit, Virtual Vehicle unleashes the potential for any number of third-party developers to create apps that can offer ROI for fleets and quality of life improvements for drivers. Virtual Vehicle provides the tools needed to manage the mobile devices that come and go from the vehicle, all without ever having to install or change on-vehicle mobile gateways or telematics units.
The Virtual Vehicle platform offers many benefits to fleets, including:
- Productivity: With factory-installed telematics hardware, fleets can maximize uptime by avoiding installation delays and costs for complementary hardware.
- Flexibility: Virtual Vehicle allows fleets to create a software experience catered to individual business needs through a growing pipeline of developer-created innovations.
- Accessibility: Virtual Vehicle leverages edge, cloud and in-dash data to optimize networks, keeping data available 24/7/365, even when fleets are offline.
- Cost-effective: Users of participating applications on Virtual Vehicle benefit from usage-based billing.
Platform Science’s Virtual Vehicle is currently available on Freightliner Cascadias manufactured September 9, 2019 or later and will be available as a monthly subscription. Source