What the Internet of Things means for the commercial vehicle sector

Self-driving vehicles

If the driverless automobile is not the most useful IoT innovation for the CV market, then it is certainly the flashiest and most futuristic. It’s also closer than you might think. One Gartner report indicates that by 2020, we’ll have a quarter billion connected vehicles on the road with automation functionality, and Google’s AI system has received legal recognition in the US as the “driver” of their test cars.

If vehicles can reliably drive themselves, the implications for the global CV industry could be huge – and go way beyond getting a van or truck to go from A to B. An AI will certainly be able to navigate the route of a long-haul journey well enough, but when it’s fed real-time, contextual information from sensors it’ll be able to make adjustments for weather, terrain, traffic congestion, and safety.

And because it never needs to eat, rest, or accommodate any other needs, gains in speed and efficiency could be huge.

Minimising fuel costs

Reducing fuel costs is a significant budgetary goal for many fleet managers, and one that is particularly hard to achieve. There are a number of ways to make inefficient use of petrol or diesel: idle time, poor routing, and inadequately maintained machines are only a few contributing factors. Lack of visibility doesn’t help – it’s not always easy to know how an individual vehicle is consuming fuel, let alone a fleet. 

With the IoT, each driver’s dashboard can act as a node connecting to the wider network. This will provide up-to-the-minute data explaining how each vehicle and its operator is performing: if there’s a particular habit that’s negatively influencing performance, you’ll know about it; if there’s a fleet-wide process that’s inflating everyone’s fuel consumption, you’ll have the information you need to implement less wasteful practices.