Elly Yates-Roberts |
This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.
The transportation industry is facing a period of disruptive transformation. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, up to 68% of the human population will live in urban centres. Due to restrictions on personal passenger cars in densely populated areas, many companies are providing new mobility services in a shared economy. Services like car sharing and ride hailing, alongside new technologies like electric vehicles and autonomous driving, are enabling new and exciting possibilities for customers.
Automotive manufacturers are increasingly exploring solutions that blend into one coherent urban, digitally managed city transportation network, with several high-profile announcements in the last two years. However, car sharing or ride sharing services create a new set of challenges. New mobility platforms comprise a large amount of software, both in the vehicle as well as in cloud-based back-end systems.
Managing and maintaining full vehicle fleets will be a key area of expertise for these new business models. In their new role as fleet operators, vehicle manufacturers face the task of maximising availability and uptime of vehicles by optimising all maintenance and repair operations. To achieve this, continuous remote vehicle status monitoring, remote diagnosis, FOTA and efficient (on-site) repair will be key success factors. These new services can be leveraged using existing vehicle connectivity.
DSA is developing a portfolio of end-to-end solutions to efficiently operate vehicle fleets. Our software and hardware solutions can be integrated into the vehicle electronics architecture to continuously gather sensor information, operation data, vehicle health and system information. The vehicle information is transmitted to and stored within the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP). DSA offers a series of extensions to the MCVP that provide a complete picture of the fleet status in the cloud. Information is stored in conformance with the definition of the Common Data Models, simplifying data exchange and collaboration with other systems in the MCVP ecosystem.
Our remote vehicle diagnostics solutions allow remote helpdesk technicians to connect with a vehicle to perform troubleshooting and verify the functionality of the car. With the enhanced information, it is possible to send roadside service technicians equipped with the right tools and spare parts to fix the vehicle quickly on first visit, if the problem cannot be solved remotely or during next regular visit to a repair shop.
Our firmware and configuration over-the-air update solutions allow automotive manufacturers to update their vehicle fleet from the engineering or fleet operation centre, reducing recalls and allowing the efficient distribution of improved software and functionality to the fleet, thus reacting quickly to the changing needs of the market.
The industry-proven software of DSA, integrated with the Azure Cloud, provides security, reliability, scalability and a faster time to market to address the changing transportation ecosystem.
Ansgar Schleicher is managing director at DSA