On Wednesday, VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV), which is a joint venture between Eicher and Volvo Group said that its total range of commercial vehicles would now come with connected technology. From 1st of August, all trucks and buses from the company’s shed will come with factory-fitted telematics systems. This would help the owners to enhance their productive activities through vehicles.

VECV’s CEO Vinod Aggarwal said that they are now the first company in India to become sellers of fully connected commercial vehicles.

He also said, “The entire lineup of the company’s commercial vehicles that ranges from 4.9 tonnes to 55 tonnes will be having telematics systems with two years of free subscription.”

Aggarwal stated that with the help of connected technology in place, the owners would now get

regular inputs of their vehicles on a real-time basis.

These vehicles would get live internet connection and they will be in constant connection with the owners and managers and also company workshops.

The technology will help the owners to keep check about their drivers’ driving habits for maintaining fuel efficiency and give alerts when vehicles would need repair or servicing.

Aggarwal explained, “We need to give the technology at least cost of ownership to the customer. Because of the transition from BSIV to BSVI, the ownership cost for commercial vehicles have touched 8-15 percent marks. The connected features will help the owners to realize the factors for fuel efficiency, uptime and they will be able to increase the productivity of the vehicle.”

Customers with large fleet have high demands of fuel efficiency, safety, and driving behavior as critical elements determine and maximize the productivity and profitability.

The technology will have benefits for big logistics players and last-mile vehicles also at the same efficiency.

The company has set up a center at the Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh for catering to the uptime services, fuel management, and diagnostic services under the connected services project.

There is no extra charge for upgrade service. Aggarwal said that the company plants were currently functioning at a 25-30 percent level due to poor demand and said that will grow in the September-October period.

He states that the introduction of the incentive-based scrappage policy will help in the revival of the commercial vehicle segment which was under severe slowdown.