I find myself in the unique position to tell the story of the telematics industry with an unbiased conclusion of where I believe it’s headed. I entered the transportation industry in 1996, the year when the opportunity to commercialize telematics became viable. I worked from a home office with a family of two brothers and their mother, which would become the world’s largest fleet telematics company. I shaped the company’s sales and marketing path; the brothers and family shaped the technology.
In 2024, I exited the business to be able to share my experience, unbridled by brand and in pursuit of advancing the broader technology supplier ecosystem I helped establish — which, I believe, is in danger of collapse if history repeats itself.
This article is mindful that there is an entire generation currently employed (and hopefully reading this) that has never known the pre-Internet work. I have taken care to not only share the history of what happened, but to connect that history to building blocks and the connective tissue that has resulted in where we are today, to draw reasonable assumptions where we’ll be in the near and not too distant future.
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS PAPER
In 2000, telematics was not a word used to describe the technology that today is ubiquitous and saturated with solutions ranging from event recorders to connected cars. Like many inventions, they have a genesis that inspires others to rethink what’s possible.
It started in Europe with the commercial launch of the Kienzle tachograph in 1974 — a paper disk with a lie-detector-like print head that recorded speed and distance changes when driving, while also including working, driving, rest, and presence times, as well as their interruptions.
To discourage tampering, the device recorded each time the case was opened to remove or replace the paper disk. In the United States, the industry has evolved from the paper disk tachograph to paper rolls, to the digital tachograph, to electronic logging devices (ELDs). The genesis for much inspiration in telematics is that vehicle movement should not only be displayed on the dashboard as a speedometer for the driver, but that the data from the trip would be useful if recorded.
Note to reader: In the more complete book that I am writing, I’ll share details of how companies have acquired technology, including the Kienzle tachograph, to reflect on the strategic importance of telematics. Cutting to the chase here, after changing hands to Siemens VDO in 2000, Continental (yes, the tire brand’s parent) acquired Siemens VDO Automotive in 2007. The significance of the period 2000–2009 cannot be underscored enough in terms of the interest and investment in telematics by global players. [CB1]
LATE 80S, EARLY 90S: THE KEYSTONE YEARS
In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, a series of innovations were introduced that have been advancing telematics ever since.
DIAGNOSTIC DATA
In 1988, On Board Diagnostics (OBD) delivered data via an access port from vehicles to service technicians using a scan tool. While the diagnostics were limited, it was the start of something that would inspire engineers and lawmakers in California and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to require OBD in all new cars from 1991 for emissions control purposes.
In 1996, OBD-II diagnostics became a requirement for all gasoline and alternative-fuel passenger cars and trucks sold in the United States. In 1997, all diesel-powered cars and trucks sold were compliant.
The technology became scalable when the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) standardized the emissions diagnostic codes, as well as the physical OBD connector and its general accessibility within a vehicle.
WIRELESS MESSAGING AND LOCATION
In the 1980s, long before smartphones, pager messaging was popular. At the same time, GPS technology was used by the military, but commercially, it was as accurate as a football field.
In 1988, clever engineers at Qualcomm who were working on improving truck transportation logistics put their wireless text messaging technology together with GPS positioning to create the first commercially viable dispatch tool.
An approximate position every 15 minutes would be delivered to a dispatcher screen, and messaging between dispatcher and driver was truly revolutionary at the time. In 1994, PeopleNet entered the industry, and throughout the 1990s, PeopleNet and Omnitracs built deep integrations between vehicles, data, and back-office operations.
A NOTE ON EUROPE AND ASIAN AUTOMAKERS AND DATA
Note that outside of the U.S. and Canada, the OBD connector and protocol was used. It was not standardized in terms of use and location. Accessing data in Europe was done by connecting an aftermarket telematics device to the port.
Squarell Technology developed a clever way to read data from the vehicle by using what are essentially electronic sensor clamps that were positioned over wires. The important distinction is the word “read.”
Whereas OBD2 allowed a device in North America to query a sensor by sending a data request from the scan tool to the vehicle that would return the value of the sensor reading, Bosch also developed a solution called CANBUS, which was first introduced in the 1980s, but was not adopted by the USA automakers.
Without a regional governing body like the SAE or a jurisdiction like California requiring a universal solution, and with competing interests from automakers in Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom, international vehicle manufacturers have lagged behind in the adoption of telematics-driven innovation.
1996: THE GPS BUILDING BLOCK IS ADDED
By 1996, desktop computers and the internet were taking off, and in that same year, President Clinton enabled GPS to be viable for commercial and consumer purposes by enabling location services to be within about a car length of accuracy.
While trucking was okay with football field accuracy, companies working on efficiency in the services, navigation, and stolen vehicle recovery invested resources to apply GPS to use cases in residential and urban areas.
Fresh from the internet-adoption tech boom of the 1990s, with declining greenfield growth in selling internet access subscriptions, many tech entrepreneurs were connecting the dots of GPS location and live updates on a map — and this business service represented wide open growth.
The Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) industry was born.
WHAT IS GPS?
In 2001, the number one question I had to explain to hotel ballrooms filled with interested business individuals wanting to jump in on “the next big thing” was that GPS was free.
Just like AM radio in your car, you simply need an antenna facing the sky that is attached to a GPS receiver and a data recorder. For easy memory’s sake, it was called a “black box,” like the data recorder is commonly called on aircraft.
GPS includes latitude, longitude, and speed. Before the interest in getting speed from the vehicle speed sensor, GPS alone gave speed that was +/- accurate 3 mph in my experience. There was a slight delay in accuracy for GPS speed to match the actual vehicle movement, but the speed was accurate enough to report a change in speed to estimate a hard braking event (rapid decline in speed over distance) or vehicle speed exceeding a threshold.
BUYER EDUCATION
While GPS is the same for every provider, there were five choices that any provider of services with GPS makes. Each choice is worthy of explanation to help a customer narrow down their choice of AVL provider to match their need.
1) Sample frequency: potential of a processor that receives the GPS data: From a cold start, some providers recorded a position, then did not attempt to find the location again until some time or distance had passed, whether the ignition of the vehicle was on or off. Others chose to keep the GPS receiver warm when the ignition of the vehicle was on to maximize the sample rate, which was one sample per second during a trip. Very few chose to keep the GPS receiver hot and always on, recording location whether the ignition was on or off.
2) Data sampling (time, distance, algorithmic): How important is it to the business to locate a vehicle within 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 15 minutes? An algorithmic sample of GPS data had a bonus of being able to render a trip, independent of maps, and to capture business applications with short stops that otherwise might slip between the time or distance sampling.
PHOTO: METAMORWORKS
3) How frequently data is recorded into memory in the vehicle: There’s a difference between sampling and recording into memory. Time or distance sampling was always recorded into the providers’ memories. Some providers of risk or safety algorithmic solutions recorded every second of data that was sent back to a computer for algorithmic processing of events. Other providers, most notably Geotab, which patented the method, sampled GPS every second in the vehicle but only recorded the data that carried useful information.
4) Data transfer method between the vehicle and a computer: There were four — sent by satellite for remote trucks or equipment, sent by cellular for cities and locations with data coverage, non-cellular wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 900 MHz, radio trunk network), and manual data fob or data card. An external cellular modem had cost over $500, and telematics data plans were in factors of $10 KBs (not MBs, not GBs). A $60- to $80-per-month plan was not uncommon in addition to the cost of devices and installation. Businesses paid easily $1,000 per vehicle per year. Non-cellular wireless or manual data download solutions typically had no monthly fee, with a few exceptions.
5) Data transfer frequency: Less applicable for the majority of cellular or satellite providers, but for businesses that were best suited for non-cellular or manual transfer of data. The consideration was how often a vehicle or employee would be at a location where their data could be retrieved had to be considered.
BETTER BUYER, FUTURE DECISION MAKING
Each of these five distinct choices determined who the target customer would be, and they are very relevant today with respect to video solutions. In many applications of video, there is a low desire to manage video in real time due to the high frequency of false positives, as well as the time required to interpret video, which always requires context because sometimes a video isn’t self-evident.
In the early history, several companies brought together government-regulated diagnostics and unbridled access to accurate location information, together with mass adoption of both the internet and cellular wireless communications.
WHAT’S NEXT
In upcoming chapters in Automotive Fleet, I cover patents and how a couple of them suppressed telematics expansion and how the accelerometer sensor enabled safety solutions. I also field test the state of video and telematics solutions today.
Know that there is no such thing as a universal solution. Adopting emerging technology is, and always will be, a journey with no finish line. Embrace that reality. Know that there are providers of exciting solutions that create value that you have never heard of, and that we’ll shine light on who they are and what’s coming next. ■
