When Isuzu Commercial Truck of North America rolled out its new 2008 N Series truck models this spring, it also said it will introduce a new customer service— an easy-to-read vehicle “health report”—that will be the first step toward bringing a full-fledged telematics solution to the U.S. medium-duty marketplace, according to Dan Cutler, executive director of product development.
“Japan has a telematics solution called Mimamori that we plan to introduce to U.S. fleets a year or two down the road,” explained Cutler. “While real-time, satellite-based solutions are more common in heavy-duty fleets, their use is still relatively new to the medium-duty market, so we are taking it a step at a time. Our hope is that the new report will give customers the opportunity to experience for themselves the benefits of access to better information about their vehicle assets.”
The health report, which will be available through Isuzu dealers, is designed to provide information about the engine, emissions, fuel economy, PTO hours and driver operating habits to help customers reduce costs, improve performance and manage risk.
According to Bill Kaucky, service readiness engineer, Isuzu is completing design work now on an interface to the electronic data recovery module (DRM) already on all 2007-compliant engines, which will enable the downloading of information from the DRM and the preparation of the new report for customers.
“The work is almost complete now,” Kaucky added. “Dealers should have it available later this year through their existing on-line service tool, the Isuzu Diagnostic Service System (IDSS).
