By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
January 31, 2024
We’re living in an increasingly connected world, where everything from our smartphones to our vehicles can collect and seamlessly share data. As more vehicles become connected, fleets have access to more data than ever on how their vehicles run, how their drivers perform, and how they can best optimize their fleet.
In order to make use of all this data, however, fleet management companies need a provider that can take that data and turn it into actionable insights. That’s the goal of CerebrumX, a connected car data ecosystem company that delivers insights based on real-time data. While most fleets consist of a range of connected and non-connected vehicles, CerebrumX’s FleetConnect solution bridges the gap and delivers insights for your whole fleet in one convenient platform.
We recently interviewed Sumit Chauhan, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of CerebrumX, to find out how his company can help fleet managers monitor the range of vehicles in their fleets. With over 24 years of experience in the Automotive and Software industries, Chauhan is well-positioned to provide insight into the connected car data ecosystem and the future of fleet management.
Here’s what we learned:
Tell us about CerebrumX. How does the company help fleets?
We founded CerebrumX in August 2020 with the sole intention of finding a way to use and monetize connected vehicle data, which is becoming increasingly readily available as more and more vehicles are connected. Because electrification and ADAS is happening at a rapid speed, the quantum of data that is getting collected per vehicle is humongous, which means that having access to that data and providing it to customers in the right format is paramount in terms of the data’s value. So CerebrumX works with insurers, fleet management companies, and smart mobility companies to provide that data.
From a fleet point-of-view, our FleetConnect product provides fleet management companies with certain solutions and insights. We don’t just provide data, but actual insights in terms of total cost of ownership (which entails predictive maintenance), ethanol (which is the loss notification), scratch notifications, and so on and so forth. We also track things like fuel pilferage because that’s a common thing that happens with fleets over a period of time. We’re also very cognizant of the fact that drivers are the most important asset for a fleet management company. So it’s very important to monitor the drivers’ overall well-being and how they’re driving, as well as proactively training them by providing insights on their driving behavior and driving scores.
The last thing I would say is that we’re in a bit of a ‘twilight zone’ when it comes to fleet management companies, for a few reasons. One is that while connectivity is increasing rapidly, fleet management companies have an aging fleet, so many of their vehicles are connected and some are not. That leaves a very interesting problem on how to manage the vehicles that are and are not connected. To bridge the gap while all the vehicles get connected, we have a dongle solution with our partner Pioneer, who is also an investor in CerebrumX.
The second reason is because of electrification. Electric vehicles are becoming more attractive because a lot of government initiatives are being given by the state and federal government – so many fleets are transitioning to electrified vehicles. Still, it’s only at about 5-6% right now of the overall fleet. So again, managing those vehicles, providing them charging, and monitoring them is an interesting problem as well. But because we get the data directly from the cards, that problem becomes easier working with CerebrumX.
Can you tell us more about the ‘twilight zone’ that we’re in? What should fleets do and how can CerebrumX help?
When it comes to connectivity, any fleet management company has a fleet that is aging generally anywhere between zero to seven years, particularly if you look at class five vehicles. That’s the number of years that they keep these vehicles on their fleet and then sell them off in the resale market, which means that connectivity came into its own only in about the last three or four years. Now we are at almost 100% connectivity in terms of the new vehicles being shipped out. But because the fleet is about seven years old, we have a scenario where in some fleets it’s almost 50/50 between connected and non-connected.
The connectivity is even lesser for some of the fleets, which means you have to transcend the barrier between the connected and non-connected vehicles if you want a ubiquitous solution. It wouldn’t make sense to put a dongle in a connected vehicle because it’s already connected. You should only need to put the dongle in the unconnected vehicles. CerebrumX gets the data directly from the connected vehicles, but we bridge the gap with a dongle provided by Pioneer. That way we can provide a solution where all of the data flows through CerebrumX’s cloud and to the fleet management company. You get a ubiquitous API interface whether the vehicle is connected or unconnected.
In terms of electrification, I would say that’s an even more urgent problem because of the rate of electrification and the need for fleets to understand what it means to manage EVs. Connectivity is a simpler problem, but managing EVs is a totally different beast, because that involves managing a different engine and a different set of parameters in terms of the batteries (a humongous task in itself). What we’ve done is develop a full-fledged suite of APIs and insights that we provide for EVs, including the usage and how you can go about charging these vehicles.
We have solutions like for when you plug in your vehicle at night, we can ensure that the charging only happens when the tariff is at its lowest, say 3-6 a.m. Otherwise, if the charging starts right when you plug it in, it might be at the highest tariff rate during the day, which is obviously a big loss to the fleet management company. Having CerebrumX in your corner provides insights and data on how to better manage these electrified vehicles, whether they’re stationary or on the job.
Do you have a success story with a fleet that you can tell us?
One of our customers has a new Ford F-250 truck that was put into service. It was probably the second or third day on the job when the vehicle was jacked while the driver stopped for coffee. Somebody got into the cabin and took off with the vehicle in a matter of minutes, which we saw because we have real-time surveillance on the vehicle. The driver reported it, and we monitored the vehicle using the data.
We used the stereo inside the cabin to announce to the driver that he was being surveilled. He unplugged all the wires he could see because he thought that would eliminate the connectivity. Luckily for the fleet management company, CerebrumX doesn’t work only on a dongle, but works on the connected vehicle data, which is using the TCU or ESIM installed in the car. So, we kept surveilling, and within a matter of two hours, the vehicle was sighted, and the guy surrendered and we got the vehicle back. So that’s a great example of what happens when you have real-time access to the data or the connected vehicles.
CerebrumX has also been helpful in the field of lot management, which may be generally associated with dealerships but is also pertinent for fleet management companies. When a company like Hertz or Enterprise has a lot of vehicles sitting in their lots, it’s hard to take stock of what kind of maintenance each vehicle requires. When a vehicle stands idle for a long time, chances are something has gone wrong, such as the battery levels or the tire pressure being depleted.
Using CerebrumX’s technology, one of which is lot management, you get a full stock of all your vehicles and their health. With our connectivity, we don’t even need the vehicle to be turned on to monitor it. If the battery is being drained out, we can remotely turn on the ignition so that it gets recharged. Those are the kinds of things that help not just cost, but also in terms of elegance of how the fleet management companies can look at the solutions we provide.
