Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA)  announced that all Freightliner Trucks and Western Star customers with an active Detroit Connect suite of connected vehicle services subscription now have access to the Detroit Connect portal. The portal is a hub for new and future connectivity services such as Detroit Connect Virtual Technician remote diagnostic service, for Detroit-powered fleets.

The Detroit Connect portal provides users information about overall fleet health, as well as enables them to take a deeper dive into specific fault events communicated by Virtual Technician, the company explained. Real-time fault event notifications delivered through the portal lets fleets quickly determine whether a vehicle requires an immediate service stop or can continue on its route or finish work at the job site, and delivers full diagnostic information from Virtual Technician, including the cause of the fault and in some cases the steps needed to repair the issue.

Beginning later this summer, fleets with the new Freightliner Cascadia will soon be able to utilize Detroit Connect Remote Updates and will be able to remotely access Detroit Diesel Engine Control (DDEC) performance reports over-the-air through the new Detroit Connect portal, the company announced.

DDEC reports use diagnostics to analyze driver and vehicle performance, providing data such as fuel efficiency information, time spent in top gear and time spent in cruise control. The reports help fleet managers better understand vehicle performance, and allow for insights that will help them improve vehicle fuel efficiency, the company said.

“By making DDEC reports available through the Detroit Connect portal, we are eliminating the need for fleets to bring a vehicle into the shop and extract the reports,” said Lauren Attinasi, DTNA’s product strategy manager of connectivity. “The remote performance reports will benefit uptime as well as overall vehicle insights.”

In late 2017, additional features of Detroit Connect Remote Updates, such as fleet-initiated remote engine parameter programming and Detroit-initiated firmware updates, will be rolled out to new Cascadia customers.

 

Watch FE‘s video test drive of Freightliner’s new Cascadia here.