Mitsubishi says it recognises the importance of on-board telematics in growing its fleet-sector sales – and improving safety for light commercial utility operators…

Telematics reporting has become a vitally important tool in managing vehicle fleets both here and overseas and is a now-familiar facet of medium and heavy vehicle operations.

Until now, however, light vehicle fleets have operated without the availability of factory-backed electronic monitoring, in spite of increasing sales of one-tonne utilities into larger delivery, agricultural and mining fleets.

It’s a point Mitsubishi says has not gone unnoticed, and as part of its newly introduced Triton range the Japanese importer will now offer fleet buyers the option of equipping light commercial utilities with the cost-saving – and potentially life-saving – technology.

For Mitsubishi, it’s not only a way of ensuring it's fleet customers track and monitor fleet servicing requirements and driver behaviour, but to also grow its presence in a market currently dominated by Toyota and Ford.

"In the private space, the Mitsubishi Triton is very strong already, and we’ll get a greater portion of that space with the updates released here," said Mitsubishi Australia head of product panning, James Tol.

"But the area that we really want to work harder on is fleet [sales], and while the product itself is very good, there are other initiatives that we’re taking to offer more holistic fleet solutions, and one of the key offerings is a fleet telematics system."

In offering telematics in its light commercial utility range, Mitsubishi joins established players from the large van and truck arena including Hino, Isuzu and Mercedes-Benz. The module-based system allows operators of mixed fleets the use of the Mitsubishi-backed system across a range of vehicles, centralising records for the simplified tracking and processing of data.

"It’s a system that’s quite open, so much so that, for example, if a fleet has 40 per cent Mitsubishi product and 60 per cent someone else’s product, our telematics system can work across all of them," Tol explained.

"There are different levels of supervision that can be specified, but it’s really about the chain of responsibility situation that’s in place now and Occupational Health and Safety," he continued.

"It’s just another way that fleets can monitor what’s happening with their vehicles, and even intervene if they notice certain driving behaviours are being exhibited."

Tol said that the system currently meant intervention extended only to one-way reporting, operators unable to limit speed or enforce the use of electronic driver aids remotely.

"At the moment the system can only read signals, it can’t send signals, so there is no mechanism to make an intervention such as that," he confirmed.

"But there is a mechanism to notify things of that nature [over-speed, excessive braking, etc.], and provide service requirement information and so on to make sure nothing goes unchecked. It’s about improving the value story of our whole fleet offering."

Increasingly, Tol said fleets were using telematics programs to ensure fleet usage was maximised, saving money on inactive vehicles for which time-based maintenance schedules had become a costly consideration. In this way, rostering vehicles to instead be used within service mileage parameters is a more effective way to keep a lid on both maintenance and initial purchase costs.

"It’s also a way for fleet operators to determine if their fleet is being utilised fully," Tol continued.

"It might mean, for instance, that if they looked at the usage pattern [of their fleet] that maybe they don’t need 15 vehicles, and could make do with 13."

In addition to the safety offered by telematics reporting, Mitsubishi’s latest Triton promises safety and driver assistance technologies that outpace even the dearest of its rivals.

Now offering the most comprehensive safety equipment in its class, the new Triton is available at Group 1 Mitsubishi, with seven airbags, forward collision mitigation (including bulbar-compatible autonomous emergency braking), lane departure warning, blind-spot detection, unintended acceleration mitigation and rear cross-traffic alert, to name but a few.

Article source: https://mitsubishipaparazzi.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/mitsubishi-adds-telematics-to-triton-ute/