FOR years, van makers have fought for fleet business on the traditional battlegrounds of price, payload and range. Now a new front is opening up: predictive maintenance.
As connected vehicle technology becomes more prevalent and more sophisticated, manufacturers are increasingly realising the vast amounts of data generated by their vans can be harnessed not just to improve vehicle performance, but to win fleet contracts through the lower costs of reduced downtime thanks to predictive maintenance.
In an increasingly competitive market, thanks to new Chinese entrants arriving and established brands under pressure from the ZEV Mandate, uptime is becoming one of the most valuable sales tools in the commercial vehicle sector.
Ford first with use of connected data
Ford, the UK’s long-time van market leader and therefore, arguably, the most to lose, is already using connected vehicle health data to get ahead.
Speaking to Broker News at the CV Show this month, Alex Gallagher, Ford Pro’s Sales Director, said the company’s “proactive uptime” service uses data modelling to monitor vehicle health and identify potential issues before they lead to a breakdown.
He said: “When we talk to fleets, the biggest cost to their business is downtime. By far. A vehicle off the road is obviously affecting their business. They’re not doing business, they’re not productive and they’re losing money.
“We use connected vehicle health data and data modelling to look at that and see if a vehicle is at any risk of a downtime event, if so we can bring them in.”
Ford claims customers using the service can cut downtime by up to 50%. It is currently offering a six-month free trial to fleet customers before moving to a £9 per month per van paid for subscription model.
The importance of uptime is also driving strategy at Renault.
Renault UK boss Adam Wood said “uptime management” would be the “critical linchpin” in helping the brand achieve its ambition of becoming a top-three van brand in the UK.
Wood said major fleets increasingly value service levels as much as vehicle pricing.
“The market’s not just about price, it’s about quality of product and it’s also about quality of service,” he said.
New entrants are making uptime a core part of their sales proposition too.
Chinese OEM Delivan will deliver “uptime centres”
Chinese-owned Delivan, which will launch in the UK in 2027, said it wants to become the “leading partner for next generation commercial vehicles” by offering “better uptime than our competitors”.
Its vans will use a high level of connectivity to monitor performance and enable “predictive servicing”. Reflecting that strategy, Delivan plans to call its sales and service locations “uptime centres” rather than dealerships or retailers.
Farizon, another Chinese entrant, is also developing its connected vehicle proposition.
Sales Director Kate McLaren said the company is working with third-party telematics provider Geotab to extract more data from its vans, both for fleet customers and Farizon itself as an OEM.
She said fleet managers are increasingly interested in using vehicle data to analyse efficiency, monitor driver behaviour and understand battery degradation.
“It’s amazing what they can do in terms of analysing driver behaviour and their propensity to have a vehicle incident… fleet managers look at the efficiency of the vehicle. Most importantly, who are your best drivers? Who is getting the most mileage out of the vans and driving most sensibly.”
Farizon says its open API should allow telematics providers to access the data they need, making integration easier for fleets.
The trend reflects a broader shift in the LCV market as software-defined vehicles become more common.
Renault’s next-generation electric Trafic, due in 2027, will be software-defined and capable of receiving upgrades over the air during its lifecycle. That could improve residual values and allow fleets to access new functionality without changing vehicles, but also provide far more accurate predictive maintenance data.
For manufacturers, the technology not only offers a way to keep fleets moving, it creates a new recurring revenue stream through telematics subscriptions and service packages while strengthening relationships with major fleet customers.
While manufacturers are positioning predictive maintenance as a breakthrough, fleet management specialists argue the principle itself is far from new, but the execution is where the real battleground lies.
Predictive maintenance a hot topic
Speaking to Broker News David Legg, Director of Propositions and Partnerships at fleet management solutions specialist i247 Group, said the current surge in interest reflects both the growing availability of vehicle data and the commercial opportunity it presents.
“Predictive maintenance is going to grow and grow because it’s a hot topic, and everybody has something to gain from it,” he said.
At its core, however, the concept remains rooted in traditional fleet management discipline.
“They’re packaging it up as something new, but it’s really the same good, old-fashioned maintenance, just supported by digital tools,” Legg added.
Where connected technology is changing the game is in uptime and how fleets manage it.
“Downtime management is critical. Vehicles can go into dealerships and get lost because of parts delays, which still haven’t recovered since Covid,” he said.
“It’s not just about predicting faults, it’s about making sure the supply chain is ready so the vehicle doesn’t sit off the road waiting.”
The shift from reactive to planned intervention is where fleets stand to make the biggest gains because planned servicing, maintenance and repair takes a far shorter time and is far less disruptive than unplanned SMR work.
However, Legg argues that much of the industry is still only part-way through the journey.
“Most systems will tell you there’s a problem. The gap in the market is who actually manages the fix,” he said.
That distinction, between insight and action, may prove decisive as predictive maintenance becomes a key differentiator in fleet procurement. Legg points out that if fleets are running more than one brand of vehicle, they’re not necessarily going to want lots of different connected systems to monitor. Having a single interface to manage vehicle issues is far simpler for fleets and with simplification comes time, and cost, savings.
“All the data shows that if you do preventative maintenance, it’s significantly cheaper in the long run,” Legg added. “But it’s the execution that keeps vehicles on the road.”
In a market facing increased fragmentation from new entrants and fierce competition for every fleet contract, the ability to promise lower total cost of ownership may become just as important as fleet leasing brokers promising attractive lease terms.
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Tristan Young is an award winning journalist with more than 25 years’ experience reporting on the automotive industry focussing predominantly on fleet and retail. As a self-confessed petrol-head, Tristan has a weakness for car classifieds. When he’s not writing about the automotive industry, he can usually be found outdoors with a small pack of border collies.
