Supplier stories: Trakm8

The challenges for fleets surrounding EV adoption are numerous. But, says Joe Heidari, fleet and optimisation sales director at Trakm8, they are wholly achievable with the right help.

Joe Heidari of Trakm8

At Trakm8, we are very much focused on ensuring fleets have the right tools at their disposal to improve safety and efficiency, reduce fleet emissions and keep track of overall economy and TCO. Within the different types of vehicle fleets comes a demand for the best hardware – and we are proud that one of our USPs is the fact that we manufacture all our products here in the UK, for UK customers.

AI optimisation is key for our customers, because they need to be able to schedule and plan jobs, deliveries and journeys in the most efficient way for their business.

Optimise, don’t compromise

When we talk about AI optimisation, people often think just about route planning, but it’s so much more than that. AI optimisation takes into account the company’s overall assets and resources, drivers, vehicle capacity, working hours, cost of vehicles, the cost of drivers and works out the number of miles that is required to do all the jobs. Our system looks at everything in a holistic way to be able to give fleets a plan, because that’s the most efficient way. So, essentially, it treats multiple problems as a singular issue within an algorithm, whereas the human brain could not possibly take all those things into account, particularly for a large fleet.

Hardware arrivals

We launch different types of hardware on a regular basis, according to when we need to upgrade a particular piece of kit, typically to ensure we keep up with the latest technology. For example, we’ve recently launched the RH800, a four-way camera system that is fully integrated with the Trakm8 platform. We still have the RH600, which is essentially a dashcam version of our new product, but we noticed that while customers were happy with that model, they liked the idea of a four-way camera system, to give them full telematics capabilities, which is what they get from the RH800.

Vantastic idea

While the RH800 is typically favoured by truck fleets, we found that some customers were looking for a three-lens system for their vans, but couldn’t find anything in the market. They wanted to have an internal camera, as well as the dashcam – and the RH800 was able to meet their requirements. Essentially, it helps make fleets more efficient. Rather than fleet managers having to investigate, the system tells you when a red line has been crossed and what that line was. There’s camera footage that is captured automatically and sent, via an alert, back to base.

Getting EV ready

We use our telematics data to be able to identify which vehicles in your fleet currently are ready to be switched across to EV, because it’s not an overnight process. We look at the range that particular a vehicle might need, potential charging areas and the routes that it will travel on a daily basis. From there we can work out how easy it would be to switch to EV. Consultancy is a big factor in helping fleets to transition, but so is how to manage EVs on a telematics platform. We have some clever ideas here that can send alerts out for specific thresholds, such as when the battery drops below 25%, for example. So then, if a fleet manager wanted to direct the driver to a specific charging point, for whatever reason, that’s possible.