Smart tire technology collects real-time data such as tire pressure, tread depth, age, brand, size, vehicle type, location, and temperature.
Think of all the data telematics can collect from vehicles: trouble codes, driver behaviors, speed, idling, and so much more. Now think about tires: What data can you collect from them?
Tire pressure and tread depth are on the table, but those are just two basic metrics. They also rely on a person to manually record them, and those recordings may or may not be accurate — if they happen at all. And if they are accurate, how much can you really do with two data points?
“When tires aren’t digitized, it’s a huge problem, especially for the fleet industry. You hope that somebody will write it on a piece of paper, then you hope somebody takes the piece of paper and puts it somewhere, and then in three weeks, you hope that somebody put the right information into the system, which is three weeks too late,” said Christian Plaichner, chief product officer, Anyline, a provider of mobile data capture technology.
“But when you get real-time, digitized information from tires, you can make decisions on it, and you can report on it.”
Thanks to smart tire technology, fleets can collect significantly more data about the condition, use, and type of tires, as well as how many miles are left on the tire before a failure. Better yet, AI technology automatically aggregates, analyzes, and reports on what’s going on with tires, allowing fleet managers to understand the problems, take the appropriate action and benefit from the resulting outcomes.
“The smart tire is one of the last major components of a vehicle to be connected. It’s the only part touching the ground, and it’s designed to fail,” said Sunjay Dodani, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Revvo Technologies, a provider of an AI-based, real-time remote tire management solution. “Now our goal is to figure out how it is going to fail. Is it failing faster than it should? What can we do to make it not fail so quickly?”
What Data Does Smart Tire Technology Collect?
Smart tire technology collects real-time data, including:
- Tire pressure
- Tread depth
- Age
- Brand
- Size
- Vehicle type
- Location
- Temperature
- And more
Based on these data points, AI software can generate reports that show fleet managers what issues exist and recommend actions to resolve them.
“Based on the 500 million miles of data that we’ve captured, analyzed and modeled against, you see the same problem regardless of the type of fleet, which is, you can’t predict when the tire is going to have a failure,” Dodani said. “Ninety percent of the time, it could have been prevented if you took the right action at the right time. But when you take that raw data and have software that interprets them, you can derive things like leaks, irregularities with the way the tire is rotating or behaving, and whether a blowout is imminent.”
What Can You Do with Smart Tire Data?
Smart tire software does the thinking for fleet managers by predicting how many more miles are left on the tire or uncover wear patterns based on data. These insights help fleets do things like:
- Avoid replacing tires too early and taxing the tire budget
- Avoid replacing tires too late, which reduces roadside tire emergencies that are costly and jeopardize safety
- Know which tires need rotating and the right time to do so to extend tire life
- Determine which tires work best for which vehicles/applications/operating environments to improve tire performance and reduce costs
“When you can explain what’s going on with tires, then act on a recommendation that solves the problem, that’s highly valuable,” Dodani said.
Smart tire data can also inform improvements to a tire program as a whole.
“If the data show there is an environment where tires perform better, you can look at what happens if you change an element. Does it change the wear of the tire? Does it change the alignment of the vehicle? What are the impacts of this?” Plaichner said.
Acting on Smart Tire Insights
Acting on smart tire insights yields several positive outcomes.
Improved Maintenance Planning and Reduced Downtime
Understanding the condition of tires helps fleet managers dial into the precise time they need to be serviced.
“If I know the tire condition means a vehicle needs to go to a maintenance facility in three weeks, I have time to plan ahead to minimize the impacts of taking that vehicle out of service,” Plaichner said, “That’s a huge cost component.”
Dodani said automated daily reports enable fleets to quickly make decisions that improve uptime. “If I have 10 seconds, I can look at a report and know which tires on which vehicles have issues. I can forward that to my technician to tackle in the morning before the vehicles leave for the day,” he said. “Because of that, grounding gets reduced by 90% with a smart tire.”
Improved Safety
A clear benefit of smart tire technology is the ability to reduce blowouts, which can cause accidents and threaten the safety of fleet drivers.
“About 11,000 accidents are caused in the U.S. every year by tires,” Plaichner said. “We’ve seen an 87% increase in vehicle safety with our technology. That also means you’re eliminating the expense of road service calls. By taking action ahead of time or being alerted about when tires need to be serviced, you can increase safety and reduce costs.”
Fuel Efficiency
Smart tire technology immediately alerts fleet managers when tire pressure is low rather than relying on a driver or technician to notice it. Properly inflated tires improve fuel efficiency, which can yield savings that add up quickly across the fleet.
“A nice byproduct of deploying smart tires is a 6% increase in fuel efficiency,” Dodani said. “Identifying tires that have critically low pressure or are causing you drag can save some fleets millions of dollars a year.”
Other Cost Savings
In addition to fuel savings, fleets can see an ROI on smart tires by reducing downtime, expensive roadside service calls, and labor costs that would have been spent on manual data collection.
“Major fleets are adopting the technology and doing it at scale,” Dodani said. “They’re using it primarily because they’re seeing an ROI against it.”
Smart tires can also help fleets save on insurance costs.
“If you have a tire blowout, you’re putting the vehicle at risk. You’re risking property damage. The liabilities go up, so your premiums start to go up too,” Dodani said. “Insurance companies actively pick operations apart looking for risks, and one of those questions is, ‘Why aren’t you monitoring tires?’ Arming yourself with technology that allows you to be ahead of the game and do it automatically without having to deploy more resources — that’s a win.”
Smart Tire ROI for Light & Medium Duty
If you’ve seen the cost differential between standard tires and smart tires manufactured with internal sensors, you might think smart tire technology is too expensive. This is especially true if you operate a light-duty or medium-duty fleet and don’t have the big tire budgets heavy-duty fleets do. However, smart tire technology is a relatively low-cost solution that can work with any type of tire.
“Anyline focuses on using AI technology, which runs on any off-the-shelf smartphone to capture all the relevant tire data points with the phone you carry with you all day long in your pocket anyway,” Plaichner said.
“We also have more and more fleet management software providers integrating our solution into their products, so fleets can immediately benefit because tire data collection comes out-of-the-box for them when they pick a fleet management software product.”
Beyond a reasonable initial cost, Dodani says the intention of using smart tire technology is a positive ROI.
“For passenger vehicles and light-duty applications, the ROI is really in catching issues before they balloon into catastrophic events,” he said.
“A smart tire solution is priced accordingly so that you will always have a positive ROI — for passenger vehicles, since they don’t require sensors, this is a relatively low-cost software subscription, like a digital tire tech working for you for the price of a cup a coffee per month.”
Smart Tires — Start Now
Both Dodani and Plaichner offer fleets the same piece of advice about smart tire technology: Start now.
“You literally can flip a switch and can start getting insights, start seeing and measuring the ROI for your operations, and tuning it for your fleet. Start now because the fleets that are doing it are getting that edge,” Dodani said. “They’re improving their margins, and they can operate more efficiently than you, and that that’s a competitive advantage that they’re starting to employ. Plus, you will undoubtedly keep your fleet safer on the road and reduce tire costs.”
“My recommendation is to start quickly and start early,” Plaichner said. “When you try it and you see the value, then suddenly it’s so obvious: ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner?’”
