Fleet management solutions provider Omnitracs has formed a partnership with Peloton Technology allowing the former to offer the latter’s truck platooning solution to its customers.
This year, Peloton will begin filling pre-orders of its platooning product for Class 8 trucks. The Silicon Valley-based company’s investors include Volvo Group, UPS, Intel Capital and Magna.
Like other offerings on the market, its technology synchronises truck braking and acceleration by integrating vehicle-to-vehicle communications with radar-based collision avoidance systems, enabling trucks to travel safely with small, aerodynamically advantageous distances between them.
Omnitracs has more than 50,000 customers managing almost 1.5m mobile assets in more than 70 countries.
The company says co-developed solutions from the partnership may include integrated cloud-based fleet management services and hardware.
“The partners will also develop joint solutions that combine each company’s safety, efficiency and fleet management capabilities,” said the two firms in a joint statement.
Peloton is to start the roll-out to Omnitracs customers with two-truck platooning. It claims its system generates a 4.5% fuel saving for the lead truck and 10% savings for the following truck, according to independent testing by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency.
Joshua Switkes, founder and CEO of Peloton Technology, said: “We will offer expanded opportunities for platooning across the broad customer base that Omnitracs has attracted by focusing on cost advantages for fleets.”
The two will also focus on opportunities for inter-fleet platooning, leveraging Omnitracs’ routing and dynamic dispatch applications to provide navigation assistance and savings calculations for scheduled and ad-hoc platoons of trucks from different fleets.
