Clarios takes its battery subscription to European fleets

What the sensor tracks

The hardware is an aftermarket sensor on the battery’s negative post, a wire harness and a Clarios gateway that sends the data to the cloud. Heavy-duty trucks generally don’t have a battery sensor, Barrett said, and Clarios’ analytics run on the data that sensor collects.

The sensor works with AGM and SLI batteries from any manufacturer, including ones Clarios doesn’t make, and with trucks from any OEM, Barrett said. Topcu said it covers 12-, 24- and 48-volt systems, including the low-voltage side of battery-electric vehicles.

Christina Yarnold, director of product management for Connected Services, said the service reports on three things: a battery nearing end of life, a state of charge low enough to risk a no-start, and a failing starter or alternator.

“It’s not about the data. It’s about insights and actions. Nobody needs another dashboard,” Yarnold said.

Low-charge alerts can go by email or text to whoever is on duty. Because each sensor is paired to a single battery, a technician replaces only the one that’s failing.

Pricing and payback

Pricing varies with fleet size, complexity and engagement and runs as high as $15 per vehicle per month for smaller fleets, Barrett said. At that rate, a truck costs $180 a year to monitor against Clarios’ $500 savings estimate.

Asked about a hypothetical 50,000-truck fleet, Barrett put the savings at $25 million a year. That figure counts only hard costs such as jump starts and tow trucks.

“Soft cost isn’t in that math: driver sitting waiting, customer experience,” he said.

In Europe, Barrett said, the draw is downtime and driver hours. A battery failure that hits when a driver is out of hours takes that driver off the road.

Self-install and telematics integration

Clarios first assumed Battery Manager would need professional installation and hired a third-party installer. Fleets told the company their own technicians could handle it. Barrett said technicians now finish in 15 to 20 minutes after their first unit, and one union shop did its first in under 10. Setup runs through Clarios’ ConnectHub mobile app.

For now, each truck carries a Clarios gateway. Barrett called that a short-term strategy. Longer term, Clarios plans to pull sensor data through the gateways telematics service providers already have on trucks. Barrett said Clarios reaches small fleets through those providers and sells directly to large ones.

“In the very near future you’ll hear another announcement about an actual TSP integration,” Barrett said. “We need to be seamless, not another login.”