Avoid recalls
with smart vehicle diagnostics
Troubleshooting failures on vehicles can be time consuming and costly for OEMs and their customers. Whether vehicle owners are confronted with the dreaded “check engine light” or more serious faults, finding the root cause and fixing it quickly is essential.
Modern vehicles are capable of generating tons of system and sensor data which can be leveraged for diagnostic capabilities. But being able to find the right needles in the haystack in a cost-efficiently and in a timely manner is critical to avoiding more widespread failures, recalls and ultimately, damage to brand reputation.
Situation: Head unit repeatedly
crashes on a particular vehicle model
For instance, imagine a scenario where vehicle owners of a particular model are reporting repeated and random instances of head unit crashes. Simply taking those vehicles to the local mechanic and hooking up specialized diagnostic tools through the OBD-II port to run a standard car diagnostic test may not resolve the issue if the random occurrence cannot be replicated. Ultimately, after enough vehicle owners and service technicians report the issue to the OEM, engineers may get involved to find resolution.
Detect and resolve issues
early before they escalate
With the right tools, OEMs can run vehicle diagnostics remotely and proactively to detect and resolve issues before they escalate into service recalls. In the preceding head unit crash scenario, a smart vehicle diagnostics approach using Sonatus Automator, Collector and Updater would unfold in the following manner:
- OEM receives multiple reports of customers experiencing head unit crashes
- OEM deploys Collector and Automator diagnostic policies to all vehicles of that model
- Automator policy is triggered to run an on board diagnostics scan on occurences of head unit crashes across the fleet
- Automator then invokes Collector to gather all vehicle data including hidden diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) and logs
- Bundled data is sent to vehicle service engineering and responsible engineers are notified
- With the precise and correlated data in hand, service engineers have a much faster path to the root cause and resolution.
- Once a resolution is identified, either a simple configuration update or a firmware change, it is applied using Updater’s unified OTA management capability
- Vehicle owners are notified of updates through their diagnostic tool on their IVI or mobile devices
- Detecting issues early in post-production vehicles also allows OEMs to fix them while in production or before, avoiding widespread incidents.
Reduce mass recalls
with proactive vehicle diagnostics
Early detection and speedy resolution is the key to reducing the likelihood of mass service recalls. The Sonatus Vehicle Platform gives automakers the ability to efficiently perform vehicle diagnostics to assess and resolve problems before they turn into more costly and inconvenient incidents.
- Monitor and detect issues early and remotely
- Automate diagnostic tests and diagnostic data collection for troubleshooting
- Trigger on diagnostic trouble code (DTC) instances or other vehicle conditions
- Get to resolution faster with precise vehicle data
- Apply fixes in pre-sales vehicles to avoid potential recalls later
Related products and solutions
Sonatus Automator
Sonatus Collector
Related resources
Data-driven approach to improving customer experience and quality
Use Cases for Software Defined Vehicles
Sonatus Automator overview
