Lightning eMotors launches telematics system upgrade

Lightning eMotors, a provider of medium-duty and specialty commercial electric vehicles and charging solutions, this week launched Lightning Insights, an extension of its telematics system built for monitoring and managing Lightning fleet assets in real-time.

Lightning’s original telematics solution, created 10 years ago, had an array of data collection and analysis capabilities. The new system does much more and monitors up to 156 data points, including vehicle location, state of charge, energy usage, efficiency, lifetime metrics with total driving hours, energy usage, and vehicle health, and is integrated into every new Lightning eMotors vehicle.

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Additionally, Lightning Insights provides control over Lightning’s fleet-charging solutions, including charger access, charge-time scheduling, load management, payment methods, and more, according to an Aug. 9 release from the company.

“We’re excited to bring this next-generation product to our lineup of all-electric, zero-emission vans, trucks, and buses, and to further inform our customers on route optimization, driver behavior, and other metrics that boost vehicle uptime and longevity,” Kash Sethi, Lighting eMotors’ chief revenue officer, said in the release.

“Lightning’s original analytics solution has served our customers well over the years, but Insights will allow operators to dive much deeper into electric vehicle-specific health and driver behavior than most commercial telematics solutions on the market today.”

In addition to a portal, Insights customers can leverage the available API to enable the integration of Lightning vehicle data with other third-party telematics or charging-management systems. This capability offers versatility for fleet operators who already utilize other providers and don’t want an additional portal to log into, according to the release. Every vehicle equipped with Insights connects to Lightning’s data servers over an encrypted 4G connection, allowing Lightning eMotors to monitor all aspects of the vehicles’ health and providing real-time analytics viewable by customers.

“Lightning Insights offers a very user-friendly customer portal and upcoming mobile app for monitoring and reporting dozens of real-time analytics from a customizable dashboard of easy-to-digest graphs, charts and slides,” said Brandon McNeil, vice president of energy and insights at Lightning eMotors. “Whether managing one vehicle, a fleet of hundreds, or a combined vehicle and charger deployment, our new telematics system is designed to simplify fleet operations with the click of a button.”

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Insights is available for both existing and new Lightning eMotors vehicles through a subscription-based model. Existing customers who already use Lightning Telematics will be upgraded to Lightning Insights for the same monthly cost per vehicle. Existing customers who currently do not use Lightning Telematics can try out Lighting Insights via a free three-month trial.

Lightning eMotors has been providing specialized and sustainable fleet solutions since 2009, deploying zero-emission vehicle solutions for commercial fleets since 2018, including Class 3 cargo and passenger vans, ambulances, Classes 4 and 5 cargo vans and shuttle buses, Class 4 Type A school buses, Class 6 work trucks, Class 7 city buses, and motor coaches.