Press Release
Vehicle Health Monitoring: ZF provides digital health checks for cars
- ZF evaluates driving data, thereby increasing driving safety
- Expanded range of digital services – for predictive maintenance and diagnostics
- New partnerships with manufacturers to offer end customers more benefits
Friedrichshafen / Munich. Car users do not want to compromise on the functionality of their vehicles. Especially before long journeys, information about the risk of breakdown due to wear, defects, or malfunctions is particularly important. In this context, ZF supports automotive manufacturers in offering monitoring services. Thanks to its comprehensive understanding of the system, the technology group is already able to continuously monitor and document the technical condition of important systems in the chassis or drive train and provide forecasts of their functionality. Corresponding applications provide timely information about relevant effects, such as expected breakdowns, and give valid recommendations for repairs. As a result, the condition of the vehicle can be improved, the safety of the vehicle and driver increased, accidents avoided, and downtime reduced. Fleet operators and shared mobility providers in particular benefit from these digital services.
Whether it's hitting the curb too hard or the habit of letting the electric drive run against the parking brake that engages too early just before coming to a stop: seemingly minor events in the life of a car can eventually have unpleasant consequences. This is particularly annoying when a prolonged breakdown occurs during a long trip. What is already highly frustrating for private users can also affect fleet operators' business model, which is based on providing reliable mobility. Especially when different drivers share a vehicle, it is even more important to keep an eye on the effects of irregularities or misuse.
Loose screw? Detected immediately!
"If we have permanent access to this non-personalized data, we can use our analytical expertise to support car manufacturers in making statements about the functional status of the vehicle," said Torsten Gollewski, Executive Vice President Corporate R&D Innovation and Technology.
A striking example is a demo vehicle equipped with ZF's new Smart Chassis Sensor plus integrated acceleration sensor. Here, a display provides real-time information about the condition of the chassis. What makes it special is that the algorithms developed by the company not only detect deviations associated with wear or damage to ZF components, but also the entire chassis. In this scenario, the demo vehicle uses specific vibrations to detect the wheel nuts on one wheel are loose and warns against continuing the journey. In reality, continuing to drive at high speed would have posed a massive accident risk for the occupants.
Other applications: misuse and extreme impacts
The basis for this is the data generated by ZF's portfolio of intelligent systems throughout the vehicle. In addition to steer-by-wire systems, rear-axle steering systems, brake-by-wire systems, electromechanical brakes, parking brakes, active and semi-active damping systems, and roll stabilization systems, this also includes pure electric drives and hybrid drives for passenger cars. With the data from these systems, ZF can not only check the proper functioning of its own products in practical use but also offer additional functions with high customer benefit. This makes it possible to detect incorrect handling by individual vehicle users.
With its vehicle health monitoring functions, ZF can monitor drive products in the field in real time. Analyses from delivery vehicles belonging to a parcel service fleet customer show that particularly harsh daily use leads to potential stress peaks – these are detected early and remedied by targeted measures before they affect the end customer. The result: higher availability, lower total costs, and a more robust system throughout its entire life cycle. "Vehicle health monitoring makes the difference between reactive repair and predictive reliability. We avoid unplanned downtime and keep supply chains running," says Tobias Klein, Product Owner Health Monitoring for Driveline.
A common occurrence is touching the curb: when parking or leaving a parking space with momentum, or sometimes when swerving, drivers hit the curb too hard. The question immediately arises as to whether this impact will cause permanent damage to the chassis and whether driving safety will be compromised. "Drivers tend to forget about the incident if there are no immediate signs of damage. But that doesn't have to be the case," explains Klein. With a digital ZF application, drivers would immediately receive expert feedback on the effects and possible consequences of the incident without having to spend time making an unplanned visit to a repair shop for this assessment.
Data exchange cloud to cloud or as an application in the vehicle
ZF's digital applications are easy for car manufacturers to use. ZF is responsible for the data interfaces, and the anonymous data from the ZF systems can be exchanged between the manufacturer's cloud and the ZF cloud. Within the ZF cloud, AI-supported algorithms analyze the data and can – if desired, visualized – feed the findings back to a dashboard, which is also accessible to vehicle drivers. For safety-critical and real-time applications, the analysis can also be run more quickly via a local application on the vehicle computer ("embedded").
