Magneti Marelli has established a partnership with Michelin for the Challenge Bibendum 10th anniversary edition – a traditional exhibition focused on sustainable road mobility –, from May 30th to June 3rd, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This technological partnership is based in the supplying of a tracking process for vehicles taking part in one of the major Michelin Challenge Bibendum events, the road rally for advanced technology vehicles, intended to measure efficiency range to each fuel employed.
The Telematic-Box (T-Box) provided by Magneti Marelli is installed over every rally car’s dashboard participating in the rally’s Utility Vehicles (trucks and passenger buses) and Passenger Cars categories. The equipment sends tracking signals via GPS to the event’s organization team every 20 seconds, providing up-to-date position reports of each vehicle, making it possible to pinpoint competitors’ positions along the route. Being a regularity rally, the Challenge Bibendum team monitors the routes while the Magneti Marelli equipment acts as a redundancy system, a backup, to enhance the competition’s precision and safety. Magneti Marelli will be monitoring 350 km of routes for Utility Vehicles and 292 km for Passenger Cars
“With this tracking system, we are able to analyze whether any vehicle has gone astray, make an unscheduled stop, or any other kind of breakdown that needs intervention. It’s a way to ensure the participants’ safety”, tells Virgilio Cerutti, Magneti Marelli’s CEO for Mercosul.
“Telematics plays a strategic and transversal role regarding the major challenges for the future of the automotive market: sustainability, safety, “connected car” and affordable mobility. Thanks to the T-Box, the vehicle is connected to the internet and, therefore, can act as a sensor, i.e., is a receptacle of everything that is happening on the road and in the vehicle itself, besides being a reception point for information and added value services. Two perfect examples of the telematics and T-Box potentialities are the monitoring solutions developed specially for the Challenge Bibendum, and the device developed by Magneti Marelli concerning the tracking system introduction on vehicles manufactured in Brazil, as soon as possible, to comply with the act recently approved in the country”, says Paola Carrea, Magneti Marelli’s Telematics Worldwide Responsible.
The “T-Box” will also be exhibited at Magneti Marelli’s booth, where its performance and technology can be verified. The T-Box is a versatile product that, besides allowing to track vehicles as a standard function, provides a wide range of applications which can significantly improve traffic flow on urban environments.
The T-Box uses both GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and GPS (Global Positioning System) technologies. Besides, it has three service levels (tracking, telemetry and data transmission).
When it is employed as a data transmission tool, T-Box can perform a major role in gathering information related to the traffic peculiarities in a given town, making it possible to respond with traffic statistics and, potentially, helping traffic flow optimization.
In addition to the use for insurance companies scope, other possible applications provided by the T-Box are the remote diagnostics and the SOS/Emergency call function.
Within its presence at the 10th Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Rio de Janeiro, Magneti Marelli presented also its technologies for sustainable mobility aimed to tha Brasilian market, which is one of the key area for the company: particular focus has been put on the Eco Driving, on the Active Green Drive (AGD) and Telemetry Technologies, which are solutions that prioritizes emission reduction and traffic flow along combined with car telematics and infotainment.
Concerning the powertrain field, Magneti Marelli showed two of its more innovative and enviroment-friendly technologies: Flex 3rd Generation and Free Choice.
The first one prioritizes and optimizes the utilization of power sources other than oil resulting in less fuel consumption and consequently less CO2 emission. The technology christened as Flex 3rd Generation, merges other products developed by Magneti Marelli in addition of the traditional SFS® (Software Flexfuel Sensor): ECS® (Ethanol Cold System, cold ignition system that does not requires oil), the new Pico Eco® injector (developed specially for the new generation flex engines) and the 7 and 9 new ECU (Electronic Control Unit).