This technological partnership was based on 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 was installed over every car’s dashboard participating in the rally’s "Utility Vehicles" (trucks and passenger buses) and "Passenger Cars" categories. The equipment sent tracking signals via GPS to the event’s organisational 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 monitored the routes while the Magneti Marelli equipment acted as a redundancy system, a backup, to enhance the competition’s precision and safety. Magneti Marelli monitored 350 km of routes for Utility Vehicles and 292 km for Passenger Cars.

“With this tracking system, we are able to analyse 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,” Virgilio Cerutti, Magneti Marelli’s CEO for Mercosul commented before the start of the road events.

“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,” said Paola Carrea, Magneti Marelli’s Telematics Worldwide Responsible.

The “T-Box” was also exhibited in Magneti Marelli’s booth at the event, where its performance and technology could be verified by visitors. The T-Box is a versatile product that, besides allowing for the ability 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 optimisation. 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 tenth edition of the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Rio de Janeiro last week, Magneti Marelli also presented its advanced technologies for sustainable mobility aimed at the Brasilian market, which is one of the key areas for the company, and a particular focus was put on the "Eco Driving", on the Active Green Drive (AGD), and "Telemetry Technologies", which are solutions that prioritise emission reduction and traffic flow that are combined with the car telematics and infotainment systems.