Continental welcomes intelligent tacho tech
Vehicle technology provider Continental has highlighted the functionality improvements in the latest generation of digital tachographs, including the ability to record border crossings, making it easier for authorities to monitor compliance with new EU rules on cabotage and the posting of workers.
The firm says the developments will strengthen the importance of the smart tachograph as an instrument for achieving goals in social and transport policies.
The DTCO 4.1, Continental’s next-generation intelligent tachograph, will enable implementation of the guidelines set forth in the EU’s Mobility Package I, including those governing cabotage and posting of workers in the transport industry.
In addition to their other functions, tachographs installed in commercial vehicles will record border crossings through a link to a satellite positioning system.
“We welcome the use of the tachograph for monitoring compliance with the guidelines for cabotage and posting of workers, and we think it is good that tachographs will now be mandatory for vehicles with gross weights between 2.5 and 3.5 metric tons engaged in international transport,” said Gilles Mabire, head of the Commercial Vehicles & Services business unit at Continental.
“The Mobility Package I will ensure fair competition in the European transport industry and promote improved safety, which is very good news.”
He continued: “We’re making an important contribution to society, and we’re proud of it. We’re also very confident that our tachographs will help policymakers deal with a number of other important problems in society. Thanks to their ability to record clearly assigned data in a secure, trustworthy manner, they are a marvellous tool for this.”
Work is underway on Continental’s next generation tachograph, the DTCO 4.1, at its manufacturing centre in the Black Forest.
“We’ve been following the work on the Mobility Package very closely and have already drawn up technical scenarios for recording border crossings,” said Dirk Gandras, Continental’s manager in charge of tachograph development.
The previous tachograph generations will provide the technological foundation, and the current version DTCO 4.0 can already receive satellite signals.
The DTCO 4.1 will register border crossings by means of satellite positioning and record the locations where vehicles are loaded and unloaded. Authorities can use this data to check compliance with regulations, in particular those pertaining to market access and to posting of drivers.
In addition to using GPS signals, it will be one of the first industrial applications to support Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) of signals from the Galileo system. The engineers on Dirk Gandras´ team have already taken the Galileo signal into account in constructing the present DTCO 4.0 generation.
