Continuing its strategy to partner with OEMs, Telogis, a Verizon company, has announced that it has added another OEM to its partner roster with Nissan Europe to provide connected-vehicle technologies and services to Nissan commercial customers in Europe. The new NissanConnect Fleet powered by Telogis will connect customers’ vehicles, people, and the work that is being done, helping to make drivers safer, providing higher levels of service, while improving sustainability and operational efficiency.

“Nissan Europe followed very closely what we were doing with Ford Telematics when we launched with Ford in Europe. We announced the Ford Europe partnership in September 2015, and went live in April 2016. Nissan has been looking at connected services for some time, and they looked at the landscape and wanted to work with someone who could take NissanConnect vehicles and bring those to commercial customers in a way that others weren’t doing in the marketplace today,” said Kevin Moore, vice president, global OEM automotive sales at Telogis.

NissanConnect Fleet solution will be available in Europe starting in the fourth quarter of 2016, with other global markets following. Telogis will be providing telematics services to the automaker’s commercial products and EV products, including: all crossover range Qashqai, X-Trail and Juke; medium-compact car Pulsar; Navara one-ton pickup; NV200 light commercial vehicles (LCV); Cabstar medium-duty vehicles; and Nissan electric vehicles (EVs) — LEAF and e-NV200.

The difference between this partnership and Telogis’ earlier partnership with Ford is that it will be leveraging Nissan’s own proprietary telematics control unit. Current vehicles are equipped with the second generation of the telematics control unit, which Telogis will use through a data exchange to provide its fleet-grade telematics solution.

“We collaborated with Nissan as it was developing this internal box to extract this data coming through the box and their global network center and into the Telogis platform,” explained Moore. “All of the EVs that Nissan produces come standard with this unit and the internal combustion engines can be factory fit or dealer installed after it is delivered.”

Telogis said its mobile resource management (MRM) software platform receives and analyzes proprietary Nissan data from each vehicle including driver and vehicle performance history, and turns it into actionable information to help companies of all sizes make more informed business decisions. Taking into account the realities of the EU’s strict privacy laws, drivers will have the ability to put the NissanConnect Fleet solution into a “privacy mode” when off the clock.

The initial focus of the launch will likely be large corporate fleets, particularly those that are purchasing large numbers of light commercial vehicles and EVs, with the classic “micro” or business fleet, Moore added. NissanConnect Fleet will initially be rolled out in the EU’s “Big Five” markets: the UK, Germany, France, Benelux, Nordex, Italy, and Spain.

Prior to the partnership, Nissan wasn’t providing its commercial customers with telematics data. The telematics control unit was used by the EV models to give users vehicle health information via an app.

“They didn’t have anything that was fleet focused,” Moore said. “Now they have applications or a platform to allow customers to manage all makes and models nor to be able to provide customers a rich data experience.”