Zonar announced the availability of its Light Duty Transmission Control Unit (TCU), built in conjunction with its parent company Continental.

The Zonar LD TCU is designed to meet the evolving needs of light-duty vehicles within fleets, including access to detailed vehicle telematics data and diagnostics to improve performance, efficiency, and security, according the company.

Light-duty vehicles make up over 60% of today’s vocational fleets, and many school districts and transit services rely on light-duty vehicles such as passenger vans to transport riders safely and reliably. The LD TCU provides these fleets with a simple plug and play telematics solution for their light duty vehicles, providing the same essential Zonar Ground Traffic Control reporting as the Zonar V4 telematics device designed for light-duty, heavy-duty, and off-highway vehicles.

Data collected by the LD TCU is compressed, encrypted, and transmitted to Zonar data centers over a private VPN. This high-resolution path data allows users to see the location of every one of their vehicles, with an exact record of every action performed, during every trip.

Additionally, Zonar noted that last mile delivery is responsible for more than 50% of supply chain distribution costs. COVID-19 has accelerated the demand of the Zonar LD TCU to support retail, grocery, and package deliveries to homes. As fleets experience significant labor shortages, last-mile delivery operations are looking for ways to optimize their operations through telematics solutions that help them with the following:

• Uncover hidden costs and fuel inefficiencies by looking at speed, distance, path and idling. Ground Traffic Control provides fleet managers with advanced analytics through a cloud-based web platform, supporting all major mobile devices and computers.

• Track each of their light-duty vehicles’ locations and activities in real time. The LD TCU uses advanced GNSS positioning technology (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou satellites).

• Maintain optimal vehicle health to improve safety and compliance for the entire fleet. The LD TCU is a small handheld device that plugs directly into the vehicle’s OBD2 port for full access to diagnostics data.

• Enhance scheduling and security by tracking when vehicles arrive and leave, and how often they’re late — or on time.