Photo: OnStar
Back in 1996, at a time when other carmakers were not even thinking of such things, General Motors gave birth to OnStar, a subscription-based service that gave drivers access to anything from emergency services to remote diagnostics. Since then, the service grew and expanded far beyond the world of GM vehicles.
Back in June, OnStar announced it is making the Guardian available for non-GM cars, an app designed to provide users with emergency and assistance services. As July is drawing to a close, the same happens to Vehicle Insights, a telematics solution meant for fleet operators.
Insights provides fleet managers with access to various tools, like Vehicle Locator and Vehicle Health. The driver behavior and performance of the vehicle can also be checked from afar, and even remote commands can be given to a vehicle, such as lock, unlock and engine start, provided the vehicle allow for this.
Until now, this suite was available only for the cars made under the GM umbrella, but as of now that changes and all other makes, regardless of model year, can use it. All that is required is a plug-in adapter that goes into the car’s OBD-II port.
GM vehicles manufactured without the OnStar hardware, as well as model year 2014 or older cars, can also use the system as of this month.
To give us an idea of how widespread the solution is, OnStar says so far, since the introduction of the Insights, 3.5 million notifications were sent to fleet managers, covering 16 million trips taken by drivers over 246 million miles (396 million km).
Just as most other OnStar solutions, the Vehicle Insights is available only for vehicles operated in the United States and Canada.
Separately, OnStar says Insights is getting a new feature, namely In-Vehicle Coaching, which allows the sending of real-time verbal cues to drivers, including seat belt, acceleration, speeding and braking alerts.
Insights provides fleet managers with access to various tools, like Vehicle Locator and Vehicle Health. The driver behavior and performance of the vehicle can also be checked from afar, and even remote commands can be given to a vehicle, such as lock, unlock and engine start, provided the vehicle allow for this.
Until now, this suite was available only for the cars made under the GM umbrella, but as of now that changes and all other makes, regardless of model year, can use it. All that is required is a plug-in adapter that goes into the car’s OBD-II port.
GM vehicles manufactured without the OnStar hardware, as well as model year 2014 or older cars, can also use the system as of this month.
To give us an idea of how widespread the solution is, OnStar says so far, since the introduction of the Insights, 3.5 million notifications were sent to fleet managers, covering 16 million trips taken by drivers over 246 million miles (396 million km).
Just as most other OnStar solutions, the Vehicle Insights is available only for vehicles operated in the United States and Canada.
Separately, OnStar says Insights is getting a new feature, namely In-Vehicle Coaching, which allows the sending of real-time verbal cues to drivers, including seat belt, acceleration, speeding and braking alerts.
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