General Motors’ latest gadgetry, “Proactive Alerts“, launched quietly this past spring with a mission to make service department visits painless and efficient.
The technology runs through the vehicle’s OnStar system and has the capability to diagnose and alert drivers of potential issues and repairs before an actual mechanical failure. Ideally, the vehicle would identify the problem, perform the diagnostics involved and have the warranty work approved and ready by the time the driver arrives at the service department.
Steve Holland, GM’s chief technologist for vehicle health management, told Automotive News its applications would be limited for the time being, but the possibilities will be endless. For now, he used the vehicle’s battery as an example.
“Let’s take the battery,” Holland explained. “We collect data every time the car is started and transmit it to the cloud via the car’s 4G connection, and we run our proprietary algorithms there.
“Normally what happens is everything looks OK, a “green’ condition that we ignore. But occasionally we’ll notice problems.”
Proactive Alerts will monitor the battery, fuel pump and starter for now, but Holland reiterated its plans for expansion.
“Our plan is to expand Proactive Alerts to other critical systems in the vehicle,” Holland says, “things that have a lot of electrical content.”
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