Sibros’ connected vehicle software helps pave way for electric trucks

The software in high-tech vehicles, particularly electric cars and trucks, requires regular attention. Technology companies such as Sibros, a hardware-agnostic connected vehicle platform company, are the reason vehicle owners aren’t making weekly trips to the dealership and why maintenance on modern software-defined vehicles is becoming increasingly easier.

Sibros operates worldwide. While the majority of its customers are in the United States and Europe, the company is gaining traction in Asia, South America and Africa.

The mission of Sibros is simply to power the connected vehicle ecosystem through its’ connected vehicle platform. This platform allows automakers to collect precision vehicle data with no extra hardware required to deliver the data, as well as maintain a healthy, up-to-date vehicle by delivering software updates to every embedded ECU and sensor.

The technology has two parts, the cloud and the in-vehicle firmware. While both are built on the same core code base, the two parts function differently for each customer using different in-vehicle networking capabilities.

The cloud is agnostic in the sense that it can be deployed to all different types of customers. The in-vehicle firmware has two variants, one that can be deployed for two-wheel vehicles such as e-bikes and motorcycles and the other for larger vehicles such as trucks.

A connected vehicle platform has three pillars — software updates, data collection and remote commands — all of which are valuable components in the trucking industry.

“In the trucking space, the use cases are all related to one of these areas and we are essentially enabling OEMs to bring more software-defined vehicles to the market faster,” said Sibros co-founder and CEO Hemant Sikaria. “A lot of it seems to be focused more on electric trucks because we can do a lot of deep analytics on the battery life, range prediction, as well as reduce recalls and fires through software updates and remote diagnostics.”

Sibros’ solution works with combustion engine and hybrid vehicles, but the company has seen increasing demand for its connected vehicle technology among electric trucks within the trucking industry

“Since we are providing more of the infrastructure and networking, the actual powertrain of the vehicle is not as important for us, but electric vehicles have more software, which provides more opportunity for us to make a quicker impact,” Sikaria said.

While many similar companies focus specifically on fleet management, Sibros’ focus is on hardware-agnostic technology. This means there is no additional hardware required to run this technology, something many of the automated and digitized solutions in the trucking industry require.

Sibros has a unique mechanism that allows for the automakers to view vehicle data of all the vehicles they have manufactured. Additionally, there is a subset view for fleet owners to manage their specific fleets. With Sibros technology, information and data surrounding parking or usage-based insurance can also be accessed. This type of data is delivered with consent from the automaker, fleet owner and vehicle owner.

In a space in which automakers/manufacturers reach out to external partners for internal development, Sikaria is confident that Sibros can meet the needs of the customer. The challenge lies in automakers choosing to keep development in-house. Sibros combats this challenge by providing the automakers the infrastructure of the software upon development of the vehicle. This includes all the intricate details, with no additional hardware needed for use of the technology. This lets the teams at the manufacturer focus on building more exciting things.

“If we build it, someone can use those tools to make something more remarkable with it,” said Sikaria.

Sibros also allows its customers the opportunity to quickly turn around and deploy in other markets.

“You don’t have to worry about compliances, whether the product can be deployed there, whether it follows GDPR privacy laws and regulations, because we take care of all of that. With our platform, they can do that immediately,” Sikaria said.

As the industry advances, and more companies are turning to electric vehicles, Sibros plans to continue the focus on evolving its technology to best suit the needs of its customers. And since its newest $70 million series B funding announcement, Sibros has partnered with big name companies like Google and Qualcomm Ventures to provide the very best and updated technology. Because of this, Sibros can see opportunities for future expansion.