Is Veturilo a GPS tracker?

Available technology, nowadays, features an intricate level of complexity. It is, oftentimes, hard to get a grasp of how everything works. And there are quite a few misunderstandings as to the purpose and proper use of each different piece of technology we have available, within arms reach. Especially with the IoT blurring the lines of how technology interacts with different aspects of our daily routines. One such misunderstanding is that Veturilo may be a GPS tracker. Let’s find out if this is true.

What is a GPS tracker?

A GPS is short for a Global Positioning System. Its purpose was to improve navigation systems for all means of transport. It was launched in the US in 1973, to overcome difficulties in older navigation systems and provide for more accurate geographical positioning measurements. In 1996, it was determined that this kind of technology could prove useful to citizens and the military. That’s how this kind of technology became publicly available.

Soon, several manufacturers began developing solutions that required little or no technical savvy to use. Fast forward to today’s reality, we have mobile tracking, satellite tracking and passive tracking, all available thanks to GPS technology. They were all developed for the purpose of tracking means of transport or people, by periodically checking their position on the map.

All types of trackers are used today to provide for safety, automate notifications and information exchange and manage the cost of transportation. That’s how we can now find a rock climber that got lost or injured and get her back to safety in time. And that’s how you can track down a lost shipment or a stolen vehicle. Just by using a GPS tracker.

What is Veturilo?

OBD functionality came about as soon as we found there was a need to measure vehicles for greenhouse gas emissions and regulate limits accordingly.

OBD II

Introduced in the US in 1996

The first OBD II ports were built into vehicles in 1996 in the US. The specification was made mandatory for all cars sold in the United States (see CCR Title 13 Section 1968.1 and 40 CFR Part 86 Section 86.094).

Introduced in the EU in 2001

When we conceived Veturilo, we had something different in mind. The IoT is now providing us with a host of possibilities to improve our daily commute, automate several processes and manage our business on more levels than ever before. But small or medium businesses that feature a fleet of vehicles lack the ability to tap into this kind of technology. More importantly, with today’s competitive landscape, business viability may well depend on technology that saves time and money and keeps everything neat and well organized. Running a tight ship of a business is no easy task. That is, essentially, why we were compelled to find a solution to that problem.

We’d like to help small to medium businesses manage their fleets effectively and efficiently. And our goal is to create the most usable, open and widely adopted Connected Car SaaS platform, serving the global vehicle market. We aim to make existing cars more usable, manageable, and valuable business assets, affordably!

Why is Veturilo different?

Being a SaaS platform, Veturilo enables fleet owners or fleet managers to manage their fleets using just their smart phone or laptop, a browser and an internet connection. There is no need for intricate hardware or infrastructure to maintain on-premise. There is no need for specialized staff for maintenance or operation. And there is practically no learning curve involved; you don’t need to train drivers to use it. It will just take them 5 minutes to figure out.

This kind of ease and practicality is what small to medium fleets are looking for. Now, they can avoid complex deployments and implementations and just use Veturilo. Our users tell us that it’s so easy to use, they can also use it for their cars at home. Installing and setting it up is just a breeze. And they have found that once they’ve started using it, they can’t imagine their lives without it.

A broader feature set

Being a vehicle management solution for small to medium fleets, Veturilo features several components to assist in tracking fleet vehicles. But, even a small fleet is sure to face more problems than simply having to know the location of each vehicle. Fleet owners or fleet managers are hard-pressed to find ways to reduce maintenance costs and fuel costs. They need to prevent extensive vehicle break-downs and reduce downtime to an absolute minimum. 

We developed Veturilo with all these problems in mind. And we’re hard at work ever building and improving its feature set, to solve these problems in the simplest way possible. That’s why there is so much more to Veturilo than simple GPS tracking features.

So much more than a GPS tracker

While Veturilo will provide the position of each fleet vehicle at set intervals, it’s hardly its primary function. We’ve conjured up a small list of features available in Veturilo, to help you better understand how it can help you improve yourself and your business.

Vehicle management

  • A fleet vehicles list will help you browse through your vehicles
  • Each vehicle’s readout provides current location and speed
  • Find out how many hours your drivers have been driving, for improved safety and time management
  • Your drivers can see their distance and position from their vehicle, on the map
  • Address location and location sharing with the fleet manager or tow truck service can help if there is a break down
  • An important but simple status dashboard can keep you apprised of any issues
  • Push notifications (to keep you well informed without having to look at your dashboard)
  • Trip log report for deductible expenses, to send straight to your accountant

And here are some indicative features to help you manage your vehicles:

Behavioral data

Trip log 

  • Filter by Date/time ranges
  • Detailed log of events per trip
  • Distance traveled per trip
  • Duration of each trip
  • Mark trip as business or personal (for deductible expenses report)

What’s the difference between Veturilo and a GPS tracker?

In functionality

While a GPS tracker will provide you features to track the location of your vehicle, yourself, a shipment of goods or anything else you may need on a map, there is probably not much more to it.

Veturilo will enable you to effectively manage both your vehicles and your drivers. It’s rich feature set will keep you on your toes about any issue that comes up, giving you a heads up in time to try and solve it with the minimum effort and cost incurred. Automated notifications, indicators and reports will give you peace of mind at many different levels; even at sending your trip log report to your accountant, to do your taxes.

In using it

A simple GPS tracker will present information about current location and speed on the map, almost in real time. That information is mostly useful to manage your situation momentarily. While it gets stored, it will probably not be available for you to use in any other manner.

Eventually, if this is the case, it mostly remains as a memory of a bygone day, soon to be lost into oblivion. That is to say, there is no further analysis of that information. It can provide you no further insights into your daily situation. And even if a log of distances traveled is kept somewhere in the system, crude location settings will prevent the system from giving you accurate readings, as compared to your odometer.

Veturilo will present information about each vehicle’s current location and speed on the map, as well. But it will not be as nearly in real time as your run of the mill GPS tracker. Veturilo uses event-based tracking and will adjust the frequency of information exchange according to the style of driving and complexity of the road network, providing a much better resolution in distance tracking. But, there’s more!

The real benefit

Yes’ there is indeed a real benefit. All trip data is logged and is available to review later. The same data serves to extract behavioral information for each trip. You can recommend behavioral improvements to drivers and keep them motivated with a bonus cheque, or an employee of the month poster. Such motivation works wonders for driver retention. And considering you can retain a log of issues and malfunctions, you can minimize maintenance costs and service downtime if you act in time. This ought to increase the vehicle’s resale value, when the time comes for some fleet vehicles replacement.

Automated reports offer no less convenience. You can automatically communicate a malfunction with your repair shop. They will call you in for repairs, as needed. Additionally, trip log reports are automatically sent to your accountant for tax deductible expenses.

Veturilo will store all trip information on our cloud-based platform and use it for all sorts of analyses, automated reports and recommendations. It’s not stored on your device, so you can view it all on different devices. Fleet managers, drivers and company operations staff can view the same kind of information, at the same time, keeping historical data available for future reference. Fleet management becomes so much more easier. You’ll be done with time to spare for some well earned business development.

In how much it costs

A GPS tracker is a piece of established technology. It’s only natural that it’s quite affordable, regardless of its type. Be it for mobile tracking, satellite tracking or passive tracking, all solutions should be quite affordable. Affordability usually comes with overt simplicity. And it’s a perfectly acceptable price to pay if it’s all you need from your solution. That is, if you don’t need to retain, share or analyze your data, you should be good to go as it is.

On the other hand, fleet owners and fleet managers really need a few tricks under their sleeves to stay on top of their game. Data logging, historical and behavioral analysis, reporting, and timely information sharing are some of the most important ones. These benefits call for complex systems to be developed and maintained. Even though Veturilo looks and feels simple, it’s got a powerful engine under the hood, to help you manage your fleet effectively and efficiently. Now, you can have an edge against competition and some well earned peace of mind.

We’re sure you can appreciate how these differences between the two kinds of technology can justify a considerable difference in pricing. A GPS tracker, while an extremely useful tool on your belt for business and personal use, can almost be classified as a commodity nowadays. All mobile devices seem to have one. Your sports activity tracker has one. It has become so essential to our daily routines. 

However, Veturilo is an entire tool belt for fleet owners and fleet managers. In such a competitive landscape, it may be the difference between making or breaking a business. It is, then, a Fleet Management solution.

Veturilo isn’t just a GPS tracker, after all

Veturilo already is (and aspires) to be so much more than a GPS tracker. It is a cloud-based SaaS platform to bring you all the benefits of IoT connectivity and none of the disadvantages of having to maintain such a complex solution in-house. You’ll not be needing specialized personnel to operate it either, Veturilo offers a distributed but centralized management of all information, ensuring great security and business continuity, no matter what. It’s a great way to perform remote vehicle management. And your vehicles become your co-pilots in giving your business the lift-off it deserves, and keep your customers satisfied.

Any vehicle manufactured after 1996 in the US (2001 in the EU) is equipped with an OBD II port. Our OBD II device plugs into that port and reads information for the ECU of your vehicle. It uses LTE network connectivity to send that information to our platform before it can be processed and displayed on your device. And it doesn’t matter if there is no service signal, for a while. Veturilo will store the information, until the service becomes available again.

Key takeaways

Make no mistake. While OBD II devices are, more often than not, related to GPS tracking, Veturilo is so much more than a GPS tracker. Its rich feature set works wonders for vehicle management. Fleet owners and fleet managers will greatly benefit from using it in managing their fleet on a daily basis. Veturilo will help:

  • Monitor fleet status, location, trips and mileage
  • Cut down maintenance costs and downtime
  • Control fuel consumption and prevent fuel fraud
  • Notify your repair shop about any malfunctions, proactively
  • Provide you with behavioral data, helping you improve driving behaviors
  • Increase the resale value for all vehicles
  • Let you know when a vehicle is towed, helping you attribute ticket costs incurred, to a specific driver. It can also help you avoid getting tickets altogether, in the long run
  • Make quick work of your deductible mileage report
  • Share a vehicle’s position. complete with a map, with a towing service, if needed

And all that, without any complex infrastructure that you need to maintain yourself. All you need is a small and simple device that you can plug directly on to your OBD II port of your vehicles. And you don’t have to worry about it either. We will provide it for you, easy and simple. What are you waiting for, then? Why not give it a try?

Register now