Patent Application
20100217478
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a system and method for monitoring the state of health of vehicle components, sub-systems and systems and, more particularly, to a system and method for providing vehicle health monitoring telematically from a remote location so as to monitor the health of vehicle systems and sub-systems to identify vehicle problems to provide warranty screening and customer concern resolution.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Warranty costs for vehicle parts is a huge expense for vehicle manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturer). One of the most significant warranty costs is known in the art as no trouble found (NTF). An NTF typically starts with a customer complaining about a particular abnormal condition, such as intermitate loss of torque, battery discharge, etc., in the vehicle, and the dealer, OEM or supplier is not able to replicate the problem identified by the customer. Particularly, when the vehicle is brought to the dealer for service, the dealer runs standard tests, but is not able to replicate the condition. The dealer may then replace a certain part on the vehicle, such as the battery, hoping that that is the part that is not operating properly. The dealer then will return the part to the OEM or manufacturer along with the warranty claim that is paid by the OEM or manufacturer.
Analysis of many of these parts that are returned to the OEM or manufacturer under NTF conditions have shown that the part is actually healthy and in good working order. Therefore, the dealer replaced the part that was not the root cause of the problem complained by the customer. This practice results in a significant cost in transportation expense, testing man-power, part replacement, etc. Therefore, only a vary small portion of the warranty claims can be audited because of the cost.
Another current practice requests dealers to call an OEM service center and answer specific questions before a part under warranty is authorized to be replaced. This practice is also restricted by manpower. Further, the phone audit does not rely on tangible evidence to present dealership misconduct.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a system and method are disclosed for monitoring the state of health of vehicle components, sub-systems and systems on board the vehicle and/or remotely, and use collected information and data about the vehicle to establish a database for the vehicle as to the state of health of the various components, sub-systems and systems. When a customer brings a vehicle to a service center or dealership complaining about a particular problem, and the service center wishes to replace a part associated with that problem, the OEM or manufacturer can authorize or reject the replacement of the part based on review of the database as to the known state of health of the part. Therefore, only parts which may not be healthy will typically be authorized for replacement. Also, the database can be made available to customers for customer concern resolving.
Additional features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
The following discussion of the embodiments of the invention directed to a system and method for collecting and storing information concerning the state of health of vehicle parts and using that information in a database to determine whether parts will be replaced is merely exemplary in nature, and is in no way intended to limit the invention or its applications or uses.
As will be discussed in detail below, the present invention proposes a system and method that collects data and information about various components, sub-systems and systems on a vehicle either on the vehicle itself and/or remotely at a back-office, and provides a database storing the collected data for the particular vehicle. Various state of health monitoring algorithms can be employed to analyze the data and determine the state of health of the particular component, sub-system or system, which would also be stored in the database. The database can then be used by the dealership that may be servicing the vehicle to determine the state of health of various components, an OEM who may be considering a warranty claim by the dealership or other service center as to authorization to replace a particular part, and/or the customer himself when they subscribe to the database to determine if certain problems can be easily resolved without the customer having to go to the dealership or service center.
Various vehicle components, sub-systems and systems typically have their own algorithms for monitoring their state of health that may issue a trouble code if a certain problem is detected. Further, algorithms are known in the art that receive the various diagnostics and trouble codes from the vehicle components, sub-systems and systems, and use this information to determine a broader state of health of the vehicle and its components. Therefore, data and algorithms already exists in the art that can be used to determine the state of health of various vehicle components, sub-systems and systems.
The information stored at the data center 18 in the database 26 can then be accessed by any or all of a customer 30, a dealership 32 or an OEM 34. The term customer as used herein is intended to represent any designated person that may subscribe to the data center 18 and may be authorized to receive information from the data center 18 for a particular vehicle. The customer 30 may want to access the information to see if there is a particular problem with his vehicle depending on some condition experienced by the customer 30 before the customer 30 takes the vehicle 12 to the dealership 32 to be serviced. This may prevent the customer 30 from having to go through the time and expense of taking the vehicle 12 to the dealership 32. Various problems, such as an abnormal drain on the vehicle battery, can be identified by the customer 30, who can take suitable action to prevent the battery drain, such as removing external power draining sources from the battery that the customer 30 may have plugged into the power receptacle in the vehicle 12. The dealership 32 can access the information in the database 26 to determine a cause of problems on the vehicle 12 when the customer 30 does bring it into the dealership 32. The OEM 34 can authorize warranty claims, such as replacement of parts, requested by the dealership 32 based on whether the OEM 34 determines if the part requested to be replaced is healthy from the information stored in the database 26.
If certain criteria are met based on the vehicle status evaluated from uploaded vehicle data, for example, battery state of health is high, but battery state of charge is low, the customer concern may be resolved through authorized remote vehicle operation, such as remote vehicle start and charge the discharged battery. The battery state of health may be uploaded to the data center 18 once every month from each vehicle that is under warranty. Since battery state of health usually does not change dramatically within a short period of time, a monthly report is usually enough to represent the battery status between two consecutive reports. If the most recent three reports indicate a good battery health for a particular vehicle, where the criteria can be further tuned, the warranty claim of replacing the battery may be rejected.
The foregoing discussion discloses and describes merely exemplary embodiments of the present invention. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from such discussion and from the accompanying drawings and claims that various changes, modifications and variations can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the following claims.
