Pittsburgh-headquartered Wabtec has signed an agreement with Dutch company Intermodal Telematics to produce telematics technology for rail cars.
Wabtec, a rail technology provider, says the product could be ready in the first quarter of 2024. Wabtec (NYSE: WAB) will use Intermodal Telematics’ technology to create the rail car telematics offering.
The telematics technology enables rail car owners and operators to access real-time data to see the location and status of individual rail cars and monitor rail car components such as hand brakes, hatches and doors, according to Wabtec. Tank car owners and operators will be able to track a tank car’s cargo temperature and pressure as well.
Having this information will also allow rail car owners and operators to develop insights on how to optimize rail cars’ performance and predict maintenance needs, Wabtec said.
The technology will consist of sensors, gateways, wireless communications and analytics, and it will be made available for retrofit on existing fleets as well as integrated onto new rail cars, Wabtec said in a Thursday release. It will be available in North America as well as other areas globally, per the agreement.
Wabtec’s partnership and new offering come as others in the industry have been seeking not only to provide more real-time data on rail cars, but to use that data to help make supply chain flows more efficient.
For example, RailPulse, a coalition of eight rail car owners consisting of rail equipment manufacturers, rail lessors and some Class I railroads, has been seeking to develop what it describes as “a neutral, open-architecture, industry-wide railcar telematics platform” that uses rail car-mounted sensors to cull data on rail car movements. And Quincy, Massachusetts-based RailState has been deploying sensors along the Canadian and U.S. rail network to provide insights on regional network flows.
“The rail industry is on the verge of a new era where the use of real-time data about the status and condition of cargo will be transformative to the customer experience and supply chain efficiency,” Nalin Jain, Wabtec group president of digital intelligence, said in the release. “Telematics builds on Wabtec’s rich history serving the freight car markets with next-generation solutions. Our innovative solutions will improve shipment visibility, increase on-time performance, and expand asset utilization to make shipping freight by rail more competitive.”
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