One of the biggest considered threats to aftermarket telematics device manufacturers over the last 15 years has been OEMs and their ability to directly provide vehicle telematics data to consumers.
The rise of OEM telematics
Initially, this threat appeared from expensive self-propelled construction equipment, where OEMs installed telematics hardware for remote monitoring of proper maintenance performance. They needed this data to improve equipment operation, and later started providing customers with access to it as well. Quickly, remote access to telematics appeared across the majority of special vehicle manufacturers. It became so popular that they even released a standardized AEMP protocol to seamlessly access remote machinery data from different OEMs.
Around the same time, truck manufacturers, by market demand, started installing telematics equipment into newly produced trucks and selling access to the truck data to their customers. We witnessed a few generations of such systems, starting from very poorly implemented XML-based SOAPs up to modern RESTful APIs with JSON payloads.
Next in line were cars, with primary demand coming from car rental companies operating these vehicles at scale. They wanted access to vehicle data, but didn’t want to install aftermarket devices or pay regular fees to Telematic Service Providers (TSPs). Driven by this demand and the available technology level, the OEM telematics market emerged.
Given the diversity of OEMs and the variety of ways they provided access to vehicle data, a demand for new simplification middleware appeared. That gave birth to OEM data hubs – similarly to how the diversity of aftermarket telematic device manufacturers gave birth to flespi.
Our take on OEM Telematics
At Gurtam, we've been looking at this market since 2017. The very first wave of automotive OEM protocols became available to our TSPs starting in 2018. We initially supported the AEMP protocol for construction equipment and implemented various per-manufacturer data pollers to retrieve telematics data from different European truck manufacturers. We observed how poorly the data access was provided, with quite a restricted amount of information pullable from OEMs. And of course, there was a large diversity of data parameters across OEMs, with a total lack of real-time data from all of them.
It wasn’t just our internal observation. In reality, TSPs used OEM data access capabilities purely as a sales hook. They approached customers who had these OEM telematics services activated, connected them to a Fleet Management Solution (FMS) such as Wialon, and convinced them to try a normal aftermarket telematics device just for comparison. And when fleet operators saw the difference in what aftermarket devices provided compared to OEM telematics at the same or even lower price, they quickly chose aftermarket telematics.
Given such strong competition with an already established market, OEM truck telematics wasn’t able to survive on its own. OEMs invested in it by providing telematics as a free service for a few years after the vehicle was sold to its first customer. This gave it a chance, but even nowadays, OEM telematics in trucks is mostly focused on vehicle maintenance first and foremost.
In 2025, Gurtam decided to give OEM telematics a second chance, and we investigated the demand, capabilities, contractual terms, pricing, and data availability across various vehicle OEMs. And now, not only trucks – we especially looked into car OEMs as well.
OEM vs. Aftermarket Telematics in 2025
So here’s what you may need to know about OEM vehicle telematics – and how it compares to aftermarket telematics.
Let’s start with the territories. This is one of the limitations of OEM telematics: according to the contract, their telematic services are only provided within certain countries. Mostly, it covers the USA, Canada, and EU countries. It depends on the OEM, but vehicles bought in the USA may not be available for telematics when in Canada, and vice versa. As for the EU, not all EU countries are covered; there are still some “dark zones,” so territory should always be checked carefully. And with OEMs, you have no flexibility. In aftermarket telematics, it’s only the TSP and their choice of connectivity providers who define the service territory.
Now let’s look at pricing. This is where OEMs come very close to aftermarket telematics providers and can even be quite competitive. They offer telematics bundled with a pre-installed device, connectivity included for a specific region, and the cost ranges from around 2 EUR/month up to 20 EUR/month. The price heavily depends on the amount of data provided and whether it's one-way or two-way (with or without remote control). Remote control itself might also be charged differently – depending on whether it’s used via an online device (GPRS) or offline (SMS). In some cases, considering the upfront investment needed for aftermarket telematics (device + installation), OEM telematics turns out cheaper.
Now let’s compare the vehicle data you can receive. OEM devices have direct access to the vehicle CAN bus, and it’s entirely up to the OEM to reveal or hide specific aspects of vehicle operation in the data they share. You might get door lock status, windows open/closed, SOC, and so on – basically, any vehicle aspect available on the CAN bus. But any information circulating outside the CAN bus is completely unavailable. So you can’t access dashcams, 3rd-party sensors, or any driver identification systems. With aftermarket telematics, it’s quite the opposite – you often need to make an effort to read data from the CAN, but you’re free to install as many 3rd-party sensors as you like and easily get data from all of them.
It’s important not only what data you receive, but also when you receive it – the latency of data reception. And this is where OEMs often underperform. The reason is simple – they’re not designed for real-time data delivery. That may sound a little weird in 2025, but the reality is that you can still encounter cases where vehicle data from an OEM is available only once per day, or only minutes after the trip ends. And even if this is real-time data provision, you can just compare the data flow between a normal aftermarket device and the platform of your choice (50–200 ms) and the complex systems OEMs have developed to securely handle and pass telematics data to your consumer. They’re just slow and complicated by design – and there’s probably nothing OEMs can do to change that. Especially now, with ongoing budget cuts everywhere.
Latency is just one part of the story. But let’s also look at the reliability of data service provision. And here comes the really bad news. If you rely on telematics data in your operations, OEM telematics could be a very poor choice. You can only consider it if you need data for reporting purposes and don’t depend on it for day-to-day operations.
Why is the reliability so poor? The answer is simple – for OEMs, telematics is not a core business. They sell and service vehicles, and telematics is barely on their radar. If you compare the revenue share between vehicle sales, after-sales service, and telematics, it’s easy to see that telematics – and the complex IT stack behind it – will never be a real priority for them. It was just a response to market demand, nothing more. That’s why reliability is low. And if the data stream goes down for days or even weeks – they don’t really care. Now compare that to specialized platforms where telematics is the core of the business, and each minute of downtime affects both their reputation and future revenue.
Another thing worth comparing is integration simplicity – how easy it is to technically access vehicle data. Unfortunately, it’s usually quite poor with OEMs. Yeah, some of them offer RESTful APIs, and some can push data to your endpoint via HTTP. But the vast majority of OEMs built their systems the way they wanted, often tailored to their first customer’s needs. They often provide the data through some rather exotic, specialized system and force you to lock into a specific vendor – such as becoming an AWS customer to retrieve it via a system like Amazon Kinesis stream, for example.
And finally, for all TSPs, I have really bad news: OEMs do not want to work with Telematics Service Providers. They only want to deal with their direct customers – fleet owners. Even when it comes to data hubs or OEM telematics resellers, they still want and need to work with vehicle owners – fleets. Everything in their business model – from contract terms and data ownership to sales and support – is focused on fleet owners, where telematics is sold as part of a connected vehicle service package.
Impact on the TSP Business Model
And this relationship significantly changes the pipeline of responsibility in telematics service provision. With aftermarket devices, TSPs are responsible for software, hardware, and connectivity, providing complete solutions to fleets. This is the core part of the TSP business, and it's the TSP that deals with any kind of problem in telematics – no matter if it's software, hardware, or connectivity.
But when OEMs sell their services directly to fleet owners, TSPs are basically just ingesting this data into their software solutions to offer added value on top. And in case of any problem with the data feed, the TSP can no longer be solely responsible for it. This changes the relationship dramatically. Do fleets still need TSPs in this model?... Or, if they already have direct relationships with OEMs or data hubs, is the TSP business model about to change fundamentally? Is the future of TSPs to become just software providers?
A lot of questions pop up, and I doubt anyone has definitive answers. What I do know from negotiating and working with some OEMs is that the threat from their side toward aftermarket telematics is way overhyped. They still have too much to change. And aftermarket telematics is evolving too, so the competition is going to be intense.
And the issue isn’t just technical or commercial. Part of the problem is the mindset and legal restrictions. Fleets don’t need raw telematics data – they need to improve their business processes by feeding telematics data into specialized software. And this is exactly what TSPs do. But OEMs are unable to provide TSPs with this data due to a mix of legal and technical constraints. A dead end?...
All positive cases with OEM telematics I’ve witnessed so far were related to either large fleet owners or car rental services. Maybe this is exactly the use case where size and simplicity really matter – who knows?...
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to protect aftermarket device manufacturers. Nah, they’re doing fine, releasing great hardware and competing fiercely. What I’m trying to say is that for Telematics Service Providers, the world of OEM telematics is fundamentally different from what they’re used to. One day they’ll have to make a decision – whether they want to become software-only providers fed with telematics through OEM servers, or maintain this large set of responsibilities and control all components of their solution for fleets?... It's a real strategic crossroads for the future.