Ford analyzes massive amounts of vehicle data to stay ahead in the commercial van market.

Ford employees were focused on the 98.3% of vans that were in service.

Ford Motor's attempt to leverage endless amounts of information generated by its vans and trucks - from engines to oil filters to brake pads - to attract more customers in the European and American commercial vehicle markets.

Ford employees were focused on the 98.3% of vans that were in service - and of them, around 8% needed repairs fairly soon or urgently - but they were even more focused on the 1.7% that were not.

The automaker in the United States tracks 4,000 data points via modems installed in all commercial vehicles since 2019 - and can warn paying customers of engine problems and basics such as brake pad wear, low oil, or diesel additives that are inexpensive to maintain proactively but costly to fix if not addressed.

The carmaker has linked all of its UK dealers to its system, allowing it to schedule repairs and prepare parts for vans before they arrive at a dealership. The system was released in 2021 by Ford, which leads the commercial vehicle industry in both Europe and the United States.

According to Hans Schep, European head of Ford Pro, the company's commercial vehicle business, the company is already on track to meet long-term goals of boosting vehicle "uptime" by up to 60%.

For commercial vehicle manufacturers, data is a big battleground, and competition will only heat up with electric vehicles, which are effectively computers on wheels.

Following a successful test run in the United Kingdom, Ford is now launching the FORDLiive service across continental Europe and the United States. The company has prioritized its successful Ford Pro business in Europe above lower-margin mass-market passenger cars.

Ford recently announced job losses in engineering in Europe, but it is still looking for software specialists for its data services.

Data is being used to indicate where vans are, how much fuel they consume, how drivers use or misuse them, if they can skip an oil change, and, most importantly, how to reduce downtime.

There is also an ongoing battle in the European Union between insurance, leasing businesses, and auto repair shops and carmakers for access to connected car data and the massive potential revenue it may produce.

Electric vans provide significantly more data points for Ford and its competitors to deal with, such as tracking how much range they have remaining and giving simple, all-in-one charging solutions.

According to Ford's Schep, supplying that data is critical for van fleets because 60% of the automaker's corporate clients "are particularly worried about the transition to electric."