October 2024 – When Vehicles Started Changing, Infrastructure Had to Change Too

For years, most conversations around transportation technology were about making existing vehicles move more efficiently.

By 2024, something more fundamental was happening.

The vehicle itself was changing.

Electric vehicles were becoming increasingly visible across different parts of transportation. Electrification was no longer a conversation limited to passenger cars. The logistics and commercial vehicle ecosystem was also beginning to seriously discuss what electric mobility could mean for the movement of goods.

For us, this created another interesting question.

If the vehicle of the future is changing, shouldn’t the infrastructure around that vehicle change too?

That question connected directly with the work we had already started around ANPR, FASTag and seamless vehicle movement.

An Electric Truck Is Still Part of a Much Bigger Ecosystem

It is easy to look at an electric truck and think that the transformation is primarily about replacing diesel with electricity.

But logistics is much more complicated than the powertrain of a vehicle.

A commercial vehicle interacts with multiple systems during its journey.

There is vehicle registration.

There is FASTag.

There are toll transactions.

There are permits and compliance requirements.

There are transporters and fleet operators.

There are drivers.

There are consignments and logistics records.

There are government databases such as VAHAN.

There are banking and payment systems.

And increasingly, there is data being generated at almost every stage of the journey.

The challenge was not simply creating more technology.

The real challenge was making these different pieces communicate with each other.

FASTag, EVs and a New Set of Questions

As electric mobility started becoming part of logistics conversations, discussions naturally started emerging around the infrastructure surrounding these vehicles.

How should tolling evolve?

How would different vehicle categories be identified?

Could existing FASTag infrastructure support more use cases?

Could ANPR add another layer of vehicle identification?

Could vehicle information available through authorised systems be used to make transactions more accurate?

How could all of this eventually work without creating another complicated process for a transporter or driver?

We did not have answers to every question.

But we knew these questions were worth exploring.

We Had Data. But Data Alone Wasn’t the Solution.

India’s transportation ecosystem was already generating enormous amounts of information.

FASTag had transaction-related information.

Vehicle systems had registration-related information.

Logistics platforms had operational information.

Transporters had fleet and movement information.

Different government and private systems had their own pieces of the puzzle.

But having pieces of data is very different from having a connected ecosystem.

That became one of the areas we wanted to understand more deeply.

Could the right information, accessed and used through appropriate authorised mechanisms, be connected to create a more seamless vehicle journey?

Instead of looking at ANPR as just a camera reading a number plate, we started looking at the larger chain.

Number plate -> Vehicle identification -> Verification -> FASTag -> Financial transaction -> Logistics information -> Operational visibility

Each step had its own technology.

Each had its own rules.

Each had its own stakeholders.

And each could fail in different ways.

Connecting them was the difficult part.

The Ground Research Continued

The previous month had already taken us back to the roads.

That continued.

We were trying to understand infrastructure not from a presentation, but from actual operating conditions.

Because the Indian road ecosystem has edge cases that are difficult to understand sitting inside an office.

A number plate may not be readable.

A vehicle record may not match what you expect.

A FASTag may have its own history.

Connectivity may behave differently at different locations.

The physical infrastructure may create another limitation.

And once a financial transaction is involved, every exception becomes important.

This was exactly why we had started going deeper into the operational side.

The technology had to adapt to the road.

We could not expect the road to adapt to our technology.

From Separate Technologies to One Connected Journey

This was also changing the way we thought about TruckSuvidha’s role.

Earlier, it was easy to look at everything separately.

FASTag was one solution.

ANPR was another technology.

Vehicle databases were another source of information.

EV infrastructure was another emerging ecosystem.

Logistics platforms were another layer.

Payments were another layer.

But a transporter does not experience these things as separate industries.

For the transporter, there is only one thing that matters:

The vehicle has to complete its journey efficiently.

That realization was important.

Maybe the future opportunity was not in creating one more isolated technology.

Maybe it was in connecting the technologies that already existed.

From Physical Highways to Digital Highways

Road infrastructure traditionally meant highways, bridges, toll plazas and checkpoints.

But the definition was changing.

Tomorrow’s highway infrastructure would also need digital rails.

Vehicle identity.

Payments.

Data exchange.

Verification.

Tracking.

Compliance.

Charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

And systems capable of communicating with one another.

The physical highway moves the truck.

The digital highway moves the information around the truck.

For logistics to become truly efficient, both have to work together.

We Were Still Far From the Finish Line

At this stage, we were not claiming that we had solved everything.

Quite the opposite.

The deeper we went, the more complexities we discovered.

Integration was difficult.

Infrastructure needed development.

Data had to be accurate.

Access had to follow the appropriate rules and permissions.

Financial transactions required another level of reliability.

ANPR brought its own operational challenges.

EV adoption would create additional infrastructure requirements.

And multiple stakeholders would eventually need to participate.

But those challenges made the opportunity more interesting.

Because if everything were already connected, there would be very little left to build.

Also read:- September 2024 – When an Impossible Idea Took Us Back to the Roads

Startup Lesson – Don’t Build Another Island

One lesson became increasingly important for us during this period:

Innovation is not always about creating something completely new. Sometimes the bigger innovation is making existing systems work together.

India already had FASTag.

ANPR technology existed.

Vehicle information systems existed.

Digital payment infrastructure existed.

Logistics platforms existed.

And electric mobility was creating another new layer.

The opportunity was to understand how these pieces could eventually become part of one connected transportation ecosystem.

That is what we were trying to explore.

Piece by piece.

Integration by integration.

Test by test.

The journey that had started years ago with a simple question – how do we connect a truck with a load? – was evolving into a much larger question:

How do we connect the vehicle with the entire digital infrastructure around its journey?

The trucks were changing.

The highways were changing.

The technology was changing.

And once again, we wanted to understand that change from the ground before trying to build for it.

Because the future of logistics will not be created by putting more technology around a truck.

It will be created when all that technology finally starts working together.