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Digital dithering
Page 38
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Digital tachographs will be law in new trucks from August 2004 but the ktit won't be widely available until 2005. Patric Cunnane reports.
THE INTRODUCTION of the digital smart-card tachograph constitutes a completely new technology for recording drivers' hours. So says the Department forTransport in its survey of affected parties. carried out last autuntn.This much we know, But will the equipment be ready in time to meet the EC's deadline next summer?
The clock started ticking with the introduction of EC Council Regulation 2135/98 which requires all vehicles entering service for the first time to be fitted with digital tachographs two years after the publication of Regulation 1360/2002. This means 5 August next year. But following a meeting in Brussels last month this date now seems unlikely to be met and a delay of up to a year is on the cards.
Before this meeting, a number of questions troubled the industry When will the manufacturers of the new equipment be ready to submit their designs to the standards agency for type approval? If they don't receive type approval by the end of the year it puts manufacturers in a difficult position. They planned to start producing trucks with digital tachographs by the end of 2003. If type approval is not achieved, must truck manufacturers continue fitting vehicles with standard tachographs?
And what can dealers and manufacturers do with pre-digital stock? Mercedes-Benz warns that from 6 August 2004 it will be illegal to sell HGVs with old-style tachos.A spokesman says:"If type approval is not met by a certain date manufacturers will be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
"Rather than send out trucks with the old equipment installed manufac turers may choose to send trucks to dealers tacho-less because it costs 11,000 a truck to replace the chart system with a digital tachograph." Mercedes is confident that truck builders are ready to fit the new equipment at short notice.
The two manufac turers of digital tachographs, Siemens VDO and Actia told the Brussels meeting that they will produce their first units by early 2004. Clearly, the wish for truck manufacturers to install units before the end of this year becomes impossible. Instead, they will not even he able to test units until next spring.
Nick Rendel I, managing director of Siemens VDO, says his company will be producing units by early next year, subject to type approval. "We understand from VOSA that there will be a grey period, that the law will not be enforced until the equipment is available. This means that if you put a new truck on the road in the UK on 6 August 2004 without a digital tachograph you will not be prosecuted. However, I am not sure what will happen if you take that truck to France," he says.
Rendell says the turning point for operators is the day they buy their first truck with a smart-card digital tachograph. "From that moment, they will be expected to have the support systems in terms of software and smart cards."
Any sensible person might conclude that the EC will revise Regulation 1360/2002 to set a realistic date that the industry can meet. They would be wrong. August 2004 remains written in stone yet is likely to be ignored by enforcement agencies — although no one can ten for how long.
"It's a complete fiasco," says Philip.Tordan,MD ofTachodisc.He says the real cost will be IT: "A DIT survey shows that 40% of hauliers haven't even got computers." •