How We Solve Vehicle Integration Challenges in Car Sharing

Table of Contents

• New Cars, No Data
• How to Analyze a Vehicle for Car Sharing
• Our Support Philosophy
• Proactive Solutions for a Dynamic Market

New Cars, No Data

Imagine dozens of the newest EV models arriving at your workshop one day. The goal of your installation and infleeting teams is clear: get the vehicles equipped, off the yard, and into operation as quickly as possible, ideally without ever having to touch them again. Meanwhile, you already have the marketing campaigns ready and customers anticipating your new cars. But unexpectedly, it turns out that you can’t access critical vehicle data that’s needed for your car sharing operations. Your fleet is grounded before its first rental.

This is exactly what happened to one of our customers as a result of an unannounced update by the vehicle manufacturer. But more on this later.

Integrating new vehicles, adapting to unexpected OEM software updates or hardware changes (e.g. wiring) is a major operational challenge. Without a proper analysis of the CAN bus or OBD data, a single missing or misinterpreted signal can stop the entire operation.

In this article, we’ll explore the importance of vehicle analysis for car sharing. We’ll then explain how we empower your local teams or – if nothing else worked – fly experts out to your location to solve complex integration challenges and make your car sharing work.

How to Analyze a Vehicle for Car Sharing

Modern cars are complex data ecosystems. Currently, you can access this data by analyzing the CAN bus, getting the data via OBD port, or conducting a hybrid analysis with both.

This analysis is the basis of reliable fleet integration. It’s how we guarantee that the data your customers see in the app reliably reflects reality. This reliability means knowing for a fact that a lock status is accurate, so that a user never walks away from an unsecured car. It means ensuring the state of charge (SoC) reading is precise, so a customer is never stranded with an empty battery that the system thought was full.

Each of these data points has a specific sequence of 1s and 0s on the vehicle’s CAN bus. Our engineers enable relevant commands for car sharing by locating these sequences on the bus. By translating this vehicle language correctly, we eliminate the guesswork that leads to operational failures.

Every vehicle model has a different CAN bus data structure. Sometimes even individual vehicles within the same model year differ. At INVERS, we have analyzed more than 1,000 cars to be truly vehicle agnostic so we can speak the language of any car you choose to add to your fleet. Even if you plan to use a vehicle model that has not been analyzed yet, our team can perform the necessary analysis in just a few days.

Our Support Philosophy

A little issue can make the whole integration process an even bigger challenge. We have structured our support to handle everything from routine installations to critical integration blockers, ensuring that your fleet remains available and reliable. Here is what we do:

Empower Your Team with Expert Training

Reliability starts with the installation. We operate on a “Train the Trainer” model where we provide your local team with the expertise they need to install our telematics and integrate it with your system.

Our SmartControl app provides your team with step-by-step installation guides. They help technicians to locate the precise wires and connection points to set up and test each vehicle for sharing. With our Installation Jobs feature, you can use a one-for-all tool that turns a complex engineering task into a scalable and repeatable installation process. By allowing you to pre-configure installation tasks and assign specific jobs to technicians, it minimizes manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors. This empowers your team to be self-sufficient, ensuring that every hardware unit is set up correctly to prevent future operational impairments.

Onsite Support for Critical Integration Problems

Sometimes your trained technician follows the playbook but the data isn’t there. A minor facelift may not seem like a big change, but data can move to an entire new CAN or be sent in a different format so that the telematics doesn’t catch the right data anymore. In these rare cases we offer a fallback where we literally go the extra mile for you to ensure your operations don’t stall.

To illustrate this, let’s return to the customer story mentioned earlier:

The Problem:

One of our customers was about to integrate a large volume of new Cupra Borns. These vehicles were identical to the VW ID.3 models we had previously analyzed. However, the manufacturer had introduced a silent facelift that fundamentally changed the CAN design without any external documentation or warning. Consequently, critical charging data like SoC was missing, making the vehicles unreliable for rental.

The Challenge:

The vehicles were on site and ready to be deployed. The missing data made them unusable and local experts could not find the issue.

The Solution:

This was a critical case. The only solution was flying over to the installer’s site the very next morning as there where many cars were waiting to be equipped. Onsite, our expert performed a deep analysis and discovered VW had moved the data to an entirely different CAN. He physically mapped the new design and developed the fix on the spot.

The Result:

Our customer was able to integrate the new Cupra Borns and make them available for customers right after our visit, turning a potential reliability crisis into a successful launch.

Proactive Solutions for a Dynamic Market

New models aren’t the only challenge. Sometimes it’s existing ones that change after an update, threatening the reliability of your active fleet. The best support is invisible, which is why our vehicle analysis team works proactively to solve problems before they stop your fleet.

A prime example of this is Tesla’s Over-the-Air (OTA) updates.

The Problem:

A Tesla software update can silently move or change CAN bus data structure. Suddenly, data like SoC or mileage might disappear across your entire Tesla fleet. A fleet that was reliable yesterday becomes a blind spot today. Because these shifts are extremely rare, many technology providers do not actively monitor for them, leaving operators vulnerable when they do occur.

The Solution:

We keep a vigilant eye on these irregularities and re-analyze immediately when necessary. That’s how we solved the latest incident by replicating a critical Tesla update on our own in-house test vehicle. Our team analyzed the changes to find the new data locations and updated our platform’s logic and our telematics devices over the air (OTA).

The Benefit:

Because our platform can tell the difference between the OEMs firmware versions, the fix is applied automatically via OTA updates. Your fleet updates itself with no site visits or hardware changes required. This is the power of a true technology partnership, ensuring continuous reliability even when the vehicles themselves change.

How to Ensure Seamless Vehicle Integration

Integrating a modern and diverse fleet is one of the most complex technical challenges in shared mobility. Smooth and successful integrations are the end product of a deep and continuous vehicle analysis process designed to guarantee reliability. Every layer of support is built on the foundation of our engineering team’s ability to analyze and understand any vehicle.

Don’t let vehicle integration be a bottleneck. Partner with a team that has over 30 years of experience in solving car sharing’s toughest vehicle analysis challenges. Contact us to learn how our engineering expertise can future-proof your fleet and ensure 24/7 reliability.