A fleet is only as software-defined as its least-connected vehicle.
Volvo Trucks North America has completed its rollout of unattended OTA software updates across its trucks in the US and Canada. According to Volvo’s announcement, updates now reach trucks without interrupting operations. The company describes its latest Volvo and Mack models as the first steps towards truly software-defined vehicles (SDVs).
The average European fleet yard looks very different. ACEA figures put 6.2 million trucks and roughly 31.1 million vans on EU roads, and the average truck is 14 years old. If you buy a software-defined truck this year, it will work alongside vehicles designed a decade or more ago.
What a software-defined fleet actually requires
A software-defined fleet is one where you can update and monitor every vehicle remotely, whatever its brand and wherever it is working. That definition applies to the whole fleet. One new truck with OTA updates gives you one software-defined vehicle. The fleet only qualifies when the oldest and hardest-to-reach vehicle meets the same standard.
Most SDV coverage starts with the newest truck on the forecourt. Fleet operators have to plan from the other end.
Mixed OEM platforms are here for a vehicle generation
Truck makers are building separate software platforms
In June 2025, Volvo Group and Daimler Truck launched Coretura. The joint venture will build what the two groups call the non-differentiating core, a standardised and open SDV platform and operating system for commercial vehicles. Volvo and Daimler will remain competitors and will keep building their own digital services on top of it.
TRATON is taking a separate route. TRATON ONE OS covers Scania, MAN, International and Volkswagen Truck & Bus.
The timing matters for anyone planning vehicle replacement. Coretura aims to have its first products in vehicles by the end of the decade. With a 14-year average truck age, a vehicle bought in 2027 could still be earning in the 2040s. Your fleet will hold vehicles from before and after these platforms arrive for a long time yet.
Standards already solve much of the data access problem
Multi-brand data access for trucks is not a new problem. Six European OEM truck makers created the FMS standard in 2002 so telematics applications could work with any manufacturer’s vehicles. The remote version, rFMS, reached version 5.0 in July 2025. It gives remote access to vehicle data through the hardware the OEM already fitted, with no extra device.
Factory telematics is now common too. Berg Insight reports that Volvo Connect is standard in Europe and new MAN trucks come with RIO. DAF made PACCAR Connect standard in 2024.
The rFMS specification itself points to what is still unsolved. Contracts and subscriptions remain specific to each OEM. The specification also notes that data updates may be impossible when communication is unavailable. The standard defines how data moves once a connection exists. Keeping that connection alive for the life of the vehicle falls outside its scope.
Where the least-connected vehicle drops out
A truck can be mechanically sound, legally compliant and fully booked with work, and still disappear from your data. Here are the ways that happens.
Network sunsets happen country by country
A study for the European Commission, cited in our analysis of the coverage gap beneath Next Generation eCall, found that around 64 million EU vehicles could lose emergency call functionality. The cause is mobile operators retiring 2G and 3G on uncoordinated timetables.
Deutsche Telekom plans to close its 2G network in June 2028. Belgium, Poland and Slovakia will keep 2G running until the end of 2030. If you run a pan-European operation, the same vehicle could lose its connection in Germany more than two years before it would in Poland. The Digital Connectivity Forum’s review of 2G switch-offs shows the same risk for tracking and telemetry services.
The fitted module sets the lifespan of connected services
Manufacturers are saying this publicly. Škoda has confirmed that some Škoda Connect services, including Breakdown Call and Vehicle Health Report, still depend on 2G or 3G in certain models. A vehicle’s connected services last only as long as the network its communication module was built for. The model year on the registration document tells you very little about that.
Older vehicles sit outside UNECE R156
UNECE Regulation 156 on software update management became mandatory for all new vehicles from July 2024. Vehicles registered before that date sit outside the framework the SDV model assumes. Given the age of the EU truck fleet, that describes most of the trucks working today.
Connection is the requirement every vehicle shares
Data access is opening up. Under the EU Data Act, providers such as Wialon are unlocking OEM data for fleet owners. OEM platforms and aftermarket telematics still depend on the same thing, a vehicle that stays connected across networks and borders for its whole working life. Nothing in the current rules guarantees it.
Before you judge how software-defined your fleet is, start with its connections. Check which network each vehicle’s module relies on, and when that network closes in each country your vehicles operate in.
Cubic3 connects vehicles across more than 550 mobile networks in over 200 countries. That gives vehicles a way to stay reachable as individual networks close. Our coverage from 5GAA Gothenburg explains how non-terrestrial networks extend that resilience beyond the reach of mobile masts.
Find the vehicle in your fleet that goes dark first
See how Cubic3 keeps every vehicle in a mixed fleet connected
