We are pleased to announce that ROBIS has reached five million test results since its inception in February 2019.

ROBIS has been busy over the past three years, gathering battery data from vehicle workshop customers across different industry sectors, including automotive main dealers, commercial vehicles, emergency services, fleet workshops, independent workshops, public service vehicles, and specialist roadside organisations. From the five million battery tests to date, key results show that:

• 41% of the batteries were in good condition, showing that 59% of the vehicles on the road require some attention
• 35% of batteries required charging to prevent roadside breakdown
• 13% needed replacing to get vehicles back on the road

Five Million Recorded Tests

Five million recorded battery tests are a significant achievement that demonstrates the growing demand for remote battery management. We would like to thank our customers for their continued support and express our gratitude for their ongoing patronage.

Ken Clark, Managing Director of Rotronics, says: “Reaching five million test results on ROBIS is a great milestone. It shows the support that the system gives our customer in analysing and improving vehicle reliability and performance, delivering valuable information to increase battery health and help reduce battery replacement costs”. Ken adds: “Regularly testing a vehicle's battery health prevents unanticipated battery problems such as unbalanced, damaged, or faulty batteries, and it’s ROBIS as a system that makes this prevention achievable”.

How do our customers use ROBIS?

Rotronics customers use the online battery information system to help them troubleshoot workshop battery management problems and achieve optimal fleet performance.

ROBIS was created for workshops to evaluate and understand battery health within their workshop but to also help support workshop maintenance processes. The online portal provides live data for technicians and shows battery performance over time. This helps with consistency throughout the workshops to drive high-quality workshop practises, which can be analysed by industry, vehicle, and battery type, and more, with the important goal of cost savings.

As a system, ROBIS provides visibility of battery health to workshops. It delivers an overview of which staff are performing battery tests, and whether the battery is being charged or replaced in accordance with the test diagnostics. This enables workshops to identify any possibilities to improve vehicle reliability and staff training to reduce roadside breakdowns and battery replacements.

Without ROBIS, workshops have limited visibility into their vehicles’ battery health, which leads to more battery defects. This causes unwanted time and money issues for commercial and fleet workshops, which ROBIS could easily resolve. ROBIS simplifies problem-solving and assists customers in meeting their budget-saving objectives, which, as we enter a challenging year with rising costs, is becoming a focus for most businesses.

Listed below are a few advantages our customers receive from using ROBIS:

• The Rotronics team can interpret the data and demonstrate how to use ROBIS to its full potential
• Displays raw data of good, bad, and ugly battery results
• Users can maximise fault identification and opportunities in their workshop by implementing a proactive Rotronics battery management programme
• Online portal gathers battery data following battery tests
• Accurately determine corrective action required
• Remote digital analysis 24/7/, 365 days a year
• Visibility over which technicians are carrying out battery tests, and following battery charge procedures
• Historical Battery trend analysis by individual, by vehicle, workshop, or region.
• Main error culprits battery CCA or the battery type, leading to inappropriate remedial actions

The Future of ROBIS

Given the growth of ROBIS since its launch in 2019, we predict that it will continue to assist and educate workshops on the importance of understanding the correct way to properly maintain their battery technology.

ROBIS will continue to encourage healthy workshop competition within industries to compete with each other to become the best workshop. We are continuing to develop ROBIS, to give even more battery related insights, to provide guidance around where internal training is required.

Fast forward into 2023, ROBIS workshops will be able to upload maintenance schedules to analyse and compare their data against batteries being tested. Customers will be using the automotive dashboard, adding live data feed to the CPX900 tester which will be simple and convenient to use. This will allow customers to correctly measure and test battery diagnostics in workshops providing a clear visibility while also giving a return on investment.

ROBIS will be installed into the Midtronics testing platforms, including the DCA8000 allowing modification for individual customer requirements o, enabling users to print live tests there and then to hand to customers.  

Whilst it is early days regarding the electrical vehicle market, industry insights tell us that EVs are likely to give fewer battery issues compared to traditional battery types. However, at the roadside the 12v battery can be flat even though the electric vehicle is full of charge. New EV vehicles are still using the same batteries which means maintaining vehicles is more important now than ever before. Battery maintenance is not going away and needs to remain a priority component that needs regular inspection, this is where ROBIS comes in.