GM gets favourable order from Patent Office for its vehicle diagnostics system

The system is to help the owner to manage the vehicle health

General Motors Corporation has received a favourable order from the Indian Patent Office for an innovation which could send data from vehicle to the subscriber through email. The method has been developed to help the owner to manage the vehicle health with the assistance of automatic diagnostics.

The company explains that the invention, titled "Vehicle email notification system and method", is related to techniques for wirelessly collecting vehicle information and providing that information to the vehicle owner or other authorised person. Using the method, dynamic vehicle data such as mileage, oil life, vehicle safety system status, and others could be obtained from the vehicle and supplied to the subscriber by email or other modes.

This would mean that the vehicle information and status would be generated automatically and send to the authorised person without human intervention. Through the method, based on specific triggers such as automatic periodic email notifications on the status of various parts of the vehicle or a trigger on the oil life and mileage that can be used to inform the subscriber when there is a need for vehicle servicing, it would generate an electronic message with the details and send it to the owner or any other subscriber through the internet.

The automobile major has filed a patent application on July 10, 2008 with the Patent Office of Kolkata and after the first examination report and other procedures, a hearing was given by the Patent Office on May 28, 2015.

With further clarifications on February 11, 2016, Deputy Controller of Patents and Designs in the Patent Office of Kolkata, Nirmalya Sinha, has issued an order that the application is in order. The official analysed that in the application, the triggers are owner configurable, which is a difference from previous inventions pointed out by the company and the message and notification mentioned in those documents has been replaced with email in the instant application.

It may be noted that the US-based automobile manufacturer has its subsidiary, OnStar, in various countries focusing on providing emergency, security, navigation, diagnostic and connectivity services to its customers on a subscription basis.

In the diagnostics services, it offers diagnostics report, running a check on the engine, transmission, antilock brakes, among others and send an email to the customer with the results. 

It would also include a dealer maintenance notification, by sending a diagnostics report to the dealers when it is time to change oil or any other maintenance required, upon which the dealer can contact the customer. In US, diagnostic alert notifications has been provided for most GM vehicles from 2015.

In the emergency services, OnStar provides automatic crash response, emergency services, crisis assist and road side assistance through its emergency services in countries such as US.