The AIS-140 (IRNSS) regulation, mandated from April 1, 2019, and what it means for your public service / commercial vehicles

Public-service vehicles and commercial vehicles form the backbone of our nation’s economy. The rapid economic growth in the last 10 decades has led to a massive increase in the number of these vehicles. Today, there are over 80 lac public-service and commercial vehicles on the road, and – given our existing infrastructure – certain standards had to be introduced to ensure optimum utilization, efficiency, and more importantly – the safety of our transport systems.

One such standard is the Automotive Industry Standard 140 or AIS 140 (IRNSS) – an integral part of the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) requirements for public transport and commercial vehicles, mandated by the Government of India from the 1st of April, 2019.

So what exactly is the AIS 140 (IRNSS)?
The AIS 140 is a set of standards published by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) that mandates that a vehicle-tracking device and one (or more) emergency button(s) must exist in all existing and new public-service and commercial vehicles. The Government of India has directed all the States’ RTOs to ensure that all passenger-carrying buses and commercial vehicles conform to this standard, or registration will be suspended (for existing vehicles) or withheld (for new vehicles).

Highlights of AIS 140 (IRNSS) guidelines:

• Real-time centralized tracking of all road-worthy commercial and public-service vehicles
• One or more panic/emergency button(s) on all public and commercial vehicles
• Bi-lateral transmission of geolocation data to VAHAN servers on BSNL, as well as to private vendor servers
• Robust IP67 compliant (electronics protected from dust, sand, water) telematics device to transmit the data
• Devices have to be enabled with FOTA (Firmware Over the Air) so that they may be updated remotely

With great power comes great responsibility, and with new standards come new troubles with conformity! There are only a handful of companies in India that sell AIS-140 (IRNSS) certified devices, therefore it is not easy to access these devices. Because of this, most of the market-ready devices are costly and are bound to burn a hole in your pocket. Moreover, the installation of these devices requires complex rewiring, making the entire process extremely expensive and tedious. So, to summarise – difficult to acquire, cumbersome to install, expensive, but necessary.

Where do we come in?
ZASCO GPS is among one of India’s very few OBD telematics companies with an AIS-140 (IRNSS) certification for its device, with approval from State RTOs. Unlike all other market-ready devices requiring complex installation, ours is a straight-forward plug and play device, compatible with all OEMs. Our device also has the best through-put of geolocation data (validated by a market leader in the bus-ticketing and aggregator space), and the battery on our device comfortably exceeds other devices’ battery life by over 36 hours. Not only does the ZASCO EDGE CAN OBD & VTS device conform to all AIS-140 (IRNSS) guidelines, it goes above and beyond. Using the ZASCO Ingenious Vehicle Health Monitoring solution, you can also optimize fleet efficiency, reduce operational costs, maximize fuel efficiency, reduce maintenance costs, improve driver behavior, and enhance overall safety.

We, at ZASCO, believe that connected vehicles are things of the past already. We stand for an even more intelligent system – the Digital Twinning concept. The result – insightful analytics and data transmitted in real-time to increase safety and ensure government compliance, without making the whole process tedious for you.