Tacho 4.0: Our sales representative Oliver Krahmer on facts, half-knowledge, myths and legends about the new tachograph.
EU Regulation 165/2014 aims to further improve road safety, prevent or at least make the manipulation of digital tachographs more difficult and ensure fair competition in the European internal market. That sounds reasonable and everyone has been waiting for a long time for the new tachograph 4.0.
As of 15.06.2019, you will no longer be able to get a new truck without this new “miracle speedometer”, which should offer so many options to the driver, the entrepreneur, the work shop and the inspection authorities. However, now, almost overnight, without any possibility to really prepare for it, the deadline is here – and everyone suddenly faces the question: what changes for me as a driver or as an entrepreneur?
This reminds me a bit of the introduction of the truck toll in Germany or the introduction of the professional driver qualification law (BKrFQG) – and the five-year lead time until the evidence had to be presented. These innovations came virtually “overnight,” one might think.
But this time many issues are homemade!
No matter who I’ve talked to on the phone in the past few days, where I’ve been looking for information or what I’ve read in specialist articles, I have not been able to get a single truly reliable and final statement.
So, what is really changing now with the new speedometer?
If an entrepreneur trusts MAN sales, Tacho 4.0 will require new driver cards, new entrepreneur cards, new work shop cards, new reader devices, new remote download software – in a word everything needs to be new! But according to the press office of Continental, only a new work shop card is needed. Then again, if you read at VDO (is that not Continental?), much more is needed, depending what you want to do and how.
It is quite praiseworthy and speaks for a company like Continental, that they are the first to have the approval for this tachograph, but real championship would be an official commitment to what an entrepreneur with the Tacho 4.0 actually needs to change. Because the confusion is widespread and providers of telematics solutions are currently feeling this uncertainty very strongly.
Personally, I can not imagine how the switch is going to happen on the fly from an the purely organizational standpoint, and that really every driver needs (and gets) a new driver card and the entrepreneur new entrepreneur cards. Of course I am not sure. So I stick to the statement of a Continental employee: so far nothing changes, only the work shop needs a new card. Maybe there will be an official commitment after all and everybody can concentrate on the essentials again.
Addendum from 4.8.2019:
New webinar
I am offering a new, compact and FREE webinar related to this topic starting from 12. August 2019.
In 30 minutes we discuss the important and sometimes hidden changes that the new Tacho 4.0 comes with.
I provide case studies and have useful documents ready for you.
Another topic is the tachometer archiving and the resulting pitfalls.
Tacho 4.0 – what you should know
First Date: August 12, 2019 | 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
