The COVESA All Member Meeting in Porto featured a standout session offering fresh insight from leading truck and bus OEMs. The panel explored several key questions shaping the future of commercial vehicles: the growing need for interoperability across truck and bus platforms; why ACEA members chose to collaborate with COVESA; how standardized interfaces such as SAE J1939 can benefit the broader market; how ACEA’s involvement expands the scope of today’s Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS); and whether the emerging in-vehicle API for trucks and buses should remain OEM-internal or be opened to the public.

A highlight of the event was the expert panel featuring Abdelkader Sellami (Volvo Trucks), Armin Keller (LogiCom), Ted Guild (Geotab), and Steve Crumb (COVESA), moderated by Achim Henkel (Bosch). For more than a year, ACEA truck and bus OEMs have collaborated closely with COVESA to advance interoperability in commercial vehicles. ACEA’s membership includes major manufacturers such as DAF, Daimler Truck, Ford, IVECO, Traton (including SCANIA and MAN), Volvo, and Renault Trucks, collectively representing a powerful force driving alignment and innovation in the sector.

A primary goal of this collaboration is the integration of the FMS-Standard (fleet management standard V5) into the Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS). The panelists gave a deep insight into this collaboration and traced the path into a digital future for upcoming fleet management systems. Moderator Achim Henkel (BOSCH) posed several key questions to the panelists, which we’ll explore throughout this blog.

Why is interoperability key for trucks and buses? 

Commercial vehicles operate largely within fleet environments, where managers expect flexibility to integrate multiple OEM brands into a single operation. As a result, a common “fleet management standard” has become firmly established. Interoperability is now essential, and FMS has emerged as a widely adopted international standard.

Why does the market profit from standardized interfaces (e.g., SAE J1939)? 

Standardization lowers the cost for feature developments and implementation and provides a harmonized interface to upfitters. It eases aggregation for international fleet operators, who operate several brands and decreases the overall transport cost.

What is the reason for choosing COVESA? 

COVESA has a brilliant active community. Truck and bus OEMs are looking for an API more flexible than SAE-J1939. The need for fast reaction time and new harmonized data is steadily increasing. Data requirements are more demanding due to the electrification. The market is evolving fast. SAE-J1939 does not require new data. ACEA needs the flexibility to define our values on our own – and quickly. COVESA is the best fitting community and already offers the main relevant data elements. 

How does this ACEA collaboration extend the scope of today’s VSS? 

Traditionally, COVESA comes from passenger cars. But COVESA wants to expand to truck and bus OEMs. Trucks and buses already leverage harmonized APIs across cross-OEM organizations, making ACEA a natural fit to help extend the scope of COVESA VSS. VSS is driven by a global community and ACEA brings VSS to the truck and bus OEMs on the street and opens the door to public transport markets. 

What has been the first hurdle you have already overcome by migrating FMS5 into VSS? 

The first goal will be the migration of FMS.v5 to VSS. It sounds easy, but the challenges are in the details. Who would have anticipated that VSS would need to accommodate features like 10 foldable doors in a bus or up to 8 axles with as many as four wheels per axle, as seen in trucks?

Is this new truck and bus in-vehicle API an OEM-internal API, or open to the public? 

For buses, a “new world“ starts with digital SW-based services. There is a strong request from the operators for data sharing to control and maintain their fleet. Even other organizations like UITP, VDV, and ITxPT are striving for their own data charging systems, and future collaborations might enable synergies. The basis for OEM APIs will be public and available in GitHub, though OEMs may choose to customize their own production deployments.

When do you expect the migration to be ready for download? 

Last month, it was agreed that the FMS migration will be introduced as a sub-branch within the current VSS repository, with maintenance of this branch to be managed by ACEA. The data structure has already been defined, and if all goes as planned, an initial version of the specification will be ready in time for COVESA’s October All Member Meeting in the United States.

As an outlook, we can say that this collaboration will shape the path to a digital truck. All upcoming extensions will be published in the COVESA Data Expert Group via pull requests. Then the community decides on merging and how to extend VSS to the latest fleet management standard FMSv.5.