Fleet Clearance: Activation Process

There are many things going on in the background during a vehicle activation process. In an ideal scenario it would be possible to start retrieving data as soon as you add a vehicle, however there are factors that can cause it to take several days before the first data becomes available.

  1. The vehicle needs one or several Over-The-Air (OTA) updates to activate data upload.
  2. Although activation has succeeded, the vehicle might need to be driven in order to generate new data.
  3. In some cases manual intervention is needed if the vehicle privacy mode is turned on.

However as soon as the first data starts to come in, no further delays should be expected. This guide explains the different states you can observe and explains differences from brand to brand.

Guide

See the Fleet Clearance Tutorial for a step-by-step guide to use the Fleet Clearance API endpoints.

Table of Contents

Vehicle state flow

Whenever you add a new vehicle using the POST /fleets/vehicles endpoint, an asynchronous process is started to activate data access. We always keep a state of the vehicle activation, which can be one of pending, approved, rejected, revoking, revoked, canceling, canceled or error.

The following chart shows the state changes along with further descriptions below.

Vehicle activation states

Pending state

Once you add a vehicle it is by default in the pending state, which means that we are processing its activation. It should be considered that the activation can take several days or more. If the vehicle software is up to date the activation succeeds faster, as otherwise Over-The-Air (OTA) updates might be required.

If the vehicle remains in the pending state there are a few things that you can check on your side:

  1. Make sure that the vehicle is being driven. If several OTA updates need to be applied, the vehicle has to be driven several times.
  2. The vehicle has to have privacy mode turned off, which can be checked in the vehicle settings screen.

If you have controlled the above but can not get the vehicle activated, get in touch with us on support@high-mobility.com.

BMW & MINI

Exceptions to the above described activation times are BMW & MINI, which both move from pending to approved within moments.

It's possible to cancel the activation process for any vehicle that is in the pending state through the API, which will set the vehicle to canceled.

Mercedes-Benz

In order to activate Mercedes-Benz vehicles, we require the odometer value to be included in the activation request as a control measure. As there is a delay from the time of the clearance request and when the vehicle gets activated, we allow a deviation between the odometer you pass in and the actual odometer reading.

If the odometer matching fails, the vehicle is set to the rejected state.

Generating new data

We always return the latest available data when you perform a request after the vehicle clearance. If the request is done right after the vehicle state is set to approved, there might not have been any new data being generated since the activation. You will start to receive data as soon as the vehicle is being driven the next time.

BMW & MINI

Exceptions are BMW & MINI, that both have the last uploaded data available as soon as the vehicle is activated.

Here's a few hints for your implementation:

  1. It's possible to see the status of all vehicles using the GET /fleets/vehicles endpoint.
  2. Subscribe to the fleet_clearance_changed webhook to get notified about any state changes.

More Information

If you have any questions, please contact us on Slack or send us an email.