Connected Vehicle Platform for Electric Two-Wheelers: How a Leading OEM Built for Scale

In partnership with Tarento, the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters by unit volume launched a fully owned, production-grade Connected Vehicle Platform (CVP) powering 30+ digital features for riders of its electric scooter range. The client produces millions of two-wheelers annually and rolls hundreds of thousands of units off the assembly lines every month across multiple manufacturing facilities. The new platform replaced a vendor-proprietary stack with a scalable, data-owned architecture engineered to support the company's expansion across urban commute, premium motorcycles, and global EV markets.

Platform Scope, As Delivered

• Connected vehicle platform supporting multiple electric two-wheeler models
• Companion rider app across Android and iOS
• 30+ digital features spanning navigation, diagnostics, safety, and rider control
• Custom Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol for low-connectivity environments
• Vehicle telematics ingestion engineered for fleet scale
• Service-oriented remote diagnostics
• Integration with the manufacturer's charging network, service backend, and analytics estate

Building a Connected Vehicle Platform for Electric Two-Wheelers

Our client is India's undisputed domestic market leader in two-wheelers. It controls a massive share of the country's motorcycle market and operates one of the largest production footprints in the global automotive industry. As the manufacturer expanded into electric mobility under a dedicated EV sub-brand, it needed a connected vehicle platform for electric two-wheelers that matched the engineering rigour and operational scale of its core business.

The platform had to support rider-facing features, vehicle data ownership, telematics, service workflows, and future EV portfolio expansion without keeping the company dependent on a vendor-proprietary stack.

Business Challenge

In the connected mobility era, the platform is no longer an accessory to the vehicle. The challenge was not only to replace an existing system. The client needed a vehicle telematics platform for OEM scale, capable of supporting millions of connected vehicles, high-frequency data ingestion, service diagnostics, mobile experiences, and integrations across charging, dealer, and analytics ecosystems.

• Vendor lock-in and limited data ownership: The legacy proprietary stack restricted transparency, customisation, and the company's ability to use rider data for product and business decisions.
• Engineering scale of a market leader: The platform had to be designed for a connected fleet trajectory measured in millions, not thousands, and built so it would not need architectural rewrites every release cycle.
• Connectivity unpredictability across Indian geographies: Rural and tier-3 connectivity gaps meant the app and vehicle could not assume always-on cellular data.
• Feature breadth across the rider journey: Navigation, diagnostics, safety, control, charging, and service had to live inside a single coherent rider experience, not as a folder of disconnected screens.
• Time-to-market pressure: With multiple model launches in flight and an ambitious global EV roadmap, every quarter of delay carried a direct revenue and brand cost.

Objectives & Success Criteria

Together with the client's connected vehicle platform leadership, clear targets were agreed for the engagement:

• Deliver a production-grade platform aligned with global OEM connected-vehicle standards.
• Replace vendor dependency with a fully owned, in-house controlled architecture.
• Ship 30+ rider-facing digital features across navigation, safety, diagnostics, and control.
• Engineer for scale to millions of connected vehicles without future architectural rewrites.
• Deliver a resilient rider experience in low and no-connectivity conditions.
• Establish a release cadence the in-house team could sustain post-handover without partner dependency.

Why This Engagement Worked

This was not a packaged platform rollout. It was a co-engineered build, with Tarento embedded across mobile, middleware, OEM telematics, BLE communication, cloud integration, and quality engineering alongside the client’s connected platform team and its automotive partners.

• OEM-grade engineering discipline: Architecture, code, and test rigour benchmarked against global automotive software standards, not against generic enterprise app delivery.
• End-to-end mobile ownership: Companion rider app design, build, and release across Android and iOS, including the BLE service layer and the vehicle-display communication channels.
• Connectivity-resilient design: A custom Bluetooth Low Energy protocol that keeps the app and vehicle communicating when cellular fails, with cloud sync the moment a signal returns.
• Telematics at scale: Ingestion and processing patterns engineered for millions of vehicles emitting continuous data, with clean separation between hot and cold paths.
• Embedded delivery model: Tarento engineers worked inside the client's connected platform team rather than as an external supplier. That preserved institutional knowledge and accelerated day-to-day decisions.
• Ownership-first mindset: Every architectural decision was made on the assumption that the in-house team would own and evolve the system long after the engagement closed.

Approach & Methodology

The engagement followed a phased, capability-building methodology designed to deliver rider value in production early and transfer full operational ownership over time.

Phase 1: Architecture alignment and platform foundations

Before any feature work, the team aligned with the client on the architecture that would carry the product for the next decade.

• Co-defined the connected platform reference architecture across vehicle, app, and cloud layers
• Designed the BLE protocol and offline-first communication patterns alongside the in-house firmware team
• Established the mobile foundation, CI/CD pipelines, and quality gates
• Stood up the rider-data ingestion and event model for downstream analytics

Phase 2: Feature build and progressive launch

Features shipped in deliberate waves. Each wave was tied to a specific rider value moment.

• Core rider features first: live tracking, remote locking, ignition control, ping-my-scooter, custom ride modes
• Safety and emergency features next: panic, fall-down detection, accident alerts, theft alerts, emergency contacts
• Convenience layer: turn-by-turn navigation, call and music control, OTA updates, trip and battery analytics
• Service and ownership flows: remote diagnostics, charging-network handoffs, dealer service hooks

Phase 3: Scale, hardening, and ownership transfer

As the connected fleet grew across model variants, the focus shifted to scale behaviour, observability, and capability transfer.

• Performance and load engineering for telematics ingestion as connected fleet volumes expanded
• Observability tooling and incident-response playbooks for a 24/7 connected product
• Documentation, runbooks, and architectural decision records for institutional continuity
• Pairing and shadowing model so the engineers operated the platform end-to-end before handover

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Solving BLE Vehicle Communication for Low-Connectivity Markets

1. Connectivity isn't reliable enough for a cloud-first product A custom implementation of BLE vehicle communication for low-connectivity markets allowed the rider app and vehicle to communicate directly when cellular data was weak or unavailable. Once the signal returned, the system synchronised data with the cloud. This kept critical rider features active across urban, semi-urban, and low-connectivity regions.
2. Feature breadth without app bloat A modular feature architecture and disciplined product framing meant 30+ rider features sit inside a single coherent app, not a sprawl of disconnected screens fighting for the rider's attention.
3. Scale without architectural rewrites Telematics ingestion, event modelling, and downstream processing were architected for a fleet measured in millions from day one. The alternative would have meant a costly retrofit after launch, when the cost of change is at its highest.
4. Genuine ownership transfer, not vendor dependency Embedded delivery, paired engineering, and explicit documentation milestones meant the in-house connected platform team was operating the system in production before the engagement closed.

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Results & Impact

Quantitative outcomes

The platform enabled remote vehicle diagnostics for electric scooters, continuous OTA updates for EVs, and 30+ connected scooter features across safety, navigation, service, control, and rider convenience. More importantly, it gave the in-house team direct ownership of the product roadmap, data flows, and future feature evolution.

Qualitative outcomes

• A fully owned, OEM-grade connected vehicle platform replacing the legacy proprietary stack
• A foundation extensible across premium motorcycle and youth EV programmes
• An in-house engineering team capable of operating and evolving the platform independently
• A repeatable mobile and telematics engineering pattern reusable across future vehicle programmes
• Direct visibility into rider behaviour and vehicle performance, feeding product and R&D decision-making

Before vs. After

Dimension	Before (Legacy Vendor Stack)	After (Owned Connected Platform)
Platform ownership	Vendor-proprietary, limited control	Fully owned in-house
Rider features	Narrow, slow to evolve	30+ live features, regular release cadence
Connectivity resilience	Dependent on cellular	BLE-backed, offline-first
Data access	Limited, vendor-mediated	Direct, full telematics ownership
Scale readiness	Capped by legacy design	Architected for millions of vehicles
Future readiness	Reactive	Predictive maintenance, digital twin, V2X-ready

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Ready to Build a Connected Vehicle Platform You Actually Own?

If you are an OEM moving off a vendor-proprietary connected stack and need a partner who can co-engineer at OEM grade rather than simply deliver features, an embedded, scale-first build approach gets you there with your team intact and capable at handover.

• Talk to our Connected Mobility team
• Learn more on Tarento´sProduct & Platform service.