The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) said medium-duty vehicle data will be added to the Vehicle Configuration database (VCdb) and incorporated in the electronic catalog standard – ACES.
The announcement was made at last week’s Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week in Las Vegas.
The vehicle additions will cover more than 1,300 base vehicles of 23 different makes for years 1980-2007. Subscribers to the ACES vehicle database will see the first of these additions in the January release with the remaining makes published shortly thereafter.
"Many suppliers of light-duty replacement parts also offer coverage for some of the 7.4 million medium-duty trucks and commercial vehicles in the U.S.," said Scott Luckett, vice president, technology standards and solutions, AAIA. "Without these vehicle applications in the electronic catalog systems sales have suffered. Now, aftermarket manufacturers who support ACES can use the same electronic catalog technology to exchange information about every car and truck on the road ranging from Class 1 to Class 7 (up to 33,000-pounds GVW)."
The medium-duty vehicles were researched primarily by Technologue and validated with sources from R. L. Polk & Co., Federal-Mogul and others. Both companies are encoding their research data to the new ACES vehicles giving aftermarket companies the opportunity to seamlessly link data together such as Technologue OE and Polk VIO. Research that used to require weeks and even months of data mapping can now be done in hours, saving significant resources.
The initial release of medium-duty vehicles into the Vehicle Configuration database was approved at a meeting of the Technology Standards and Solutions Committee in Las Vegas. Technologue and R. L. Polk & Co. were demonstrating the medium-duty data coding in the R. L. Polk booth at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (HDAW).
For more information about ACES and other industry data and technology standards, click on "Standards & Technology" at www.aftermarket.org.