Automatic vehicles identification at petrol stations

Traditional approach for filling the vehicles on a petrol station has many downside like the following::

• if the customer is a corporate (for example, taxi or truck) and has some prepaid fuel on his corporate account - then there is a need to identify his corporate vehicle to start a filling. In case if the driver himself is selected for identification - then there is always a chance for cheating, for example the can be filling his personal car or even reselling fuel to others for account of his company corporate account, which brings losses to the company. So, there is always a need to guarantee that fleet customers fill the prepaid fuel into their corporate vehicles, so stealing of fuel is not possible.
• it is important to check that the correct fuel type is filled inside the vehicle, cause filling of the wrong fuel type can lead to damage of the engine and very expensive repair.

PTS-2 forecourt controller is a popular forecourt controller for automation of petrol stations. It allows to work with different brands of vehicle identification systems (AVI systems), which allow to automatically identify the vehicle once the pump nozzle is inserted inside the vehicle's tank. These systems are used for 3 main purposes:

• to automatically identify the vehicle without interaction of the driver
• to automatically check the account linked to the vehicle (remains of balance, personal loyalty program or discounter, etc.)
• to prevent fuel thefts (filling will not start to a different vehicle and a possibility to cheat during the fueling process is eliminated)

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Once the pump nozzle is inserted in the vehicle's tank - the management system can automatically know the vehicle's ID and check its account in order to provide it with its personal discount or loyalty policy and start the fueling process, so all is done automatically without the driver's interaction.

During the filling the PTS-2 controller is constantly checking the vehicle tag and in case if the pump nozzle is removed from the vehicle (in order to steal the fuel by filling a canister or some other vehicle) - then the PTS-2 controller automatically pauses the filling, the filling will be automatically resumed once the nozzle is inserted back into the initial vehicle's tank (when the initial tag is detected again).

PTS-2 controller allows flexible configuration for petrol station to state which pump nozzles are equipped with the AVI system and which are not. It allows to install the AVI system only on part of the dispensers (for example those, which are appointed for the fleet customers).

In the end of the filling the PTS-2 controller saves information on the performed transactions together with the detected vehicle tags to its database allowing to track vehicles in reports and to upload the data to a remote server.