Ford Motor Co.’s drive to use the massive amounts of data generated by its vans and trucks — from engines to oil filters or brake pads — to attract more customers in the European and American commercial vehicle markets is displayed on a 9-meter (30-foot) screen at its British headquarters in Dunton, east of London.

During a recent Reuters visit, that screen showed real-time data from the 114,000 British vans still covered by Ford’s monthly FORDLiive subscription service.

Ford employees focused on 98.3 percent of the vans that were in service — and of those, about 8 percent needed repairs soon or urgently — but even more attention was paid to the 1.7 percent of vehicles that were out of service.

The U.S. automaker tracks 4,000 data points using modems it has installed in all commercial vehicles since 2019, and can alert customers to engine problems and major issues like worn brake pads, low oil levels or diesel additives, which are cheap to service up front but expensive to fix if not addressed.

The automaker has connected all of its U.K. dealers to its system so it can arrange repairs and have parts ready for the vans before they arrive at the dealership.

Ford, which leads the commercial vehicle market in both Europe and the U.S., launched the system in 2021. Hans Schep, head of Ford Pro’s European commercial vehicle division, said the company is already close to meeting long-term goals of increasing vehicle “uptime” by 60 percent.

Ford estimates that idle time when a van is not running costs an average of 600 pounds ($724) daily per van.

After successful testing in Britain, Ford is also introducing the FORDLiive service in continental Europe and the United States. The automaker is focusing on its lucrative Ford Pro business in Europe rather than the lower-margin mass passenger vehicles.

Ford recently announced it was cutting engineering positions in Europe, but is still hiring software specialists for its data services.