Patent ID: 7302371

Claim:
A method of vehicle design and manufacture comprising the steps of: (a) generating a vehicle design; (b) building a plurality of pilot vehicles using the vehicle design; (c) installing a telematics unit in each of the pilot vehicles; (d) configuring the telematics unit to monitor one or more systems of the pilot vehicles during vehicle operation; (e) associating each of the pilot vehicles with a captured test fleet identifier, wherein the plurality of pilot vehicles are each associated with the same captured test fleet identifier; (f) receiving a request for test data; (g) determining which of the pilot vehicles are associated with the request using the captured test fleet identifier(s); (h) recording test data from the pilot vehicles associated with the request during operation of the vehicles; (i) obtaining the test data from at least one of the telematics units; (j) altering vehicle design data in response to the obtained test data; and, (k) building a production vehicle with the design influenced by the altered vehicle design data.