New analysis by Milton Keynes-based automotive research and consultancy firm SBD Automotive has found that over 99.5% of cars sold in the UK last years had eCall fitted, over 1.93 million cars plus many vans sold with eCall on board.
SBD looked at sales of all major production brands to the end of 2024, and this shows when combined with previous sales more than 12 million cars and vans on the UK’s roads are now fitted with eCall.
eCall automatically raises the alarm in the event of a crash when the airbags are deployed, and it can also be manually activated by the driver or passenger by pressing the eCall SOS button. It has been installed in all newly approved cars and vans across the UK and Europe since 2018.
The figures were welcomed by the specialists in eCall, VESOS Solutions, which has developed its award-winning TeCall platform to enhance the value of eCall by filtering, enhancing, prioritising and forwarding alerts to emergency services in seconds.
Together, they found that 31% of cars and vans are now fitted with eCall, with the number growing to 41% amongst those who use the National Highways network. And based on current sales trajectories, more than half of all UK cars will have the solution embedded by July 2028.
“More and more eCall-enabled vehicles means more and more safer drivers,” commented VESOS traffic operations expert Rachael Quinn. “We are seeing examples all around Europe of the time taken to reach people in crashes being reduced significantly thanks to the automated alerts, and that can only lead to lives being saved. What we need to do now is make sure that the data delivered by these millions of connected vehicles is used to its maximum effect.
“Unlike traditional emergency calls where people have to try to explain where they are, eCall data includes an exact location of the incident,” she explained. “Furthermore, it has data about the vehicle type and number of seatbelts engaged, giving responders a heads-up on what to expect when they reach the incident. Our TeCall platform makes this data even more valuable by ensuring emergency services only get reports of incidents in the areas they want, it filters out alerts from faulty units, provides data for analysis and operations, and ultimately saves lives by reducing response times.”
VESOS founders Andy Graham and Andy Rooke have worked with SBD on eCall since the concept was first suggested 20 years ago, delivering the first report to the now DfT in 2006 on the rollout of eCall.
Lee Coleman of SBD says, “We are delighted to work with VESOS to bring our automotive market knowledge and to continue work on this life saving initiative which far too few people know they already have in their cars and vans”.
