Quipment has announced that it will withdraw from the market next year. Photo for illustration.Photo: Quipment
Quipment has decided to withdraw from the market next year. This is evident from a press release and a letter that Olof Dieckhaus, director of the BCT supplier from Ede, has sent to all Quipment customers. Problems in the supply chain and the tight labor market are cited as reasons for this decision.
“Recently, Quipment and its shareholder have been discussing the future in the short and longer term,” Dieckhaus writes in his letter. “We looked at the company results, the life cycle of the Quipment BCT, the problems in the supply chain and the shortage on the labor market. This made us decide to continue to support all built-in BCTs of our existing customers until mid 2024 and then to focus exclusively on our shareholder.”
“After more than twenty years of being active in passenger transport, Quipment will withdraw from the market in mid 2024, Dieckhaus explains the decision further in a press release. “About eight years ago, Quipment made a new start after it itself had filed for bankruptcy. The reason for this was that the government stuck to the deadline for installing BCTs, which meant that a large part of the order book had to be cancelled. In the end, it turned out that the deadline could not be kept. At the time, the ministry was held liable by Quipment. However, at that time we did not have the financial means to take on the legal battle. After this turbulent period, Quipment has entered calmer waters and we have been able to offer continuity to our customers in recent years. We thank all our customers, many of whom have been customers since the establishment, for their loyalty and pleasant cooperation”, said Dieckhaus.
System card exchange Also the system card change, which took place on 10 March 2023 takes place, according to Quipment, plays a role. Before that date all taxi operators must have replaced the G2 system card, which is built into the BCT, with a G3 system card . If the old G2 system board is not replaced, the entire BCT will no longer work or no longer meet the requirements.
However, the system board of the Quipment BCT can only be replaced at the production location of the Ede software company. “The tight labor market and the supply of parts have had a negative impact on our options,” Dieckhaus writes in the letter. “Due to material shortages, we were hardly able to carry out repairs for several months. It is therefore operationally impossible for us to provide BCTs with G3 system cards for repairs outside the normal stock.”
Unjust “In addition to the operational impediments to replacing the system boards, we believe that the cost of this entire replacement operation, other than the repairs, is in no way justified,” Dieckhaus continued in the letter. “Certainly not because the current BCT is actually insufficiently verifiable for the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT).”
“Since the introduction of the current BCT, the government has not been able to control, so no fines have been imposed to date based on the data registered by the BCT. Why then would you let the users of a BCT incur sky-high costs for something that cannot be used in practice?” he wonders aloud. “Also, the fact that work is being done on a successor to the BCT in the meantime makes an investment at the end of its economic and technical lifespan economically irresponsible.”
According to Quipment, the government is currently working on the successor to the current BCT, the so-called ‘variant BCT’. Olof Dieckhaus says he will continue to monitor this process critically and will continue to share his experiences and knowledge about this within both the BCT Supervisory Committee and the Panel IV and ICT from the program “Realization variant BCT”, a project of the ILT.
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