Cost example
The purchase price of a single sensor is a few euros. Multiplied by a series volume, it becomes a seven-figure sum. The example below works that share through for an order of magnitude of the kind found in vehicle manufacturing. The assumptions are set out openly, and a section of its own states what the arithmetic does not include.
The assumptions
- A pressure sensor with a purchase price of €3.50 per unit.
- A series of 3,000,000 vehicles, one sensor per vehicle.
- The measured quantity can be reconstructed from channels already present in the vehicle (so the sensor can be removed from the series product).
- Against that stands a Virtual Sensor licence at €10,000 per year (single machine, excl. VAT, see Pricing).
The arithmetic
| Units | Part cost of the sensor | less one annual licence |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | €35,000 | €25,000 |
| 100,000 | €350,000 | €340,000 |
| 1,000,000 | €3,500,000 | €3,490,000 |
| 3,000,000 | €10,500,000 | €10,490,000 |
Across three million vehicles, then, €10.5 million in pure part cost is removed, 1,050 times the annual licence. Put the other way round: the licence is paid for from 2,858 units onwards (€10,000 divided by €3.50), and across three million vehicles its share comes to roughly a third of a cent per vehicle.
What this arithmetic does not include
The table shows a single quantity: the purchase price of the component. It is therefore incomplete in both directions.
Not included on the cost side: the measurement together with its reference instrumentation, the development effort for training and validation, the validation and release of the model, and the memory and compute it requires on the ECU. During development the physical sensor is still needed; it is the reference for training and for assessing the model. It is removed from the series product, not from testing.
Not included on the savings side: everything attached to a sensor without being the sensor: the wiring harness and connector, an occupied ECU input, assembly and test steps in production, diagnostic coverage, warranty and field failures, and spare-part logistics over the product's life. In practice this sum often exceeds the bare part price. It can only be quantified reliably with your own figures; a blanket factor would not produce a usable statement here.
The arithmetic rests on a technical precondition, not a commercial one: the target quantity has to be reconstructable from the existing channels. A training run on a measurement you already have gives a first indication of that, evaluated on a held-out validation split.
Checking against existing measurement data
Data Sensors runs for seven days with full capability, without an account and without payment details. That is enough to check against an existing measurement whether a virtual sensor is a candidate for the quantity in question.