How to Hit a Draw With a Driver Easy
As the Internet of Cars draws near, here's what drivers don't want
Automakers think car buyers are in love with slick connected car features, like buying a song you just heard or updating your Facebook status while parking. Not so. More often, drivers and passengers want mainstream features that get them to their destination faster and then find a place to park. The driver's top five requests today are on-demand real-time traffic information, automated map updates, real-time weather and news, real-time parking spot finder, and driving assessment/coaching.
"This is a defining year for the auto industry [and] the connected vehicle," said Thilo Koslowski, VP for automotive at the Gartner tech consultancy, speaking at the Consumer Telematics Show in Las Vegas the day before CES opened. "You will see lots of examples [at CES] of the connected vehicle becoming the main innovator of mobile and IOT [Intenet of Things] innovation. It's about how the car is connected in the future to the other pieces of our daily lives." This is the Internet of Cars, or IOC.
Why drivers want assessment and coaching
The top five driver wants for connected-car technology are from a 2014 Gartner study. They underscore that most drivers want things that get you from A to B to P (parking) quicker. The outlier is driver assessment and coaching: You get cheaper insurance if you plug in a Progressive Insurance Snapshot dongle to the car's onboard diagnostic connector (OBDC) and give up some of your privacy in exchange for being monitored. You drive more cautiously and get cheaper rates. For some risky drivers, this can be the difference between no insurance and insurance.
GM's OnStar telematics system just hopped on the bandwagon and does the monitoring without the need to plug in a connector. This is in conjunction with Progressive. Other insurance companies are also offering driver assessment.
The coaching part includes drowsy driver detection as offered by Mercedes-Benz and others, as well as the feedback from lane departure warning, blind spot detection, and adaptive cruise control, effectively telling the driver, "Don't do that, OK?"
The bottom three
According to the same Gartner study of US drivers in 2014, the least desired connected driving features are in-vehicle social networking options, in-vehicle media purchases, and application downloads directly into the car. In other words, car buyers care less about flashy features that only a few might use or that automakers see as a recurring revenue stream. They should be making their money selling cars, not promoting Taylor Swift downloads.
Other connected car trends
There are about 25 million connected cars today worldwide, with that number expected to grow to 150 million in 2020. In comparison, there are 7 billion Internet of Things connected devices now, and there should be 30 billion in 2020. With those numbers in mind, here are other key trends discussed at the Consumer Telematics Show.
Microsoft's self-driving car
Self-driving cars continue to move forward. Volvo and Audi hinted they will have significant announcements this year. That noted, the fully autonomous car is still years off. Drivers in general are nervous about cost and giving up control to the car but experiencing the building block tools of self-driving available now — adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and lane keep assist, blind spot detection — will make motorists more comfortable with the future. But cost has to come way down. One of the key sensors, a road scanner, used to cost $80,000; now it's down to $8,000 but that's only one piece of the equation and $8,000 is still not a rounding error on the price of the vehicle.
Connected wearable devices in the car have promise, but it's not clear exactly how much is promise and how much is hope somebody can make money off it. A wristwatch with Bluetooth could connected to your smartphone and remotely unlock or start your car, but your phone could do that, too. "The killer app would be biometrics, something that monitors your pulse," said Vijitha Chekuri, a director of connected vehicle solutions for Lochbridge.
There's mixed opinion about how much buyers are willing to spend for embedded modems in cars. They have stronger signals, they're always available, and they're getting cheaper. A 3G device installed today might not work with the cellular infrastructure in 10 years.
"We need to continue to connecting modems in the car," said Peter Vir, head of connected technologies and apps at Jaguar Land Rover. Clearly, $50,000 cars are a more fertile market except at GM where the push is to put 4G embedded into every car. Kia said its K900 premium sedan — the $60,000 Kia — because that kind of buyer demographic expects embedded. Plus, said Jaguar's Vir, "We need [embedded] connected, else how else will I preheat my vehicle?"
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Source: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/196809-as-the-internet-of-cars-draws-near-heres-what-drivers-dont-want
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