Connected Car Market Will Happen; How is the Issue

By 2022 there will be 1.8 billion automotive machine-to-machine Internet connections, including 700 million connected cars and 1.1 billion aftermarket devices for services such as navigation, usage-based insurance, stolen vehicle recovery (SVR) and infotainment, a new study conducted by Machina Research, and sponsored by Telefónica Digital, suggests. 

What people now do is multitask, using their smart phones, tablets or other devices as the “interaction platform,” is that is what they want to do. The connected car market might face similar challenges. 

People might decide all they want is for the autos to allow connection of smart phones to in-car peripherals such as screens. 

Think of “car phones” and you will see the problem. People like being able to communicate easily from wherever they are. 

But a dedicated car phone no longer makes sense. People just use their mobile phones. 

Machina Research predicts that by 2020, 90 percent of new cars will feature connectivity, growing from less than 10 percent today. 

In part, that is because connectivity will be necessitated by regulatory mandates such as the European Commission’s initiative eCall, which calls for a system to be fitted to all new vehicles by 2015, meaning emergency services will automatically be contacted and given the vehicle location in the event of a serious accident. 

But there are lots of issues if the communications are hard-wired into the auto itself. 

 Among the issues for automobile suppliers are ways to keep auto communication systems up to date, as new air interface standards are introduced, and as autos are built for global markets where air interfaces and networks are disparate. 

In other words, technology life cycles are different in the mobile and auto industries. Mobile networks tend to change every 10 years or so. Autos will be used for 15 to 20 years. 

Some requirements are obvious. Auto communications must be multi-mode, since autos might have to use 3G in some markets and can use 4G in other markets, with various flavors of 4G also an issue. 

So the car communications systems will have to roam. Largely unresolved are the business model issues, such as who pays for the connections. 

That’s another reason why allowing people to connect their own smart phones makes sense. 

Connected car sounds like a good idea. But so did “interactive TV.” People now “interact” while watching TV. They just don’t necessarily want to interact with the content directly, using some dedicated feature of the TV or the content.

In similar fashion, a connected car market likely will develop. Precisely how remains a very open question. Car phones seemed like a good idea at the time, as well.