This week Berlin played host to TU Auto’s latest event to discuss key topics in the connected car space – big data, autonomous driving, car security and electric vehicles. The speakers represented a mix of established companies and local Berlin startups, raising a lot of key questions and driving very interesting debate. Some of the highlights follow.
BMW talked about the five key trends in this industry – eMobility, autonomous driving, carsharing, apps and personalization of the experience. Another topic was the “voice of the customer,” further proof that OEMs are moving toward understanding the importance of the customer experience and trying to establish ways to incorporate that voice into their daily operations.
Big data and data mining were also discussed: Who actually owns the vehicle data? You might be surprised to hear that it’s “the customers,” but the OEM “stores” it for them. There are many challenges associated with this data. Not only the volume of it, but the complexity, speed of creation and the ability to utilize it in a timely and valuable way.
A few stats to set the stage for this data:
- Today data is transferred from the unconnected car only one or two times per year;
- Today’s connected car transfers about 1 Mb of data per day; and
- Tomorrow’s connected car will transfer about 1 Mb of data per second.
Today’s car has about 65 ECUs, along with 1 Gb of functional software. This translates to about 15 Gb of data onboard.
Moving on to Teradata: Is the connected car actually the new smartphone? Frost & Sullivan found in a recent study that 40% of today’s drivers are looking for infotainment experiences when they shop, with only about 15% prioritizing the driving experience. Again, customer experience was a key topic with a focus on creating “markets of one.” But privacy reared its ugly head: How can you have a personalized experience without giving up some of that privacy? You can’t. And that brought up another provocative theory: Is privacy actually dead due to Facebook? While not necessarily a new thought, connecting it to the car is new and translates to a discussion about trusting what is done with the data. And there has to be some currency associated with the data. Is the customer paid for it with some kind of benefit or feature or do they allow its anonymized usage for the greater good? Better traffic information for example.
There was a panel dedicated to the revenue opportunity and relevance of apps in the car. Again, personalization and privacy were key topics. But with the view toward advertising currently included in most apps it quickly became complicated. Cars move, and in Europe that means between countries and advertising consent and privacy laws vary from country to country. So what’s someone to do who wants to drive more revenue from the connected car and it’s data?
You can’t talk about privacy without bringing up the topic of security. The panel that focused on security began with a quite scary realization for the audience. Nowhere in the world is there any requirement for the security of a connected car. Let that sink in a minute. And there have already been some well-publicized hacks. Starting with DARPA hacking the OnStar system for “60 Minutes,” you can see the possibilities in action in this video. In this scenario the car was actually controlled remotely.
Then there was ADAC and BMW. Not as serious as the prior example, but it could certainly enable many thefts by unlocking doors through a connected drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CIzbL-SHJY
But should you be worried? The panel said no – hackers need motivation to hack. What is the motivation to hack a car or, more specifically, how do they make money by hacking a car? Until there is an answer to that question, the panel feels the industry is pretty safe – until there’s a Stuxnet for connected cars that is.
That certainly doesn’t mean the possibility of a hack should be ignored, just that there’s still time. As far as the EU, the security plan needs to be agreed to and implemented Unionwide or it won’t allow V2V and V2X functionality to work. I find the topic of security very polarizing, and as I speak with different organizations around the industry I hear everything from the sky is falling and it’s a crisis today, to there’s absolutely no way to remotely control a car without being physically connected to it, as well as many options in between. So what does this mean? I’m not sure we really yet know what is and isn’t possible as connected cars evolve.
Oracle discussed the connected car as a “thing” in the overall landscape of the “Internet of Things.” 
There’s too much to cover in one sitting, so check back tomorrow for the rest. I’ll end today with a video highlighting new touchscreen options from Jambit and HUML. This improved experience will let users interact with their headends in the same way they do with their smartphones.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
