By Jerry Maldonado –VP of Automation, Customer Lifecycle Solutions
From the Ramblings of an Automation Mad Man (A Blog Series), the Connected Car Catch-up is a mini series that focuses
on the advancement of cars and technology
Being the Mad Man, I have my own ideas for the connected car. Ideas broken down into different areas that can benefit many current automakers as well as some nicely funded startups. Let me share some of these with you over the next couple of blogs. You might be amazed at the possibilities and power that comes from a connected car.
The next area I see that will become hot for the connected car is communication. When we talk about communication we will address it from several points of views.
- Communication to the car – Wireless broadband communication ,GPS communication, etc.
- Communication from the car – telemetry information , car data, human interaction
- Vehicle to Vehicle Communication
- Monitoring Communication
Communication technology
Today’s cars are loaded with inputs from many different external sources. We have radio waves mostly used for entertainment, but also for two way communication. Radio waves have been employed in cars for years and have had several unique usages associated with it. For the most part radio transmission is limited to music and vocal communication. In the recent years radio waves have been used to update data for driver safety. For example weather alerts to the radio.
Satellite Communication (Entertainment and GPS information). For standard everyday drivers this has been a major change in the way one listens to music and finds locations while driving. With the advent of GPS driving directions, days of using a map to find where you needed to go are a thing of the past. Satellite radio helps bring information from all over the world into the car providing more information to the driver on daily events. In the military, satellite communication provides much more from a data feed perspective.
Wireless communication. Another way to access the cloud. For the consumer, this is what is thought of when we talk about the connected car. Wireless communication can now act as a two –Way Street for data transmission and now allow large amounts of data to be received from the outside world to the car. This data could be helpful in navigation updates, fueling , road conditions, health monitoring of the car and occupants
The connected car with these forms of communication can now take advantage of many new and interesting technologies and applications to make the drive time safer, more efficient, and fun.
Satellite radio was all the range 3-5 years ago. With its ever present music streams and themed stations, car manufactures flocked to add Sirius and Xm to their offerings. Today new music services like Pandora or other online music services are showing up in today’s automobiles.Not sure you changed your oil lately, well your car knows and it will send you an email, as well as probably your local dealer who will in turn send you a coupon for oil change and tune up.Wish your car was on your schedule? You know you have to leave for a meeting in Florida and you’re in an office building too far from an auto start perspective. But with a Mercedes you could schedule the car to start and then set your preferences upon entry.Gas prices are like the Stock market. Why not take advantage of new shared applications to find the cheapest gas station near you. Gas Buddy and other applications have community information on gas prices at your fingertips.
Remember the old days when you took a trip. You would drive to your local AAA location give them a from to and they would pull sheets down from a large shelf of map like pages and put together a book showing you your trip . During that time you would talk to a AAA consultant who would give you some recommendations on where to stop on your trip and some coupons for lodging on the way. Now in the world of the connected car, Mad Man introduces the Travel Partner. Travel partner would bring together data from gas buddy, GPS, Waze and other sources to plan out your trip. It would calculate based on your car locations when you should look for gas, when you should take a break, and potentially preferred spots where you would be interested to stop. Travel Partner would look at your potential gas stop and check gas prices along a 25 mile stretch for the cheapest, and closets gas station. Maybe you want one with a restaurant attached, it could recalculate and showcase them and nearby stations. It could then relay this information to GPS which would voice out “would you like to look for gas “voice response yes would trigger GPS to add a waypoint and route you as necessary. The system could even query you on prices, so it can update the systems for the next drivers. That connected.
Wish you could move into the HOV lane during rush hour but don’t drive a hybrid? Well, what if we look at the Mad Man’s caravan app. This app would leverage the safety features on today’s cars like adaptive cruise, emergency stopping, parking assist, etc. It could then relay your GPS destination and then query other cars going your way. It could see that ten other cars are going to the same location 100 miles away and can allow a driver to join a caravan. The caravan would allow the cars to drive closer and faster since the computer would control all aspects of the drive, you would nestle behind another vehicle and share in draft reduction and far safer driving. Imagine being able to plug in your journey , move close to the caravan lane , waiting for a response from the system you can join, automation speeds up and slows down vehicles to allow you to enter the lane once in you can sit back and relax. When you get close to your destination, the system will alert you and the caravan that you will be departing the car stream and you merge into the oncoming traffic to continue your journey. The caravan could reach out to Waze and other similar systems to see traffic flow and alternative routes and update the caravan in respect to speed and course.
I only scratched the surface on this portion of connected car. There are so many other avenues we can touch on one of them being my personal favorite. The connected car as a data gather platform. Big data look out. The IoT device known as the automobile is going to be a big platform for big data.
Follow the Ramblings from an Automation Mad Man every Wednesday. Did you miss last Week’s post? Read it here: Connected Car Catch-up (A Mini Series): Fleet Management