DS-APR23-PG22_Layout 1 11/04/2023 10:58 Page 1
INDUSTRY FOCUS AUTOMOTIVE
UNLOCKING THE PROMISE OF CONNECTED CARS
Two decades after the introduction of connected cars, they still aren’t connected to much of
anything. The key to unlocking the promise of connected cars is to deliver the multitude of services that users want and expect, with the
driver’s full knowledge and consent, in the moment that the driver wants them. Todd Thomas, chief revenue officer of AiDEN Automotive, comments
navigation, ability to play music off your phone, perhaps remote unlock, and maybe some maintenance service options. Cars are connected to the cloud solution
A
provided by the manufacturer. If you are a service provider and you want to connect with a car, your first option is to integrate with the Auto Manufacturer’s cloud solution, but this is an expensive and time consuming commitment. After a successful integration you have access to one-way anonymous data packages that were predefined by the manufacturer a year or two before the car came to market; expensive, limited data, and limited value. The next issue is scalability. The car market
is highly fragmented – the industry leaders have less than 10% market share. If you are an auto manufacturer and you want to connect service providers to your cars, or if you are a service provider and you want to connect to cars, you need to commit the time and expense to multiple long and expensive integrations. To many, this just isn’t scalable. The insurance market, for example, is also a highly fragmented market – if you are an auto manufacturer and want to offer your drivers a choice of insurance you will need to integrate with 20+ insurers, and vice versa. The next option is to turn to external
hardware. OBDs – on-board diagnostics – have been a popular option (although this is decades old technology) which give you access to vehicle data, but again these are expensive and provide access to limited predefined data sets with long latency. The most popular option today, particularly for
insurance carriers, is to forget communicating with the car altogether and communicate via a phone app, but these cannot simply run indefinitely in the background. How often do you get in your car and turn on your insurance app before you start driving? What if you forget your phone? Or your battery dies? Or you’re in
22 DESIGN SOLUTIONS APRIL 2023
lthough your car has orders of magnitude more computing power than your phone, it offers you very few services –
a different car? If you do have the app running you are still only connected to the phone. You do not have access to the vehicle sensors, you are limited to the sensors in a phone – and compared to the sensors available in the vehicle itself, phone data is limited and noisy. GM’s billion dollar business, OnStar, is the only
successful existing connected service. OnStar gives GM vehicle owners access to 24x7 call support, collision notification, and vehicle service support. It is now, however, attempting to leverage this success and has re-entered the insurance market. GM has access to GM vehicle data that can provide FNOL, streamlined claims, improved underwriting and risk assessment, and potentially improved driver behaviour, further reducing risks. However, a couple of challenges remain.
GM only has access to GM vehicle data. What if a household or fleet needs to insure multiple vehicles across multiple brands? If GM wants to insure the other vehicles in the household or fleet, they too will have to defer to the external hardware hacks. GM also still has a privacy and data collection
consent issue. OnStar does not include a consent management service and is not GDPR or CCPA compliant. Let’s give OnStar the benefit of doubt and say they do have consent from the primary owner and driver of the vehicle to collect data, but what if the primary owner is not driving? Or what if there is a passenger in the car? Then they do not have consent and are not in compliance. This is an ongoing challenge for every auto manufacturer.
AAOS: A GAME CHANGER In the last couple of years every major auto manufacturer has launched its initial AAOS (Android Automotive OS) cars or has announced that it is moving to AAOS – in fact, over the next couple of years, AAOS cars will become ubiquitous. The exception is Tesla, which is using it own OS, but also uses a closed network excluding 3rd parties. The move to AAOS is a tectonic shift in the auto
world. AAOS solves the problem of heterogeneous data sets across manufacturers, and provides normalised and standardised data across brands. A fuel level reading, for example, means the same in every AAOS car regardless of whether it is a GM or a Toyota or a BWM. This solves a major hurdle and opens the door for 3rd parties to develop services that can communicate with cars across brands.
INTRODUCING AIDEN HUB The first mover in connected services is AiDEN Automotive Technologies. AiDEN was founded by the Volvo software team that developed and deployed the first AAOS vehicles in collaboration with Android Auto in 2020. The team realised that the existing auto manufacturer cloud solutions were too limited to effectively support the services drivers expect. This was true not only of the Volvo cloud solution but of all the auto cloud solutions. AiDEN Auto spun out as a standalone
automotive tech startup and built the AiDEN Hub to enable the real-time services that could finally deliver on the promise of connected cars. The AiDEN Hub streams real-time services across vehicle brands, providing a simple and intuitive experience for vehicle owners, fleet owners and drivers. With 100% GDPR and CCPA compliance, AiDEN’s consent management feature enables improved and personalised features and experiences, all while maintaining the highest level of privacy protection. AiDEN provides a key for auto manufacturers to monetise access to their vehicles, unlocks access for third parties to provide digital services to cars, and gives owners and drivers the key to choose which digital services they want, who they want to share their data with, and who they don’t.
AiDEN Automotive Technologies
https://aidenauto.com
Todd Thomas
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
