Connected cars are already here, and getting smarter

There is always a moment, in a Batman film, where the bad guys will mill around, asking “Where is Batman?” And, of course, Batman is already there, in their midst, ready to dole out Bat-justice. That is kind of where we are with the connected car. Everyone keeps touting its imminent arrival, but in reality it’s already here, and has been for some time.

Bluetooth connection, which has been common on most cars since the mid-2000s, was ground zero for connected cars. Once we could connect our phones to our cars, that umbilical was only going to become more versatile, more useful, more significant.

Where are we now with connected cars? We are, possibly, on a fast-rising ramp, where the functions of such connections are going to grow, almost day-by-day, ever more closely integrating our digital lives with our driving lives. Already we have cars with built-in digital voice assistants, where one can say "Hey, Ford" or "Hey, Mercedes" and interact with the car's systems through natural speech. The next step, already present in some models, is to integrate third-party digital assistants – such as Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa – so that not only can you tell your car to turn up the cabin heat, you can also get it to turn up the heat in your house so that things are cozy when you arrive home.

Ford is investing heavily in these areas, and is gearing up to launch a high-tech new in-car connectivity system, built around a huge 15-inch touchscreen, in its forthcoming new Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, which will go on sale in Ireland in 2021.

Divya Sebastian, a specialist in Ford’s FordPass smartphone software, said: “While my car is charging up outside, connected technology allows me to preset my daily departure time, preset the cabin heat, the desired level of battery charge, to make sure the Mach-E is ready to go when I am. That will give me a few extra minutes with my son at the breakfast table. I can even preset my favourite drive modes and our Ford SYNC software will then customise the vehicle responsiveness settings, plus audio settings and ambient colours to match my mood. Over time we will add extra features, like, the ability to preset my favourite radio station and pair my phone automatically to skip the normal Bluetooth process.”

Rewards

Jaguar Land Rover, which has a research base in Shannon, is developing a new connected car system whereby you can earn rewards by sharing data on your journey such as hazards, traffic snarl-ups, or other safety issues.

John Cormican, from Jaguar Land Rover, said: “We’ve developed a virtual cryptocurrency wallet that is in the vehicle’s software, and the idea being that as you’re driving around, you’re automatically collecting data on weather, on traffic, on potholes maybe. You can send that data to the cloud, through the car’s connection, and then other users can make use of that data, can monetise it, and then can reward you for collecting it with free parking, or toll payments, or free coffee. And you’ve done nothing, you’ve just driven around and been rewarded for it. Again, it’s a mind-set change that we haven’t thought about before, but it’s the future.”

Renault, too, is getting deeply into the connected car game. Working with digital startup Odoto, the French car-making giant is developing a system that seamlessly connects your car to your home, with pre-programmed Leave mode (which puts your home to "sleep"– switching the thermostat to energy saving mode, closing the shutters and turning off the lights, for example); and Arriving mode which wakes everything up, and which might even be programmed to switch on the coffee machine (assuming you remembered to add water before you left – connected cars can't do quite everything yet).

However, according to Renault, such futuristic ideas are not necessarily what makes for the best connected car. “There’s still plenty of potential for development of existing connected features. So often, the good stuff is not so much the new inventions as the improvement of existing things,” a Renault spokesperson told The Irish Times.

“For example, both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both moving towards wireless connectivity. Given how prevalent wireless phone charging is becoming in our cars, the elimination of cables is a small change, but one that will be welcomed. Other connected features are becoming more prevalent as electric cars grow in popularity – for example, being able to use your phone to see what percentage your car’s battery is at, which then allows drivers to plan a navigation route on their phone, including charging stops if required – and then send it to the car’s navigation. No doubt, functionality like this will be refined further as charging point data and even payment platforms are integrated.”

Lapping up

There’s more, much more, to come, and according to Renault, digital-native Irish customers are lapping up their new vehicular connectivity: “There was a time when the navigation systems that were popular throughout Europe were not very useful in Ireland, because there were big gaps in the mapping data. We don’t have that problem any more. And Ireland’s young, tech-savvy population means that adaptation to new technology is usually fast.”

According to analysts at Lux Research, the market for connected services in vehicles – which includes everything from live fuel prices and parking availability through to mobile content being sold to users of autonomous pods – could be worth $12.7 billion (€10.9 billion) in the next decade.

Josh Kern, analyst at Lux Research, said: “The connected car marketplace – and the opportunities surrounding it – has changed significantly since its hyper consumer- and leisure-focused infancy. Cellular connectivity, cloud management, data access, and data analytics make up the key pillars of the next frontier. Just as smartphone app developers learned to use advertisements to supplement revenue from app users, connected car services need to find revenue sources other than drivers themselves.”