There are numerous aspects of the technologies which enable the development & implementation of connected vehicles & related innovations. Human beings are intended to be social beings who connect to stay in society. Connections still linger, but it has taken innovative definitions in current times, with the IoT connectivity platform becoming digital. IoT application enablement platform is a digital form of connectivity that has also moved into other areas of industrialization, with automotive being the top customer. Vehicles are getting connected to numerous other points that enable innovations like advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I), vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to everything (V2X), & electric vehicles (EVs). Let’s take look at the present situation of connected vehicle technologies, the innovations backing them, challenges faced and their role in the Indian context.

The growing proliferation of the embedded in-vehicle connectivity & smartphone integration platforms has intended connected cars as one of the fastest-growing segments of the IoT market or IoT application development. Keen to establish the recurring post-sale service revenue streams, all major automotive OEMs are investing in the connected car programs. Other ecosystem players, including mobile operators & telematics specialists, are also striving to gain a larger share of opportunity. In reality, numerous mobile operators have prolonged beyond the traditional role as connectivity providers, to provide end-to-end connected car solutions directly to the automotive OEMs & aftermarket suppliers.

Enabling Connected Cars with APIs

There are numerous key capabilities in the connected service enablement platform that are supported by APIs. Those capabilities are:

Car app:

With the connected vehicle application, owners can conveniently carry out some of their simple tasks — including lock/unlock the car doors, turn on the air conditioning before entering the car, and control the charging. Additionally, the car monitors several operational parameters, like tire pressure, impact, battery health, or intrusion. Various cars are even enabled with a self-driving ability that allows the parked car to drive. All those features allow the manufacturer to truly differentiate the post-sale experience & build customer loyalty by adding new capabilities.

Assisted Driving:

One of the most promising features of connected car services in transportation is its potential for driving safety. Smart transportation using the IoT would consist of connected cars that communicate with one another. This will improve assisted driving features, keeping drivers secure. With IoT-fueled communication, connected cars would have real-time data on where everything else on the road is. This information would then enable cars to brake or turn when required to avoid the collision. Assisted driving features are present in numerous vehicles, but IoT’s interconnectivity make them more accurate.

Commerce:

As the drivers become familiarized with the modern connected car service enablement, many will want to shop directly from the car. The fast-food vendors can provide apps that allow an easy and quick order & pick-up like they already offer via smartphone apps. Ultimately, this can expand to the pharmacies, grocery stores, & other retailers who sell common brand items that do not need in-person inspection and comparison. A secure API gateway connected vehicle platform would allow the external transfer of sensitive data like customer contact, location, and payment data to the vendor.

Monetizing Car Data:

Although there are numerous opportunities in monetizing car data that have been emphasized for years in the connected car market, the key to success doesn’t unfold yet. Though, there are various baselines that the carmaker has to keep in mind when setting up the strategy for car data monetization.

Focus on consumers:

Use cases & business models determined by the car data should offer values for consumers. Rather than being possessed in making instantaneous profits from the car data, explore long-term revenue model and developing products/services using data which customers are willing to pay. Consequently, your crucial goal will be offering clientele what they need & providing practical values that they appreciate. Especially for OEMs, this effort will help create brand loyalty for long-term revenues.

Create an ecosystem:

Success in data monetization is not achievable if you are working alone. Create an ecosystem with partners having their resources required & share values to deliver to clienteles. Monetizing car data is a new type of business for OEMs & Tier-1 suppliers. Unlike traditional car manufacturing, they can’t perform all activities through the value chain of car data. It needs a diverse set of players in their circle – service providers, infrastructure, etc.

As the four technology trends reshape today’s global automotive sector, customer preferences are affecting from its traditional strongholds, including chassis & engine development. All such new entrants & the disruptive trends they bring—electrification, diverse mobility, autonomous driving, and connectivity – will transform vertically integrated automotive value chains into the complex and horizontally structured ecosystem.

The connected car ecosystem is the ever-increasing collection of technologies which underpin the growth of the connected car industry. Bringing order to such the dynamic array of disciplines is not straightforward. One can diagram the vehicle IoT ecosystem in a number of ways, such as OEM vs. third-party solutions, onboard vs. external solutions, and so on.

How Connected Car Ecosystem Enablement improves safety?

As the technology in automotive sector continues to accelerate, the number of devices which can potentially connect to them increases. All such devices are intended to make driving the car safer for passengers, drivers & other road users. When connected cars ecosystem is able to communicate with town & city infrastructure like ‘smart roads’, traffic lights and up-to-the-minute warning systems, the high number of traffic accidents is very likely to be considerably reduced. Drivers will receive the most modern reports on potentially dangerous road & weather conditions, upcoming collisions and diversions in their direct vicinity & any other need-to-know information will be sent straight to their dashboard.

There have been frequent reports on the improvements in safety that driverless cars or connected car ecosystem enablement will provide, with some car makers going so far as to suggest that their self-driving cars will be an even safer alternative than connected cars which have a driver behind the wheel. Whether or not this is true is yet to be confirmed, but what we do know is that sensory technology lets connected cars to recognize & respond to risks on the road, as well as recognize each other, creating a much more aware driving environment that will no doubt play a huge role in road & passenger safety.

Advanced IoT platforms

There are various other significant criteria that distinguish IoT platforms between each other, such as customizability, scalability, ease of use, integration with 3rd party software, code control, deployment options, & the data security level.

Customizable: It is a crucial factor for the speed of delivery. It intimately relates to the flexibility of integration APIs, louse coupling of the platform components, and source code transparency. IoT promises to enhance customer relationships, offer a personalized and tailored ecosystem, drive business growth, 3rd part integration, and revolutionize industrial performance. In this evolving the ecosystem, businesses need partners who combine technical expertise with domain knowledge, innovation, and industrial scalability. 

Secure: Data security involves comprehensive identity management, encryption, & flexible deployment. Moreover, the end-to-end data flow encryption that includes data at rest, user access rights management, device authentication, & private cloud infrastructure for the sensitive data – this is the basics of how to pass up potentially compromising breaches in your IoT solutions.

IoT has enabled the creation of the multitude of personal applications & services for the better understanding of urban environments & your personal lives. These services are driven by the continuous collection & analysis of user data in order to offer personalized experiences. There is a strong need to address user privacy concerns as most of the collected data is of sensitive nature. It is more & more beneficial that IoT includes security & privacy monitoring components into IoT ecosystem. With AI/Data-driven approach all such components enable not only reporting of existing security issues but also generate some insights to prevent the security incidents.

Final Thoughts

Cutting across all such aspects, there are two paradigms of IoT solution cluster deployment provided by IoT platform providers, AirLinq – a self-hosted private IoT cloud and a public cloud IoT PaaS. There is an important capability of the modern IoT platform that consists of the private IoT cloud enablement. As opposed to the public PaaS solutions located at the provider’s cloud, a private IoT cloud can be hosted on any cloud infrastructure that also includes a private data center. This type of deployment provides much greater control over new features development, third-party integrations, and customization. It is also advocated for performance requirements and stringent data security.

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