Big data will drive connected car services

As the automotive ecosystem pushes forward with evermore-connected vehicles, new solutions – from over-the-air software updates to connected car services – are emerging from vendors to manage the vast amounts of data that accompany that connectivity.
Airbiquity recently announced a software and data management solution specifically for the automotive industry to manage large-scale data collection and software updates to vehicles. SAP introduced its cloud-based Vehicle Insights tool that leverages its HANA big data platform to analyze telematics information as well as other existing business data and external data, with the aim of better integrating connected vehicles into business processes. Last week, IBM said it will be partnering with Local Motors of Maryland on a small, autonomous bus named Olli that incorporates IBM’s artificial intelligence and analytics software, Watson, in its first vehicle-based “internet of things” solution – with the big data capabilities focused on passenger interactions rather than the vehicle’s self-driving capabilities.
Gartner has predicted that by 2020, connected car services will generate almost $40 billion in revenue annually, driven by a combination of infotainmet, navigation, fleet management, traffic management, remote diagnostics and automotive crash notification, among others. Scott Frank, VP of marketing for Airbiquity said data management is becoming more and more a strategic part of efficient management amid increasingly complex vehicle landscape.
“This is what, in our opinion, the industry is going to focus on doing next,” Frank added. “This is going to make information delivery look like child’s play, and a lot more people are going to have to get behind the service delivery side and the automotive engineering side to bring it together.”
Managing massive software updates over the air, and figuring out how to best leverage and safeguard the data coming in from vehicles all over the world poses huge challenges for data management to automotive manufacturers, Frank said. Still, the OTA software updates alone hold significant promise for reducing recall costs; IHS has forecast that the auto industry could save as much as $35 billion by 2022 by utilizing OTA software updates, particularly for telematics and infotainment system upgrades.
Eventually, Frank added, predictive analysis of the data coming in from automobiles will be able to give manufacturers better insights into flaws that need to be corrected in parts or supplier processes, and even the ability to alert consumers to have parts replaced before they break down. Both OTA software updates going out to the car and big data coming from vehicles are sides of the same coin, Frank added.
And the new offerings from vendors also give some insight into the possibilities for complex data processing supporting passenger-facing services. In the IBM Olli implementation, for example, passengers will be able to request to be taken to a destination, and ask for restaurant recommendations and where the vehicle is currently headed. The Olli implementation is the first time that IBM’s Watson IoT capabilities have been put into a vehicle and leverages Watson’s text to speech, speech to text, natural language classifier and entity extraction APIs.