General Motors Corp. plans to double production of vehicles equipped with OnStar’s in-vehicle communications systems in 2006 models.
The company said that for the 2006 model year, 3 million GM vehicles in the U.S. and Canada will be equipped with OnStar, up from 1.4 million and 2.2 million in the 2004 and 2005 model years, respectively. GM estimates it manufactures 5.5 million cars annually in North America.
The company’s partnership with Verizon Wireless is at least partly responsible for the increased demand for the service, said Chet Huber, president of GM’s OnStar subsidiary, in a conference call.
Earlier this summer, Verizon Wireless teamed with OnStar to offer a combined America’s Choice and OnStar service plan. The plan lets customers use their Verizon Wireless plan minutes to make and receive calls on their mobile phones and their OnStar in-vehicle phones, as well as transfer incoming calls from their mobile phones to their OnStar phones.
As for competition from increasingly advanced mobile devices, GM points to the advantages OnStar holds since it is embedded in the car. The service is capable of sending air-bag deployment alerts, performing remote diagnostics and remotely unlocking car doors, all of which add up to “a level of integration that a cell pone will never have,” said John Smith, group vice president of North America vehicle, sales, service and marketing for GM.
In addition, OnStar’s satellite-based phone service comes in handy when massive, albeit infrequent, power outages shut down both wireline and wireless communications, as was the case this hurricane season in Florida, Smith said.
GM said OnStar, which was first offered in 1996, is available on more than 50 GM models, and the newly announced increases will come mainly from offering the service as a standard feature or as part of an equipment package rather than as a stand-alone service.
OnStar receives 11,000 emergency-assistance calls per month in addition to about 600 stolen-vehicle location requests, 19,000 requests for roadside assistance, 35,000 remote door-unlock requests, 18,000 GM Goodwrench remote diagnostics requests and 4,000 “good Samaritan” calls. GM counts nearly 3 million OnStar subscribers.
OnStar also offers concierge and information services, but for now the selling point is safety, said Smith who expects the other services to grow as consumers become more familiar with OnStar.
The company has announced it is profitable, but it does not disclose specific financials within GM. “We’re meeting the expectations that had been set out for us,” said Huber.
In other telematics news, Webraska Mobile Technologies announced its SmartZone Navigation solution will power the navigation offering in Toyota France’s Toyota Hub consumer telematics services portal, expected to launch next month.
Toyota Hub will include HTC Corp.’s Microsoft PocketPC QTEK 2020 personal digital assistant with mobile phone, digital camera and global positioning system navigation functionalities. The device will connect to the car’s audio system for enhanced sound.
Webraska’s solution will include intuitive address entry, door-to-door directions via voice instructions and detailed maps, up-to-date map data coverage, traffic route updates and automatic re-routing in case of a wrong turn. Additionally, the application is integrated with Toyota France’s call center-based assistance service.
Toyota France said the price of the solution will be announced upon its launch.
