Are you ready for your connected car?

The Internet of Things has changed transportation forever

We're living in a world where a car might not only drive itself, but could also talk to you and provide helpful tips along the way. Imagine your car saying things like this:

• “You’ve been driving for four hours and it’s past 9 p.m. A hotel five miles from here has rooms available. Would you like me to reserve a room and guide you there?”
• “Your friends Jeff and Kelly are at a restaurant around the corner. Would you like to call them? Would you like me to navigate you to your friends?”
• “Traffic between here and home is moving slow and your brakes need service. I can get you a service appointment with a highly rated dealer in five minutes. Would you like me to make the service appointment and drive you there?”

It’s coming – and it's right around the corner says Andreas Mai, former Director of Smart Connected Vehicles for Cisco Systems.

Benefits of the connected car

The Internet of Things (IoT) is set to create $700 billion in benefit for personal transportation alone. “Big benefits, but there are big challenges too,” said Mai.

First, the benefits, to the tune of $1,400 per connected car, per year. “That breaks down into lower costs for drivers through lower insurance rates, lower operation costs and less time stuck in traffic which increases productivity,” said Mai. “

“The benefits to society are increased safety – 80 percent of crashes can be affected by vehicle-to-vehicle communication alone. There’s CO2 reduction and decreased congestion as connectivity helps increase lane capacity and intersection throughput, lower infrastructure costs from knowing when and where to send trucks out for ice prevention, fixing potholes, and more,” said Mai.

And the advantages for business? “Remote diagnostics can help automakers reduce warranty costs and ongoing data from the vehicle can help automakers be more ‘sticky’ with their customers. They’ll have the opportunity to create and deliver new services.” 

The connected car has also spawned a whole new set of service providers to create helpful services through connectivity – “like parking spot locator services, more accurate, real-time traffic information, and location-based services that create immediate value for us as drivers, but also businesses with new channels to sell to customers,” said Mai.

The challenge: Connecting, combining and analyzing data from the connected car

“The Internet of Things is a key transformative event – but only if you connect things and the pools of data from various sources, like weather information, driver capabilities, risk at an intersection,” said Mai. “All these pools of knowledge reside in different entities, and only when you combine them and analyze them can you find the benefit.

“In a single trip, a self-driving car can generate up to 1 terabyte of data. The ability of a network to scale to that amount of data is vital,” said Mai. “And after you’ve connected all these devices and applications, collected and analyzed the data, you better make sure you have a highly secure network – security is mission-critical.”

Next steps

So, where do you go from here? Mai had three pieces of advice:

1. Develop your Internet of Things strategy now.
2. Secure the partners you need to win the IoT battle, because many organizations are already positioning themselves to be successful.
3. Get your IT infrastructure ready to enable your IoT strategy. “Internet of Things capabilities depend on you having a state-of-the-art infrastructure that allows for the integration and data processing power needed,” said Mai.