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(Photo credit: khelvan)
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“Connectivity” is the big buzzword among automakers looking to attract a new generation of younger and tech-savvy buyers by integrating smartphone functionality into their vehicles. To that end, many of today’s cars feature the ability to enable hands-free calling and digital song downloading from a smartphone, with some now able to access Internet radio services and read aloud text messages, Twitter “tweets” and Facebook updates via a synthesized voice.
While car companies have had little success at connecting with auto-averse millennials in the process, the next wave of in-car connectivity will reach beyond the realm of youthful hipsters and into the average motorist’s everyday life, says Glenn Lurie, president of emerging devices for AT&T, future connectivity applications. “We can expect the integration of smartphones and cars to help make vehicles safer, leverage onboard diagnostics to both help the driver and to relay important vehicle information back to the manufacturer and to simply make the driving experience more engaging,“ Lurie says. “The car itself is fast becoming a wireless device, it’s just that simple.”
New vehicles that come from the factory with systems that connect the car to the outside world will increase globally from around 10 percent in 2011 to 53 percent in 2016, according to ABI Research in Oyster Bay, NY. This includes models that offer connectivity via smartphones, onboard telematics systems and those, such as the Audi A6, A7 and A8, that offer their own Wi-Fi Internet connections.
Already, a growing number of vehicles allow smartphone-connected users to access travel-related information services via a dashboard-mounted screen. Toyota’s new Entune system, for example, supports mobile apps such as the Bing search engine, OpenTable restaurant reviews and reservations and movietickets.com for local movie times and ticket purchases; as with the Sirius Travel Connect service offered by other automakers, it also provides a host of travel-related services, such as live weather, traffic, area gas prices, stock quotes and sports scores.
What’s more, car connectivity is becoming a two-way street, with some cars able to send pertinent information back to their owners via their smartphones. Many General Motors vehicles, for example, allow motorists to engage or disengage a car’s door locks and check tire pressure and fuel levels remotely via the
OnStar RemoteLink smartphone app; owners of the Chevrolet Volt can further monitor the electric-powered vehicle’s battery-charge status via their phones. The OnStar telematics system has long offered the ability to automatically call for help if a car’s airbag is deployed in a crash, provide turn-by-turn navigation directions and can assist with locating a stolen vehicle, among other (subscription based) services.
Among its many functions Hyundai’s similar Blue Link system can provide onboard vehicle diagnostics and notify owners of required maintenance remotely, and even help parents keep track of teenage drivers by alerting them via text messaging when the vehicle is driven in excess of a stated speed, leaves a predetermined geographic region or is operated beyond a set curfew.
What’s coming down the road? Ford previously announced plans to expand its Sync multimedia connectivity system to incorporate health and wellness services that would be accessed wirelessly via smartphone apps.
For example, the company is working with Medtronic, a leading manufacturer of glucose monitoring devices, to develop a system that would keep track of a driver’s blood sugar levels. An Allergy Alert app would give motorists access to location-based day-by-day index levels for pollen; asthma, cold and cough and ultraviolet sensitivity.
Cars could soon offer drivers the ability to access specific connectivity functions via downloadable apps, just as they’re able to do with their smartphones. Not only would this allow an owner to streamline a vehicle’s infotainment system by only loading features he or she will actually use (hopefully making it easier to operate in the process), it would allow certain aspects of the car to be “upgraded” on an ongoing basis.
Once enough vehicles are fitted with such systems, the next step is to allow them to communicate with each other in the background. This interactivity could, for example, be used to relay real-time road conditions from cars slowing in traffic or encountering hazardous weather to other vehicles further up the road. Ideally it could be used to make cars “aware” of each other on the road and integrate with onboard collision avoidance systems to help avoid accidents.
Ultimately, in-car connectivity applications could “connect the dots” and allow a vehicle to interact with other aspects of an owner’s life. To that end, AT&T is testing an integrated suite of all-digital, IP-based home security monitoring and automation services it plans to launch next year called Digital Life. An obvious extension of such “smarthome” technology would enable both house and car to communicate.
“Using a smartphone as a digital key, your home could detect when you’ve begun your commute and adjust the thermostat to the desired temperature, open the garage door as you drive up, turn on the lights and even open the garage door, unlock the doors and disable the alarm system as you drive up, all automatically,” Lurie says.
Of course the challenge with integrating all these features into a car’s infotainment system is to make them easy to operate and without dangerously distracting a driver from the task at hand, but that’s another post for another time.
For those who can’t tell the features without a scorecard, here’s an interesting AT&T infographic that details where the connected car is today and where it’s headed down the road:
