Connected Cars — It’s More Than Just Self-Driving
The concept of the connected car has opened a lot of doors for car manufacturing companies to provide more features for the users and increase their overall safety. It is estimated that there will be more than 470 million connected cars on the roads of the USA, Europe, China alone. A lot of companies like Toyota, General Motors, BMW, Audi who are adopting connected car technology in most of their future models. Additionally, there are few companies like Tesla that are making all of their car models that enhance connected car technologies.
What is a Connected Car?
A connected car is a vehicle with internet access (mostly VLAN), which allows the IoT devices, both inside and outside the car, to interact with each other. This concept enables the car to access data, send data, download software and patches, communicate with other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and provide WiFi for onboard passengers. The connected car has now become an integral part of the IoT family.
Types of Connections?
There are mainly five types of connection in a connected car. The connection types are listed below:
- V2V — Vehicle to vehicle: This communication enables vehicles to wirelessly exchange information about their speed, location, and heading.
- V2I — Vehicle to infrastructure: This communication enables the wireless exchange of data between vehicles and road infrastructure components such as lane markings, road signs, and traffic lights can wirelessly provide information to the vehicle, and vice versa.
- V2C — Vehicle to cloud: This communication enables vehicles to exchange information regarding the car and its application to the cloud. This system takes the smart home system one step further.
- V2P — Vehicle to pedestrian: This communication type involves the data about the people surrounding the vehicle. Pedestrian detection systems can be implemented in vehicles, in the infrastructure, or with pedestrians themselves to provide warnings to drivers, pedestrians, or both.
- V2X — Vehicle to everything: This communication interconnects all types of vehicles and infrastructure systems with another. This connectivity includes cars, highways, ships, trains, and airplanes.
Features in Connected Cars
- Voice Assistance/hands-free control: This feature is just like any other voice assistance technology we have in our cell phone or computer. Using this feature will give hands-free control over some of the tasks to the driver.
- Internet hotspot: This feature creates the hotspot surrounding the car which enables the users to have the availability of internet access all the time.
- Smartphone connection: Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto are the systems that allow the users to connect their phone to the car and give more control over the features of the cell phones.
- Roadside assistance: This feature was the most popular and one of the very first features in connected car technology. It was introduced by GM through OnStar which gives assistance to the drivers in emergencies.
- “Curfews” for young drivers: The data shows that the accident rate in teenage drivers is quite high. This feature by Hyundai allows parents of teenage kids to get notified if their kid is driving the car after late hours or if the car has been outside of the virtual boundary.
- App for Car connectivity: This feature gives some of the car’s control to the uses via the app on their smartphone. The controls include lock and unlock the car, turn the car engine on and off, turn AC/Heat on and off. It also shows the fuel status at glance and it allows them to locate their car on the map.
- Payments: General Motors was the company to launch payments from the dash through Marketplace for coffee, donuts, other fast foods, and Gas (only at participating Shell Gas Stations). It allows the driver to pay the money without even swiping the card.
- Prevent crashes: In most of the car crashes, the reason is always a minor human error. With the use of V2V communication, the car itself can mitigate some of the minor human errors and help prevent car crashes.
There are many more features of the connected car technology which will make this list go on and on.
Possible feature in near future
In the future, V2X will open the door for connecting the car to smart home technology. In this technology, the car will exchange the data with smart home technology. Some of the features would be like, a garage door automatically opens if it senses a car approaching on the driveway. It can also turn the lights on if the car’s location indicates that the driver is driving back home. The drive can also get control over the house if most of the devices are connected to the smart hub.
Privacy concern in connected cars
There is a huge concern over the privacy concern over the connected cars as this technology can hold tons and tons of data about the driver. The data includes the driver’s telephone contact list, where they have been? How fast was the driver driving? What is the driver’s routine route? Did the driver wear a seat belt? Was there anyone else in the car? There are many questions related to the driver’s privacy. As of now, the car manufacturing companies are the one who holds these data but who else should have access to these data? What steps are the companies taking for the security of the data? Can a company sell those data to anyone?
Some of the first technologies for connected car
OnStar — 1996
In 1996, General Motors (GM) introduced the first-ever connected car technology called OnStar. The main purpose of OnStar was to ensure the safety of the driver and passenger. Back in time, there were very limited resources for communication as the availability of cell phones was very rare. A car accident in the remote area would leave the driver with no option to communicate. The main intent of OnStar was to make communication in situations like this. It would alert the OnStar telephone operator in the case of a car accident so the immediate help would go on the spot of the incident. OnStar used the deployment of AirBags as an indication of a car accident. It would also unlock the car doors in cases like this. It was made for the safety of the user and not for convenience. After the huge success of OnStar, other companies also started creating their own system which would perform similar functionality.
Remote Diagnosis — 2001
In 2001, telematics enabled the remote diagnosis service for the first time. A remote diagnostics system uses telematics technology to communicate information about the condition of fleet vehicles. Before this service became available, many of the vehicles used to fail on the road due to improper maintenance. Earlier, the remote diagnosis was mainly used by fleet vehicle owners but the time has changed since then. Now, a lot of personal car owners get the latest information and status notification on their smartphone.
Self-driving cars
The self-driving car is one of the biggest achievements in connected cars technology. Check out the below post by Paulina Antonik if you are interested more in reading about the evaluation of self-driving cars.
