Coming Home To Your Car — Car Makers Creating Customers for Life by Giving back the Gift of Time
This is the future. You tap your iPhone and moments later… your car appears. It has already adjusted your seat and calculated outdoor temperatures and the car’s heating or cooling system to arrive at your climate preference, so you slip into a calm and comfortable environment. Immediately your car ‘senses’ your mood based on biometric information and chooses the music, and even scents you usually like best… given the day you’ve had. Knowing your destination, your car chooses the best route home considering weather and traffic — and you’re off.
First things first, your car wants you to be safe. In natural human language your car offers, “Great to have you back! Wanted to let you know that your brake sensors indicate the right is wearing faster than the left. Not a big deal now, but could get dangerous. Do you want to schedule a quick check up Monday a.m. when your calendar is free?” ‘Yeah, thanks’.
My Car Cares
“Can I help you with anything else?” says your car, “Errands? Kids? News? Maybe just nothing?” ‘All of the above!’, you answer. Your car gives you the run down, “Based on information from your refrigerator, you seem to need eggs and milk. Also, your daughter’s prescription is ready. Would you like to pick those things up?” ‘Yes please’ Your car recalculates its route. ‘Where are the kids, anyway?’ you ask. Your car immediately shows where all the children are currently, based on their phones’ GPSs, using a holographic representation.
When you arrive at the drive-thru pharmacy window your car, connected to both your bank and the store, seamlessly pays for your products. After a few moments of news highlights, you settle back and ask your car for music again and pick up your audio book, feeling great about how much you so simply achieved in such a short time. You think about how much time you used to waste, and also — how much time you’ve just been given back. How much do you love your car?
From Devices We Carry, to Devices that Carry Us
The truth is that the average American spends 46 minutes a day in their car1, most of it thinking about things we need to be doing. IBM custom- er experience expert Joanna Peña-Bickley, Global Chief Creative Officer, says this, “Think about it. We are trapped in our cars, with all sorts of stuff we would like to get done but can’t. It’s unsafe to touch our iPhones or iPads, our car’s systems feel foreign and clunky. We’re left feeling disconnected and frustrated.
“But the relationship between human and car is changing. The design challenge automotive customers gave us as an industry was, ‘Please, give me back my time!’ We are re-imagining time spent in the car to be an incredibly pleas- ing, useful and empowering experience. The Auto Industry is moving past making cars and envisioning a world where the devices we carry become the devices that carry us.”
My Car is Hardware?
“Basically my clients are envisioning a connect- ed car that will allow your daily rituals to become totally, digitally frictionless — the goal is to allow your car to quite simply become an extension of you.” Bickley continues. The car of the future will connect to an environment covered in sensors, ultimately emitting over 25 gigabytes of data to the cloud every hour. That’s more than the data stored in a smart- phone today2. “What’s more, through the use of a ‘cognitive key’, all of a driver’s preferences, habits and data will move with the driver, or passenger, from vehicle to vehicle. And don’t just think ‘car’, think about a whole array of ‘nomadic devices’.”
“…envisioning a connected car that will allow your daily rituals to become totally, digitally frictionless — the goal is to allow your car to quite simply become an extension of you.”
Even more, it may no longer be ‘your’ car — maybe you just own ‘miles’, letting your car manufacturer arbitrage what would be the most advantageous mixture of own, lease, rent, Uber, Lyft… for you, given your financial and lifestyle goals.” explains IBM’s Automotive specialist Saeed Kazi. Will they be electric? Autonomous? Probably. The possibilities are limitless.
The competitive landscape in Automotives is completely shifting. “The new deciding factor of success will not only be to make a better product from metal — it will increasingly be the ability to deliver differentiated connectedness and seamless service in a safe, secure way. That is a fact.” offers Kazi.
And so what does it mean when an automobile manufacturer begins to view itself as a hard- ware (read ‘car’) and platform provider that connects drivers, and passengers to an eco- sea of information, products and services? Did the Automobile Manufacturers of the world just become service providers?
The competitive landscape in Automotives is completely shifting. “The new deciding factor of success will not only be to make a better product from metal — it will increasingly be the ability to deliver differentiated connectedness and seamless service in a safe, secure way. That is a fact.”
The Term is Cognitive Mobility
So if extreme customized service within connected cars is the new goal, data is the new fuel… and a cognitive mobility platform is the new engine. The only way to order and find insight and action within the amount of information that will be available going forward will be cognitive computing. End of story. Without machines that can consume massive data, remember it, identify patterns, construct inferences and make suggestions — we will drown in data.
Thinking, learning, reasoning machines will process unimaginable amounts of information, from omniscient sensors to provide customized service so seamless and useful — it’ll seem like magic. “The connected car received information for the human to use, but the cognitive car uses the information to think for itself, learn from continuous interaction with users and ultimately elevate what humans can do, vastly shortening the time in which they can do it,” says Ken Englund, IBM’s NA Industrial Lead, “To be sure, the cognitive programs we are launching with partners like GM are not App Experiences.
We are building data driven operating systems injected with human wisdom that are allowing us to completely change the customer experience, as well as make things safer for everyone on the road. It’s game changing.”
What’s in it for The Autos?
Cognitive mobility opens the door to a whole new universe for traditional OEMs. Just think of the potential opportunities to improve process- es and design given the interconnection of a cognitive platform, and a world teaming with sensors sharing data. Design based on real-time feedback from customers, shortened turnaround time for manufacturer enhancements, improved performance — even the opportunity to end costly recalls by learning before release if and why a car will fail on the road! Cognitive computing will revolutionize the way cars are designed and built.
And then there’s the data and the services. A constant stream between customer and connected car, teaming with opportunity to monetize the exchange of insights, information, products and services. What are the opportunities to work with the Insurance Industry, for instance, to deliver actual, individual, information — real-time — to improve cost and coverage for driver — or driver-less car? The wallet-share and profit potential, brokering the sea of trans- actions people will quite happily execute from their cars, will change the way Automotives make, and think about money.
“The wallet-share and profit potential, brokering the sea of transactions people will quite happily execute from their cars, will change the way Automotives make, and think about money.”
The Road to Cognitive Mobility — Build, Buy or Buddy?
So the question emerges, if extreme connected customer service in your car is the future, and cognitive mobility is the only road there — where’s the map?
How will Automotive companies make the switch to deliver in a new world? “I am seeing my clients considering three main strategies to acquire mobile cognitive capabilities — They’re building it themselves, they’re buying other organizations that have it, or they’re doing lateral partnerships, like the one we’ve done with GM. We figured ‘You do what you’re good at, we’ll do what we’re good at and together we’ll get to market quicker with a better product.’ Even though OnStar Go* is at a nascent stage, the solution gives GM a 2-year head start in what will be a very competitive market- place,” says Donna Satterfield, IBM’s Vice President, Automotive, Aero & Defense Industry.
Challenging the Frontiers of Regulation
The future for the automobile industry is bright. Cognitive mobility platforms, connected to driver telematics is promising to relieve traffic and reduce driver error, over 10,000 fatalities and as many as 500,000 injuries might be preventable every year in the United States alone. And given the busy world we live in, wouldn’t it be great to put the 250 hours/year we spend in our car to good use, leaving more time for us to do the things we love, with the people we love?
But the road won’t be easy. In the future open-source environment, regulation and security will have to be scrutinized using an ethical lens. Most all manufacturers today consider autonomously driven cars a given, but where and how does the government apply regulation to ensure ultimate fairness and safety in the vehicle, and on the road? How will these changes impact insurance coverage as drivers shift between ownership and use, between driving and being driven? Furthermore, how can manufacturers safeguard data securely in an environment heading towards total connectivity? These and other difficult questions are currently being tackled by the Auto Industry today, as man plus machine continue to challenge the frontiers of regulation.
Collaboration to Determine Success
The readiness of the Auto industry to rise to the challenge of complete re-invention is also coming into play and posing obstacles. “Automobile manufacturing is one of the oldest industries in the world. These are large traditional organizations used to making things. To change the direction of research and development assets and get them all moving toward a new goal, from making cars to cognitive connectedness, is not a small feat. I am helping my clients re-imagine their human resource strategies, to make sure they have the rich development depth they’ll need. I’m also working with them to re-design training. Through the use of design thinking, we are teaching teams to adapt to new approaches that dynamically link product development to constantly evolving customer expectations. There’s a lot of work yet to be done,” concludes Sachin Lulla, IBM’s Global Watson IoT AutoLAB Leader.
And so the Automobile industry is faced with an incredible opportunity, and a significant challenge. Auto makers will have to let go of their traditional hierarchical organizations, and reorganize around an ecosystem based on user experience, as user experience becomes the primary goal and profit center of their business. This new level of customer intimacy will decide who wins the race.
The future will see our mobility device as coach, guide, companion — a data driven operating system that will inject human wisdom into every vehicle, and every decision. Our car will have the ability to see, hear, think and communicate in human language — but the journey to transform organizations and allow them to design and develop the connected car possible and demanded by tomorrow’s consumer will not be for the faint of heart.
Satterfield says, “The future of mobility is being shaped daily, at the intersection of technology, data, engineering, and design. The winners will be the ones who can do the most with their data consistently, and stay incredibly close to their customer. It’s not just about cognitive, or connectedness, it’s about making people’s lives better. That’s the driving force in our collaboration with clients.”
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