Let’s take a quick look at the previous 20 years of automotive history to discover where this trend started. A new competitor entered the market where 99% of automobiles were powered by combustion engines. Inc. Tesla Motors, a business with no prior experience in the automobile industry, was given the Nikola Tesla trademark in honour of the renowned electrical engineer. Elon Musk, a well-known entrepreneur, decided to invest in this ambition of producing affordable electric automobiles a year later.
When we fast-forward to 2012, the Tesla Model S makes its debut. The Electric Vehicle, the biggest industry change in recent years, won multiple automotive honours right away, including Car of The Year. Designed and created by a business with ten years of market experience, essentially only one vehicle was produced earlier (the original Tesla Roadster). This demonstrated the enormous untapped market for electric cars.
After the Tesla Autopilot was unveiled a year later, the buzz surrounding autonomous vehicles spread over the entire world. It was not just because the market desperately needed an electric vehicle. Since the beginning, Tesla has been designing its cars to be software centric. Big on-board CPUs from Nvidia support, not just Autopilot but also a multitude of applications and services available in the largest (at the time at least) central screen of a road car. And the software has been updated very often using Over-The-Air upgrades, giving the customers the feeling that the software was always fresh and the producer quickly reacted to feedback with new changes. Effectively, making the software a major selling point.
The notion that an automobile loses value the instant it leaves a dealer’s lot needs to be abandoned. The advancements in technology today may make cars more appealing. This transition is being driven by the growing amount of software in automobiles and the capability of that software to be upgraded over time to add new features. It is simple to see the many directions vehicle companies might take when the software supports essential hardware elements that enable continuing updates. Customers will think twice about rushing to car showrooms every few years to buy a newer model, opting for innovative longer-term subscriptions instead.
The services will be heavily focused on safety. Take the monthly membership or one-time purchase of highway autopilot as an instance. Instead, drivers could enhance a current safety feature, like adding lidar (light detection and range) redundancy to a lane-centring programme, which might be eligible for a discount from their insurance. As new technological advancements are absorbed by software-defined hardware, the range of fresh services that can be offered grows. In the future, new functions will be able to be added independently based on the needs of the driver. Examples include temporary services, features, and apps. As a result, software upgrades enable contract and pricing structures to provide new features as a service, either separately or as part of a subscription.
Automakers frequently employ Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) to link their vehicles to the internet. A connected car can share data through the internet with any other device or service, both inside and outside the car. Connected cars can always connect to the internet to carry out tasks or download data at the user’s request.
Self-driving cars will also profit from connected car technology and be able to interface with the road network and cloud system in addition to conventional cars. The automotive sector is currently being disrupted by connected cars. As more smart automobiles reach the market, consumers are increasingly drawn to linked cars. In the upcoming years, connected technology will establish new benchmarks for safety and accident prevention.
The automotive cloud can enhance already available services like emergency help or remote car access while also setting the framework for future ones like automatic driving, smart parking, and intelligent navigation. An electric vehicle’s in-car navigation system that provides information on charging stations and suggested stops to alleviate range anxiety might be powered by the Automotive cloud. In addition, the data provided by electric vehicles might be used by the cloud to improve and create batteries with greater performance and range. Microsoft and Volkswagen jointly established a strategic alliance in 2018 to hasten the development of the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud. One of the biggest and most committed clouds in the automobile sector is called VW.AC.
Beginning in 2022, VW.AC will manage data from millions of vehicles every day to provide connected experiences to customers all over the world – an essential component of the Volkswagen Group’s plan to become the industry’s top developer in automotive software.
Part – II shall be uploaded next week. Stay tuned!
