LOOKING AT WHAT THE CONNECTED CAR MEANS FOR CONSUMERS AND DEALERS, PARTICULARLY IN THE SERVICE DEPARTMENT
There has been a lot of talk in the past year about “the connected car.” Most of the discussion revolves around cars that communicate with their owners, with other cars around them, and with the outside world in general.
We’re trying to wrap our heads around what the automotive world will look like in 10, 15 or 20 years from now. The problem is that we look at connected cars within the context of our current situation, and that makes it more difficult to take the leap and see how fundamental the changes might be.
We also see it only in the context of the vehicle’s technology, and the things it will do for us or allow us to do. We don’t stop to think how enormous the implications are for the way vehicles are serviced and maintained.
PUTTING THE CHANGE INTO PERSPECTIVE
“The connected car will achieve mass market penetration in the next few years: the overall number of vehicles with built-in connectivity will increase from 10% of the overall market today (2014) to 90% by 2020”
Connected Car Industry Report, 2014: Telefonica
Telefonica, one of the largest private telecommunications companies in the world, compiled the Connected Car Industry Report in 2014. Contributors included senior executives at eight OEMs and Telefonica.
The report was also based on a study of car owners in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Spain and Brazil. Note that a telecommunications company, and not one in the auto industry, put this report together. Just one more signal as to where this is all headed.
Here are some of the most notable findings from the study regarding consumer expectations of connected vehicles on the right:
Importantly, the report found that social media was “a minor player” in consumer expectations around the connected car (Brazil was the exception, with social media assuming slightly more importance).
Based on the survey, the connected car is not all about connecting to email, Facebook and Twitter, or hooking up with friends online while in the car. It’s also much more than hands-free driving.
Those last two statements that consumers responded to in the survey begin to touch on the implications for service, and this is directly applicable to dealerships. Who would have thought car owners would be so interested in knowing the state of health of their vehicle?
We’ve seen an explosion in devices that let consumers monitor pretty much everything around them, such as their houses, their children, their driving habits, and most things about their health and well-being. Their vehicles
will be next.
Instead of just a puzzling “check engine” light, fuel consumption or tire pressure monitors, connected cars will be able to provide much more diagnostic information easily and in real time on the owner’s mobile device.
Forget the savvy sales customer – what about the savvy service customer?
There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about how customers walk into the dealership knowing more than the sales consultant. In the near future, this same scenario will play out in the service department, where the customer is fully informed about the state of his or her vehicle when arriving at the dealership.
The need for seamless and consistent communication in the service department will be much more pressing as all this information becomes readily available to the customer.
Some of these things may seem far out in the future, but what is likely to happen is the same “hockey stick” pattern as we have seen with technology advancements over the past decade or so – a small and slow beginning, with exponential growth happening suddenly.
Electric vehicles attracted their fair share of ridicule just a few years ago, with predictions that it might be 25 years before they become a familiar part of our roads. Not quite the same attitudes prevail today.
CONNECTED CAR PREDICTIONS
In a paper published recently by Kingston University in the U.K., partly sponsored by Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center, there were some other predictions about what connected cars will offer.
Here’s a list of some of those:
- Fatigue detection – already available in some vehicles. A U.K. study found that fatigue accounts for 20 per cent of accidents;
- Parking assistance – not just maneuvering the vehicle, but helping find a spot and linking to navigation systems. There is already ParkWhiz and SpotHero that can do this;
- Real-time accident assistance – such as On-Star and eCall (Europe), but going further by assessing impact to vehicle and passengers, predicting severity of injuries and linking to towing services;
- Anger management and stress reduction – wearable stress sensors that measure heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. The vehicle will deploy mitigating actions like slowing the car or, as BMW has developed, making routing recommendations that will reduce stress; and
- Leave on time apps that tell you when you have to leave to get to your destination on time, given prevailing conditions – I need this one!
This paper also identified do-it-yourself diagnostics as a coming reality. In this scenario, the vehicle can “tweet” the owner with granular details of performance that are of interest, whether they are about the vehicle itself, about driving habits or about routing, like identifying the location and distance to the nearest re-charging station.
FROM MECHANICAL TO ELECTRONIC DEVICES
What is clear is that the vehicles of today are rapidly morphing from being purely mechanical devices to becoming electronic devices with some mechanical parts. During this change, the primary focus has been on the emerging technology, what it can do and how to market it to consumers.
In the service area, there have certainly been changes, with manufacturers and dealers having to invest large sums of money upgrading equipment and processes to manage the change. But this has been largely invisible to the customer.
That is about to change and it will change rapidly as consumers gain more knowledge and the ability to grab control, just as they have done in so many other areas touched by technology.
Consumers are entering areas that they never would have before because technology allows them to do that and it increases transparency and predictability. Are service departments ready for this change?
