Volkswagen Learns Another Lesson

Like war, the automotive industry increasingly feels like long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.?It’s a little like operating a Tesla in Autopilot mode.

This has been especially true for Volkswagen.?We learned last week that Audi’s former CEO Rupert Stadler has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his role in the Volkswagen emissions scandal that cost the company billions of dollars and precious brand equity.?

The investigation associated with the emissions scandal was terrifying for some and catastrophic for a few.?Thankfully it did not affect the safe operation of the vehicles.?The latest terrifying episode for Volkswagen passed swiftly, but no less ominously this March.

Just as Stadler deftly avoided jail time, the company’s U.S. subsidiary dodged a public relations bullet after failing to assist police in finding a stolen VW Atlas with a child on-board because the customer had not paid the $150 Car-Net connected car subscription.

The Volkswagen emissions scandal (which involved deceiving emissions tests with software) sent a massive message to the entire automotive industry: don’t mess with regulators.?The Car-Net debacle, which occurred in March in the U.S., sent a more complex message but perhaps one that was missed by most: some connected car functions should not come with a price.

The details of the March event have now been reported by most news outlets.?In summary, a Volkswagen Atlas was carjacked from a driveway in Libertyville, Ill., with a two-year-old child in the backseat.?The police contacted Volkswagen and a Car-Net executive insisted that the owner needed to pay the $150 subscription to activate the service so that the vehicle could be found.?Ultimately, the child and vehicle were located without the assistance of Volkswagen or Car-Net.

When the story broke publicly Volkswagen moved swiftly to apologize for the incident and to make Car-Net Safe & Secure free for five years for most VW 2020-2023 vehicles.?This quick papering over of a public relations disaster forestalled a deeper dive into the incident’s implications.

It’s notable that police responded by contacting Volkswagen to tap into the telematics system built into the vehicle including its GPS tracking info.?This is reminiscent of the police response to the Boston Marathon bombing 10 years ago when a Mercedes-Benz ML350 owner who was carjacked by the culprits was able to give tracking permission for the police directly to the mbrace call center operators.

In the Volkswagen case, the Car-Net service provider refused to help the police until the service subscription was paid.?This is an obvious point of failure.

But the prospect of law enforcement access to vehicle data remains an unresolved issue.?Even General Motors’ OnStar does not provide direct access to its vehicles without a subscription and owner permission. A safe and secure means for law enforcement to connect to cars - of the sort currently proposed by RoadMedic in partnership with Blackberry - is needed.

There is also the question of who to call.?The police contacted Volkswagen, but the connected car service provider is Bosch – a separate company.?Some, but not all auto makers, have brought connected car call center functions in house – including GM, Hyundai, and Toyota.?Other companies use third parties.?Policies for handling calls such as VW’s vary.

The problem of who to call is a real one.?GM’s Cruise autonomous vehicle division operating in San Francisco has frustrated local authorities when Cruise vehicles have blocked traffic impeding emergency vehicles.?GM and Cruise have yet to implement a means for emergency responders or law enforcement to gain control of Cruise vehicles in urgent circumstances.

The more widespread problem, though, is knowing who to call and how in the event of a vehicle theft.?Who should the vehicle owner call and who should responding police officers call??

Further, it seems as if stolen vehicle tracking and recovery should be included in the price of the car.?It was only a decade ago that Brazil came very close to implementing a stolen vehicle tracking and recovery device (the Contran 245 mandate) for all vehicles – it was ultimately rejected on privacy grounds.

Automatic crash notification is made available for free by some, but certainly not all auto makers.?And even where automatic crash notification will – as it says on the tin – automatically call for assistance, most of these systems insert a call center between the police and the customer – delaying the transmission of critical crash information directly to first responders.

A recent Consumer Reports account noted that 14 auto makers do not charge a subscription for automatic crash notification – at least in the first months and years of a new vehicle’s ownership period – but many still do charge, including General Motors, Nissan, and Subaru.?Fiat and Tesla do not offer automatic crash notification at all.?Some car companies, such as Ford, require a connected smartphone to transmit critical vehicle information in the event of a crash.

These different approaches to automatic crash notification mean that the average vehicle owner really can’t be certain as to whether help will automatically be summoned in the event of a crash.?To repeat, for the sake of clarity, GM’s OnStar requires a subscription to be paid to access automatic crash notification.?Tesla does not offer automatic crash notification at all in the U.S. – in spite of being required to offer this feature on all cars sold in the E.U.

As for stolen vehicle tracking, vehicle thefts and carjackings are on the rise in many cities across the U.S.?General Motors and Hyundai offer the ability – with a service subscription – for police to remotely slow and stop stolen vehicles (as long as they have the owner’s permission and the vehicle is within sight).

The Volkswagen incident points the way to a future where direct vehicle data access for law enforcement is enabled and subscriptions are not required.?The cost of automatic crash notification hardware, software, and service should be built into the cost of the vehicle at the point of sale.?There shouldn’t be a subscription for the service.?The same rationale applies to stolen vehicle tracking and recovery.?The cost should be built into the vehicle and the service free.

Just as important, though, the vehicle ought to be capable of communicating directly with law enforcement and other first responders with the owner’s permission.?That permission can be assumed in the event of a crash – the automatic call is triggered by the airbag deployment in those instances.?And if a car is reported stolen, law enforcement ought to be able to immediately access the vehicle’s GPS.

Of course, one company stands out for providing no such service or capability.?Tesla CEO Elon Musk can do many things with his cars – update their software, enable self driving or even remote operation – but his cars won’t call for assistance in the event of a crash.?He can send a rocket to Mars, but he can’t summon the police to the scene of a crash.?That is terrifying.