What's in Your App Store?

While riding in an Uber in Porto a couple weeks ago the driver complained that he couldn’t project his Uber driver app – and its navigation – into the head unit display of his car.?It was a simple complaint, but the limitation meant that he was forced to mount his phone on the dashboard to access the app’s navigation on its smaller screen and it also meant that he might get simultaneously conflicting navigation guidance from the on-board system.*

This minor problem has more extreme implications if you take into account the fact that many Uber drivers mount two phones on their dashboards – one for the app and its navigation and a separate one to receive personal or other phone calls.?The situation is sub-optimal but it reflects the fact that neither Google nor Apple have integrated Uber, Lyft, or any other ride hailing driver apps into their smartphone projection systems.

For Apple and Google, the number of ride hailing drivers is too small to merit the privilege of being integrated into the Android Auto or Apple CarPlay systems.?By the same token, car makers have not seen fit to integrate Uber, Lyft or other ride hailing driver apps into their cars because of the small number of users – at most several hundred thousand in any given market.

This disinclination to integrate ride hail driver apps into cars was manifest years ago when General Motors invested $500M in Lyft.?Even this half billion dollar commitment to Lyft was not enough to justify integrating the Lyft app for use by Lyft drivers who might use GM vehicles.

This simple scenario captures the challenge facing auto makers – such as Mercedes-Benz, GM, Stellantis, and Volkswagen (and partners, Harman and Faurecia) – as they venture into the in-car app store business.?Owning your own app store is a headache as much as it is an opportunity.

Everyone has their own idea of what apps should be in the in-car app store and the number of available app candidates for integration is astronomical.?Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz are simultaneously launching app stores, both of which are focused on streaming audio and video-centric apps, social media, teleconferencing, and game play.

All of these driver distraction candidates are fine for customer eye candy on the showroom floor, but let’s consider for a moment what apps could and should be integrated within in-car app stores.?Uber and Lyft driver apps would be at the top of my list as would Turnsignl – an app that will summon an attorney (in the U.S.) – live – via Facetime when a driver has been pulled over by law enforcement.?

HaaS Alert will alert drivers to the proximity and direction of travel of emergency vehicles.?Glance TravelSafely from Applied Information links and alerts drivers to the proximity of pedestrians, traffic lights, and emergency vehicles. Spoke, too, will provide similar alerts as it sees wider adoption.

Trafficland provides access to live traffic camera video in the U.S. and still images globally.?Mavi.io enables remote ordering of meals or groceries with orchestrated pickup from the car.?Mile Auto provides mileage-based insurance.

At the same time, every auto maker offers a companion app for vehicle diagnostics and remote functions.?Most car companies have already integrated these apps in their cars. All drivers have an insurance company that offers an app for managing or transmitting insurance claims.

Urgently offers roadside assistance in the form of an app.?Glympse helps people and businesses temporarily share real-time locations, answering the question "Where are you?" with a dynamic map that updates your location in real-time so you can focus on driving and not texting or calling.?

There are a dozen or more distracted driving applications and a handful of apps designed to detect crashes and summon assistance.?These smartphone-based apps are excluded from consideration here. The whole point of a built-in app store is to have built-in functionality - not something projected from a smartphone.

Apps for finding, reserving, and paying for parking will always be essential, with Parkopedia being the most dominant solution in the market.?EV charging is a sector that is saturated with apps built around specific charging networks and integrating payments.

Apps for particular gas station brands or convenience store chains are also popular as are apps for popular coffee shops like Caribou, Starbucks, or Panera – to say nothing of drug stores and supermarkets.?The bottom line is auto makers that are implementing app stores are opening Pandora’s (??) box. (Just consider all the loyalty points programs from 7-11 to Exxon to Giant and on and on!)

Customers will have favorite apps for podcasts or their local radio stations.?Some car owners may well want to create their own apps.

And then there is the question of whether an app is an app or something else entirely.?Stellantis has deployed the HaaS Alert app to more than 2M cars – but it has delivered this functionality as a built-in solution integrated with navigation.

In essence, HaaS Alert in the Stellantis use case, isn’t an app at all.?It’s a functional safety-centric element of the vehicle.?The same applies for Emergency Safety Solution – for alerting on-coming cars to the presence of YOUR disabled vehicle on the roadside.?ESS is app-like in its value proposition – but it has been enabled in Tesla vehicles as an included vehicle function to be activated in the event of a breakdown.

Which apps or app-like experiences an automaker chooses to implement says a lot about that organization’s priorities.?Volkswagen, Mercedes, General Motors, and Stellantis have all announced their intentions to reap billions of dollars from marketing connected services in their cars – hence the onset of streaming content, games, and social media in their app stores.

Here is an app integration worth considering and prioritizing.?What if the automatic crash notification in the vehicle were integrated with Glympse?

• Emergency responders would directly receive the destination address and routing information
• The in-dash display of the car and/or the smartphone of the driver could receive a map-based display of the progress of emergency responders headed to the scene of the incident
• Simultaneously, family members or loved ones could be alerted
• Finally, local hospital emergency rooms could be alerted to the impending arrival of a patient

What if your car was capable of doing that for you??Wouldn’t THAT be cool??That would be way cooler than accessing TikTok in the dashboard if you ask me.?So just when it seems as if it’s all about the app store – let’s take a moment to think about what that app store is for.

*Correction: Driver apps may actually be available in CarPlay.