Who will win the Connected Vehicle Data Game?

The Connected Car Landscape

Cars are becoming increasingly connected. With that our digital mobility footprint is growing exponentially to the tune of 25gigs of data per hour. Much of this data will be derived from infotainment units, sensors, cameras, and a host of connected services that will come with the modern car.

Connected vehicles are not new, in fact, circa the late 1990s,?General Motors launched OnStar. However, customers did not widely embrace it. Since then, many OEMs have tried but struggled to keep vehicles connected beyond the complimentary period offered to new car buyers. Consumers have been unwavering in not wanting to pay to keep their vehicles connected

Connected Car is free and that is a good thing, right?

The opportunity to create new monetisable business models from connected vehicles is too big of an opportunity for OEMs to pass up. As a result, OEMs have finally decided to give “connected away for free”. A Free connected vehicle is a good thing, right?

Well, if you use digital marketing as a yardstick of measurement, drivers could end up being marginalised without realising it.?Digital marketing has thrived based on the exploitation of our anonymised data. We risk seeing drivers succumbing to the same fate. When the product is free, we become the product.

The actual cost of free connected car services

Presently terms of engagement are heavily skewed towards OEMs having free reign over each driver's anonymised driving data. Should OEMs be given this level of freedom? Primarily when the data is being generated by the driver. The counterargument is the connected vehicle services are being provided by the OEM at no cost. The driver does not need to pay to keep their vehicles connected.

In return drivers access a wide array of connected vehicle services, but can we be sure and verify that these services are free and not bundled into vehicle purchase or leasing price? As the saying goes, “there is no free lunch”.

Who will be the early winner of the Connected Vehicle Data game?

The type of business that will be early winners and build dependable business models from connected vehicle data will need to do the following very well:

They will advocate for drivers to have choice

• Interestingly the FIA has found that?91% of consumers?believe they own their vehicle-generated data, but?85% affirm?they have no control over it.
• This means a worthy winner will be one that not only has a good business model but has the political and social clout to stop the exploitation of driver data.
• They will need to be able to influence lawmakers to create legislation that gives drivers the choice to either not share or even better- earn from their data

They will have a direct relationship of trust and data with customers

• An early winner will most likely already have access to anonymised data of its customers with high data frequency touch points?
• These businesses have the perfect track record to initiate the discussion around helping their customers monetise their vehicle data even though they may not specialise in the automotive sector.
• According to Roy Morgan research, the 3 most trusted brands in Australia are Woolworths, Coles and Bunnings?Could they be early leaders?

They will understand the creator economy and embrace web 3.0

• The creator economy is said to be worth over $100 billion dollars and drivers need to be seen as creators
• Web 3.0 is about shifting power from big corporations to individual users. Its focus is on decentralization, transparency, and security.
• In essence, the early winner will realise this and build an appropriate product that will successfully create a win-win relationship, for drivers, themselves and parties within the vehicle data monetisation ecosystem

Like how Tesla with no previous direct links to the automotive industry has disrupted electrification in the sector. The winner of the connected vehicle data game will most likely not be an OEM. It will be someone from the automotive ecosystem that has built trust over many decades.

The question is, who will be bold enough to step forward and lead this space? The catch-22 is, it is most likely that a large corporate is best positioned to lead this given their existing data relationship with consumers. But they might lack the agility of a startup that understands web 3,0 and the creator economy. Will the early winner of the connected vehicle data game be the coming together of a large start-up and an emerging startup? Time will tell…

#creatoreconomy #web3.0 #datamonetisation #mobility #connectedcar