The Connected Car, an Emerging Marketplace

Last year I adjudicated a Connected Car innovation competition for a global manufacturer. I see massive commercial potential in this market and (conservatively) forecast strong growth and adoption over the next 2 to 5 years.

Device and OS providers, tech giants and smaller innovators are coming together to create a new marketplace of innovative services.

There are opportunities for brokers to monetise the connection of consumers and providers through cloud services and context aware computing.

There are opportunities to turn ‘the safety challenge’ into new revenue streams.

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A New Marketplace for the Connected Car

Connected Cars will connect to cloud services and use context information to provide smarter services to drivers.

Tech and mobile innovators understand that the platforms and infrastructure needed to deliver these services will provide lucrative income streams and new business models.

Commercialising Safety Benefits of the Connected Car

Many talk about Connected Car and Heads up Display (HUDs), Augmented reality and the dangers of driver distraction.

But other gadgets could specifically address safety, such as evaluation of driving style and comparison against other car users. The latter could be Gamified and displayed on social networks. Parents could use this to monitor the driving behaviours of their ‘teenage’ children.

Telematics could monitor the safety condition of the car, weather feeds could warn that driving style should be modified, manufacturers could ‘broadcast’ warnings or recall data about certain parts or components. Failure data could be crowdsourced and stored in a central knowledge base to improve failure analysis and early warnings.

All of these have commercial potential, such as protection of manufacturer warranty, more efficient insurance or encouraging safer and more fuel-efficient driving.