I attended a session on the Connected Vehicle yesterday, organized by the German-American Business Association (GABA). Panelists included Stephan Durach of BMW's Technology Office, Tim Geison of Dash Navigation, Hans Wang of Forte Media, Robert Blake of Altera, and Thilo Koslowski of Gartner. The moderator was Robert Wilson, Senior Editor of EDN.
The session highlighted for me that there are almost two camps of thought when it comes into the in-car experience - one camp is all about safety, security and a very controlled, almost zen-like experience in the car where nothing from the outside world should disturb the driver. The car is seen as a cocoon, to be protected as such, almost the last bastion of individual privacy in this world. The goal here is to incrementally improve the driving experience in terms of safety, traffic, music/radio sound quality, etc. Auto OEMs generally belong in this category, in my opinion. Safety over-rides everything else.
The other camp is all about connectivity, multi-tasking, entertainment, communications. The car's disconnected, cocoon-like environment is seen as an affront to the always-connected world that we have moved into. The goal is to dramatically change the driving experience with access to Internet, email, cellphone integration, iPod integration, etc. The mobile apps 'industry' has generally not thought about the car experience.
There are blind-spots on both sides of this. Nevertheless, I think camp#1 is increasingly being caught on the wrong side of consumer expectations. Auto OEMs' hands are tied when it comes to radical innovation - how could they possible introduce an open application platform into the car without generating class-action lawsuits from consumer advocacy organizations? Could they start thinking about a controlled "closed garden' model at least? This is a classic situation of innovator's dilemma- car companies will be driven into protecting their higher-margin products and other companies will come in and start taking the lower-margin products and innovating from there. Something radical is required to break open this vertically-integrated business model.
During the panel, BMW said they were working on something that would be more open, but no details were provided. Dash said that it has an open third-party platform with about 80 web services providers integrated. Thilo commented that auto OEMs will have to undergo a complete cultural/organizational shift to be able to address these new approaches.
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