Car companies are preparing to sell driver data to the highest bidder
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The confluence of the technology and automotive industries has given us mobility. It's not a great name, conjuring images of people riding rascal scooters in big box stores or those weird blue invalid carriages that the government handed out in the UK back in the last century. But in this case, it's meant as a catch-all to cover a few related trends: autonomous driving, ride-hailing, and connected cars. The last of these is what I'm here to discuss today. Specifically, the results of a pair of surveys: one that looks at consumer attitudes and awareness of connected cars and another that polled industry people.
Love 'em or hate 'em, connected cars are here to stayConnected cars are booming. On Tuesday, Chetan Sharma Consulting revealed that 2017 saw more new cars added to cellular networks than new cellphones. In particular, it noted that AT&T has been adding a million or more new cars to its network each quarter for the last 11 quarters. While Chetan Sharma didn't break out numbers for other service providers, it also revealed that Verizon is set to make at least $1 billion from IoT and telematics. And previous research from Gartner suggested that, this year, 98 percent of new cars will be equipped with embedded modems.
OEMs aren't just connecting cars for the fun of it; the idea is to actually improve their customers' experience with the cars. But right now, we're still missing an actual killer app-and to be honest, data on how many customers renew those cell contracts for their vehicles. A survey out this week from Solace that polled 1,500 connected car owners found that they still don't really trust the technology.
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