A white paper describing the evolution of Connected Vehicles and Autonomous Cars, challenges faced and how is it looking into the future

1. Connected Vehicles: An Overview on Evolution, Challenges, Forecasts & Trends
Why vehicles/cars are getting more attention from IT industry nowadays?
Reason is simple that with boom of economy people can afford vehicles especially car and everyone is
travelling i.e. spending lot of time inside the car. So IT industry is looking at opportunity to provide
services at car step instead of door step.
Handy applications like staring your car’s engine remotely (not with a remote or sight to sight, BLE
enabled device) or managing office/house lightings, how all of these affect you or your business? From
cars to office buildings, objects are getting smarter, and connected car technology is set to revolutionize it
further. Just like ‘digital’ disrupted and reshaped other markets, such as music, photography, retail, taxi
hire, banking, alternative payment method, much faster and more efficient than cash machines and debit
cards.
Vehicles as Components of the Internet of Things
Connected Vehicles (CV) are under the umbrella of evolution of Internet of Things (IoT). We are already
seeing the integration of vehicles with mobile applications and robust connectivity to the cloud. This
communication will typically occur via the cloud. As the IoT and eventually CVs mature, following
integration should be noticeable:
 Continued vehicular integration with mobile applications
 Creation of SaaS models that support vehicle diagnostics, management and maintenance
 Integration CVs with Smart Homes, Smart Cities and Smart Businesses
 An Evolution of Mobility-as-a-Service leading with the rise of autonomous vehicles
Integration with Smart Homes, Roads Infrastructure and Smart Businesses
The integration of CV with Traffic infrastructure like Roads infra as well as crowd-sourcing information,
can help understand traffic flows, road conditions, traffic conditions, diversions, repairs to traffic
management.
There can be plethora of other interesting integration use cases like autonomous airport check-ins,
restaurant/theater reservations and not to forget utility payments. There are even APIs available to
connect electric vehicles to the Smart Grid.
Connecting Vehicles Transforming Mobility Experience
Mobility-as-a-Service has already evolved the on-demand taxi experience of Uber, Ola or Lyft. Uber is
already experimenting with an ‘optional’ autonomous driver. For sure, these are incremental steps help
public getting used to be driven by an autonomous car. Applications like Park 4u and ParkMe or
navigation app like Waze use complex de-confliction algorithms yielding an optimal parking slot.
Touching Different Functional areas
With Telematics, Connected cars offer so much– from navigation, traffic updates, communication with
other vehicles or smart road signs. All of these generate huge amount of the data, which can bring
benefits to the driver or owner, manufacturer and the service provider: it can enhance safety and overall
vehicle performance (with predictive wear and tear), offer emergency warning and distress call systems,
vehicle tracking, vehicle diagnostics, preventive maintenance scheduling with alerts and tools to improve
fuel efficiency. Connected car encompasses following functional areas:
 Safety: Warning of road problems, sensing and preventing potential collisions or accidents.
 Infotainment: the ability to provide music, audio-video and information to passengers.

2.  Well-Being: optimization of the driver’s health and competence. e.g. Fatigue Detection
 Vehicle Management: to minimize operating cost, reducing pollution.
 Mobility management: Providing faster, safer, economical and fuel efficient driving parameters,
based on vehicle and surroundings data.
 Infrastructure Integration: Linking the car to home, office & other buildings
 Autonomous driving: Adaptive cruise control, Self-parking etc
.
Connected Vehicles Market Trends & Forecasts
 The increasing demand for smart features in a vehicle and the growing number of telematics
mandates by various governments are key drivers of the connected car market.
 Although 75% of all vehicles are assumed to be capable of Internet connectivity by 2020, or
around 220 million – only about 88 million of those cars will actually be activated end points
Here’s an interesting chart showing a historic as well as forecasted view of in-use cars having either kind
of connectivity, right from the latest one having all on-board connectivity to after-market OBD-II plug-ins
enabling connected. As one can clearly see, 2017 is going to witness the most prominent phase of
diminished after-market segment and an advent of on-board diagnostics.
Key Applications and Services in Connected Vehicle Space fueling the Growth
Following are the key applications/services driving the growth.
 Traffic & Parking Management: Optimal routes, Driver assistance, Lane management
 Connected Infrastructure (e.g. Smart Roads, Cities)
 Insurance – Usage Based Insurance, driving pattern monitoring & support
 Radio or Shared Taxi Service – e.g. Ola, Uber, Lyft
 Service Stations – Preventive care diagnostics and repair scheduling
Levels of Autonomous Vehicles

3. New vehicles are capable of some level of automation, in which the vehicle can make decisions and
control aspects of driving (e.g. advanced driver assistance, lane assist, park assist). Vehicle
manufacturers and technology companies are testing vehicles making decisions and take (i.e. self-
driving) control of part or all of a journey. Here’re the levels and their definition
1. Level 1 – No Automation: Human driver controlling the vehicle.
2. Level 2 – Specific Function - Automation: Automation of specific functions, such as cruise
control, lane guidance and automated parallel parking. Drivers are fully engaged and responsible
for overall vehicle control (hands on the steering wheel and foot on the pedal at all times).
3. Level 3 – Integrated Function Automation: Automation of multiple and integrated control
functions, such as adaptive cruise control with lane centering. Drivers are responsible for
monitoring the roadway and are expected to be available for control at all times, but under certain
conditions can disengaged from vehicle operation (hands off the steering wheel and foot off pedal
simultaneously).
4. Level 4 - Limited Self-Driving: Drivers can cede all safety-critical functions under certain
conditions and rely on the vehicle to monitor for changes in those conditions that will require
transition back to driver control. Drivers are not expected to constantly monitor the roadway.
5. Level 5 - Full Self-Driving: All functions and monitoring including driving & roadway conditions
monitoring is automated..
Challenges in adoption of Connected Vehicles
Technology companies and auto makers have different perspectives on autonomous vehicles. Auto
makers see autonomous driving technology as an add-on to existing platforms. They favor proprietary
technology tightly linked to hardware, emphasizing reliability and regulatory compliance with long
development cycles and closed systems.
Technology firms, on the other hand, see the connected car as a greenfield opportunity, with autonomous
driving as the starting point, less concerned about legacy systems. They value speed-to-market, rapid
product development and frequent iterations. They advocate for open platforms with standard protocols
deployable across vehicles series like Battery for example. Though consumer needs take priority with
them, auto-makers challenges them on reliability and durability aspects.
Other challenges in adoption of this technology are:
 Sharing of driving behavior data due to a fear of privacy breach
 Tempering of Telematics data
 Concerns on Location sharing especially for vehicles being used in sensitive functions
 Nostalgia or pleasure of Manual Drive i.e. having full control vs machine controlling the humans
Author’s view is that when product is made in collaboration with community then it is not biased, impartial
and usually free fro glitches. Technology firms may well be places better in their approach but only the
time will prove the either case.