With innovation of IoT in the couple of years, the auto industry is one of the top adopters. IoT has been transforming Automobile Industry and leveraging it mainly for promising safety, preventive maintenance and other infotainment purposes. It in the Automobile Industry is becoming a key differentiator and influences the customer purchase decision to a large extent mainly due to following reasons:

• Enhanced customer experience – increases brand loyalty
• Competitive edge – USPs
• Additional revenue source through license subscription and other pay-per-use features
• Analytics, insights and product improvement from the collected data
• Product version upgrades via Over-the-air, Online push etc.
• Autonomous vehicles
• Real-time monitoring
• Preventive maintenance alerts and notifications

But as they say ‘It’s easier said than done’ – there are many impediments for the successful implementation and adoption of IoT in Automobile Industry:

• Interoperability – Seamless integration of IoT devices with the traditional ERPs and legacy applications has been one of the biggest challenge
• No single player or consortium governing the regulatory policy for this domain – most organization have acknowledged this as a potential risk
• Inadequate infrastructure – High availability and zero downtime environment, uninterrupted data connectivity and speed etc
• Lack of skilled resources with domain expertise
• Higher cost of IoT sensors, connectivity and maintenance
• Complex ecosystem
• Ubiquity – Multiple sockets, applications, devices etc.

Learn from bigger economies

Above challenges are more relevant for a developing economy like India. However, there are a lot of learning that can be leveraged from the Global best countries such as Germany who are quite far in this journey:

• Customer-centric approach to ensure faster approach compared to standard manual features
• No single fit for all – Manufacturer and Brand should keep their respective segment and brand ethos into consideration while conceptualizing the IoT roadmap
• Vernacular and local language support is a critical success factor
• Secured solution – To avoid hacking incidents where someone took the control of vehicles
• Factory-fitted solution compared to custom-fit especially in the developing world to increase the customer confidence
• Continuous data analytics to draw insights and improve the product, reduce maintenance cost etc.

How connected is the Auto industry?

An IoT statistics states that the total number of connected devices will reach around 30 billion by 2020.

As per Business Insider’s premium research service, it is expected that 94 million connected cars to ship in 2021, and 82% of all cars shipped will be connected with IoT based device.

Hence,

it’s quite imperative for all the manufacturers to have necessary readiness to embark on this journey effectively.

EXPLORING NEW AVENUES

While all the major players are working independently, there’s a need to explore avenues of coming together and perhaps form an IoT consortium, as it’ll benefit the entire ecosystem.

Technology giants like Google, Microsoft, SAP can also take a lead and join hands to come up with a comprehensive and cost effective platform for the Automobile industry.

Many niche players are already operating in the market who can join the bandwagon and bring vale to the table. Clearly, the need of the hour is to come together and ride this wave together smoothly.

Iot is the new revolution

IoT coupled with Industry 4.0 will revolutionise en tire Automobile industry in coming years and shift the power in customers hands. In the sense, that customer will be able to design, customize his vehicle through digital tools.

The same will be moved to production using other key levers of Industry 4.0 thereby reducing the lead time.

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