TORONTO – With connected car technology expected to be the norm in new vehicles very soon, the roll-out of increasingly feature-rich in-dash infotainment systems is slowly turning cars into gadgets. Industry experts who took part in a special panel called “The Connected Car – Dash to the Future” at Canadian Music Week in Toronto last week spoke about the impact the connected car will have on traditional radio businesses, while also addressing concerns about distracted driving and road safety.
“The car is really a gadget now,” said Rahul Misra, director of automotive sales engineering for Aha Radio, a division of Harman International. “It’s a gadget that can take you places, but it’s essentially becoming a gadget.” Aha Radio is an Internet radio and content-streaming app that can be embedded in smart dashboards. Misra said the car is becoming an extension of drivers’ digital lives. “It’s not about horsepower, it’s about how cool your entertainment system is,” Misra said.
He recounted his recent experience of buying a new car, saying more time was spent with the dealership salesperson understanding the in-dash entertainment system than the car’s actual driving features. “Ten minutes was on the paperwork, 10 minutes was actually showing me how the car worked, but 40 minutes was spent pairing my phone, (understanding) how to get connected. It was actually hilarious,” Misra said.
Misra predicted that by 2017 all new cars, not just high-end cars, will have either smartphone or embedded connectivity.
Some of the features currently available from various suppliers’ in-dash infotainment systems include satellite radio, HD radio, email access, web surfing, the ability to read USB devices or SD cards, built-in YouTube support and social media interfaces. The ability to pair a smartphone with a smart dashboard, or centre stack, allows drivers to access their existing phone apps, such as local traffic or parking information apps, plus music-streaming apps.
“We’re in a changing world,” said David Taylor, director of connected services for Panasonic Automotive Systems. “It’s a time that’s requiring us to invent new technologies on the fly, to invent new processes, procedures, and to deliver faster and faster to the automaker, and ultimately to the consumer… It’s changing the way we approach driver distraction. It’s changing the way we approach security and safety. It’s changing the way we even look at things like e-commerce in the car. Most of that we’re actually having to invent with the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) as we go through car development. That’s a very exciting proposition, but it’s also a very difficult and challenging proposition at the same time.”
Fred Dixon, technology planning manager for General Motors of Canada, said GM has had Bluetooth support for pairing phones in its cars for 10 years. This summer, GM will be adding Wi-Fi support to its vehicles through its new OnStar 4G LTE system. This will allow smartphone users to experience the same seamless Wi-Fi connectivity in their cars as they have at home or in the office.
“Today as you walk into your home or your office, if you have Wi-Fi there, it allows you to connect right away and do the things that you normally do, whether it’s surf the Internet or stream video or just have your email access. So what we’ve done is we’re bringing that experience into the car,” Dixon told Cartt.ca in an interview after the panel discussion.
“Is that car of tomorrow, that car of 2020, going to look like KITT from Knight Rider or is it going to have some limits upon it?” – Jeff Vidler, Audience Insights
When asked about the safety concerns raised by drivers surfing the Internet in their cars, Dixon said: “Safety is a very important aspect of what we do at GM around vehicles. A lot of the systems we put in place are around minimizing driver distraction.” He explained to Cartt.ca that the OnStar interface is designed to remove the need for drivers to pick up their devices to access their phone apps. “The things that you would want to access, like weather, those are things we’re going to build in as apps on the vehicle screen, so you’re not picking up your device to get that information,” Dixon said.
“As far as other aspects around safety in the vehicle, ultimately it is the customer who is going to use the Wi-Fi in the way they use it,” Dixon told Cartt.ca.
Prior to the panel discussion on the connected car, Jeff Vidler, president of industry research firm Audience Insights, said 18% of Canadian survey respondents said they or someone in their household has some kind of in-dash infotainment system. He said most automotive industry analysts predict the connected car will become the norm by 2020. “Is that car of tomorrow, that car of 2020, going to look like KITT from Knight Rider or is it going to have some limits upon it? One of those things is going to be how does the public feel about distracted driving and some of these things that impact on distracted driving?” Vidler asked.
As part of its survey, Vidler’s company asked commuters what they considered to be too distracting for safe driving. Checking map apps for traffic information was cited by 61% of respondents as being too distracting for safe driving. In addition, 50% of surveyed commuters said voice-activated access to social networks was also an unsafe activity while driving.
It should be encouraging to traditional radio broadcasters that 83% of Canadian car commuters who were surveyed said they always or usually listen to AM/FM radio in the car. And the longer their commute time, the more they rely on AM/FM radio, Vidler said. In fact, 89% of commuters said they would listen to some kind of content on AM/FM radio in their cars, even if all other music options were available to them, Vidler said. Furthermore, 73% of drivers with a commute time of more than an hour said they wouldn’t buy a car without an AM/FM radio installed, Vidler said.
GM Canada’s Dixon told Cartt.ca the automaker has no plans to get rid of AM or FM radio in its cars, saying he expects AM/FM radio to be available generally speaking for the foreseeable future.
“As we bring more and more connectivity into the vehicle and customers have choices, they will gravitate to the things they want to listen to,” Dixon said. “I think the ability to listen to local radio is still going to be very, very important. The question is do you listen to local radio through your AM/FM dial, or do you do it through… some other Internet-based media that’s still taking that local media but delivering it to you in a different way?”
Also on the panel was George Lynch, vice-president of automotive business development for Internet radio service Pandora. His advice to traditional radio broadcasters was to focus on local content because that’s what drives people to use their broadcast radio service.
“There are people out there who are going to want to listen to Howard Stern…They’re going to want to listen to the Toronto Blue Jays on their local radio station. They’re going to want to listen to news, weather, traffic and sports reporting in the morning,” Lynch said. “So as far as broadcasters are concerned, that’s their bread and butter. They’ve got to stick with that, and they’ve got to do it well.”
Bob Struble, president and CEO of HD radio technology developer iBiquity Digital Corp., spoke about a potential revenue-generator for traditional radio broadcasters in Canada – the broadcast of real-time traffic data over HD radio bandwidth. (Trouble is, no Canadian radio stations have gone digital in this way.)
“Basically, for free, the user gets traffic incidents, accidents, construction, delays, plotted onto their nav screen,” Struble said. “The business model is fairly interesting for broadcasters. It’s free to the consumer for the life of the car, and the OEM pays the station group, the network, a per-unit fee, a per-vehicle fee, in return for providing that service for the life of the vehicle.
“If you figure $10, $15, $20 a car, on millions of cars, that becomes really interesting money for broadcasters,” Struble said. “There are plenty of different ways to get traffic in the car. You can get it through Sirius. You can get it through 3G. You can get it through other services. This is a free over-the-air service and helping to ring the cash register for broadcasters.”
In the U.S., this service is being implemented by two separate nationwide radio networks: one by Clear Channel, and the other by a group of broadcasters, OEMs and car companies, such as Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and Mazda.
