Automotive IoT, connected car modules face rapid growth

April 7, 2017
The market for connected car and automotive Internet of Things (IoT) technology is poised for growth, even as the federal government and different segments of the industry tussle over technology standards.

The market for connected car and automotive Internet of Things (IoT) technology is poised for growth, even as the federal government and different segments of the industry tussle over technology standards.

According to a new report from Mobile Experts (Automotive IoT Devices 2016), the overall wireless IoT module shipments for automotive will triple from 200 million in 2015 to more than 600 million in 2021. There will be multiple radios used in each vehicle, and revenue from those modules will grow from $6 billion to $10.9 billion in 2021.

Semiconductor shipments for automotive IoT will grow roughly $5 billion in 2021.

The report covers telematics, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and IoT applications that use dedicated short range communications (DSRC), tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS), and 4G/LTE wireless technology. It also explores usage based insurance (UBI) and proposed 5G wireless technology.

The report also clarifies the difference between autonomous cars (which use sensors to control the vehicle) and connected cars, which use a mix of GSM, 3G, and LTE wireless networks to share data for maintenance and emergency communications.

The industry and federal government also hope to see increased use of V2V and V2I technology in order to increase safety through having cars communicate road conditions and traffic hazards to each other automatically, with the vehicles responding to those conditions faster than the driver can.

However, a proposed mandate for V2V technology that was first raised during the Obama administration is now on hold. It’s not clear exactly how the new administrators at the Department of Transportation will proceed.

Because of this delay, any mandate will likely not affect production vehicles until 2021. That delay also will exacerbate the conflict between different stakeholders who would like to see different technologies mandated. The auto industry supports DSRC, while mobile/wireless technology companies are supporting either Wi-Fi 802.11ax or LTE-V systems.

“A political battle is raging in the United States, with the auto industry pushing for the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Transportation to adopt DSRC using 802.11p,” says Joe Madden, principal analyst at Mobile Experts. “However, the wireless industry – led by Qualcomm – is pushing for extension of Wi-Fi into the 5.8 GHz band and LTE for V2V communications. The outcome of this politicized decision will have far-reaching implications, as many other countries are waiting for the USA to make the first move.”

Mobile Experts expects DSRC to ultimately win out because the technology is already proven and automakers are prepared to implement it in their vehicles. Switching to a different technology would delay implementation for years.

“Manufacturers have done driving tests at every imaginable speed under all conditions, so even though DSRC is not as mature or sophisticated as LTE it is ready to be put into production,” Madden says. “If they decide to use LTE or even 5G, they would have to restart that 10-year testing cycle.”

Madden doesn’t see a role for 5G in the car. In part, that’s because the actual technology specifications for 5G have yet to be defined. The technology will boost data rates and reliability, but no actual 5G devices or networks exist yet.

LTE systems will support telematics, and 802.11p DSRC systems will handle V2V communications in many cases. According to the report: “While advanced car platforms will be gathering huge amounts of data, we conclude that 5G is far too expensive to be useful in uploading the entire data stream. Most of the data gathered by cars will be processed locally, with small bursts of data uploaded to the cloud instead of fire-hose data streams.”

Madden thinks the V2V mandate will eventually go forward. “The auto companies prefer to move ahead with DSRC in the U.S. market, the testing is already done, they have products ready to go into production, and the manufacturers would like to go ahead with it,” Madden says. “Because of that, if auto industry lobbyists were to go to the Trump administration and push for it, there wouldn’t be any reason to not go forward with the mandate.”

V2I systems are unlikely to expand beyond the pilot stage because of a lack of funding, coordination and interoperability.

“[V2I] sounds like a great idea, but who will pay for it?” Madden says. “It’s likely there will be individual cities or state governments involved. Likely there will be some proactive cities doing this, but not that many. The number of roadside radio units deployed is going to be quite small, just in the thousands or tens of thousands per year.”

Mobile Experts also expects to see new business models coming into the market with UBI, fleet management, infotainment and improved safety. “It's important to note that autonomous cars collect huge amounts of data. This analysis makes some predictions about what cars will do with that data, and how much will be shared over the network,” Madden says.

UBI, toll collection and fleet management account for the majority of IoT modules on the market now. OEMs are also pressing forward with their own solutions, and a few insurance companies have made deals with GM and Ford to access their telematics data directly from embedded modems instead of the typical OBDII dongles.

Another emerging application is the use of Bluetooth devices to monitor tire pressure, in part as a response to mandates in Europe.

Ultimately, virtually every car sold will include a telematics mule. V2V will reach production levels of tens of millions per year, and nearly every new car will include a tire pressure monitoring system by 2021.

However, that ubiquity will raise privacy and security issues that the industry and regulatory agencies are only now beginning to wrestle with.

“The whole social issue of whether people accept the car tracking them, or the car taking over control of some operations, that still has to be proven,” Madden says. “You have lots of people who prefer to keep their own hands on the wheel. There are issues surrounding the privacy of information, and who can hack into the car. The legal issues aren’t settled about who can access the data.”

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