Emerging standards are keys to telematics success

Technology is having a huge impact on the automotive aftermarket, from the way distributors and customers share information to the types of systems that will be incorporated into future vehicle platforms. Staying abreast of those technology developments will be a large part of the responsibilities of the Auto Care Association’s new director of emerging technologies, Joe Register.

Register, who previously led Prescient Technologies Group, joined the association in January as director of technology solutions to help lead development of next-generation of automotive technology standards and solutions. He will also serve as the technology architect focused on future vehicle telematics solutions.

While telematics will be a key focus, Register says that his role and the organizations’ technology activities will be highly dynamic, and are still being defined. “There are so many different technologies coming on the scene, whether that’s the information being sent from the vehicle, autonomous driving, or collision avoidance,” Register says. “And there are other things as well, like new composite materials in the vehicles that we are also looking at.”

Over the next year, however, the primary focus will be on standards development around telematics and vehicle communication. Register is involved with the ISO Technical Committee (TC) 204, which is defining the way in which vehicles can connect to intelligent transportation systems that support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems.

The standards work will be increasingly important for the aftermarket, as OEMs attempt to limit access to vehicle diagnostic data and communications. In fact, the OEM standardization effort is focused on a separate ISO committee, and aims to put an OEM infrastructure network between the vehicle and anything else it connects to in the future.

“That’s a concern for a number of folks, because it affects how the information could get from a vehicle to another vehicle or to the infrastructure controlling traffic systems,” Register says. There also is a huge governance issue around security and who will establish security processes.

“The OEMs see themselves in that role, but we see more of a third-party or government oversight that will provision certificates and the keys required to access vehicle data,” Register says. “We have focused on a vision that is aligned with the Department of Transportation's intelligent transportation system vision, and that will provide ubiquitous access.”

Currently, most aftermarket telematics solutions rely on dongle-style devices that plug into the OBD-II port and communicate via a cellular connection. That model could be in jeopardy, however, as OEMs work to limit access to data that isn’t specifically required to be made available under current laws.

“As more attention gets paid to the flow of information, there is a potential that the information that isn’t directly provisioned under legislation will disappear over time,” Register says. “The OEMs will only provide access to what is absolutely necessary. It could compromise some of those aftermarket implementations.”

The industry also will have to focus on how to utilize and protect other types of information – including driving behavior data, location data, and other driver-specific information that is also generated by these in-vehicle systems.

Bracing for new technologies

While telematics has been a hot topic in the aftermarket for years, Register sees other important emerging technology areas that aren’t necessarily getting as much attention, but could have a huge impact on the industry. Those include:

• Autonomous vehicles: According to Register, there is a tremendous amount of development effort on the part of companies like Tesla and Google, as well as via government- and industry-sponsored testing programs and initiatives. While self-driving cars have been heavily hyped, the ramifications on the automotive sector and the aftermarket specifically are still unclear. “There is a lot of potential in the technology, but we haven’t gotten it all nailed down yet,” Register says “People are just beginning to understand what the implications are.”

• EPA fuel economy requirements: After 2018, fuel economy standards are poised to become significantly more stringent. That could have a huge affect on the types of materials used for vehicle lightweighting, as well as on many other components and assemblies.

“I don’t know that very many people in the industry area aware of what is even happening right now,” Register says. “It will have an impact on aftermarket parts and availability going forward. We have to make sure the industry has access to information and can remanufacture those parts. No one knows about the materials being used and how that will look going forward.”

• Network compatibility: As vehicles include more communication solutions, including infotainment, telematics and V2V and V2I solutions, Register says that there could be interference issues between the different systems.

“All of these applications take up bandwidth, and it’s unclear how all of these different networks in the vehicle will co-exist without running into each other,” Register says. “It’s also not clear how, when there are different wireless carriers involved, all of these solutions will cooperate.”

Subscribe to Aftermarket Business World and receive articles like this every month….absolutely free. Click here.