How the center stacks up

Jan. 23, 2014
For telematics to work the car has to have a connection. If customers see no value in what these systems provide they will not subscribe and you have one very expensive radio.

So here I am driving down the road and I decide I want to make a call on my brand new car’s trick “center stack.” It turns out that at the same time I am receiving a call from my friend Danny Sanchez who many of you know is a techie and designs websites.

So I try to stop dialing the first call and pick up Danny’s call. While I am doing that the navigation system is interrupting and telling me I have a turn coming up in like 6.7 miles blocking my access to the phone screen. By this point about 15 seconds has elapsed and I assume I have lost both calls and I am yelling at the center stack not realizing that the stupid thing has connected Danny who’s in stitches over me yelling at my radio.

As an industry we are all very concerned with telematics but I think a dose of reality needs to be injected. While my particular vehicle’s system is a least favorite with consumer magazines, other systems in other vehicles fail to bring a real value to the table beyond their integration of iPods and emergency phone services. This is further supported by the small percentage of vehicle owners who continue to pay for systems once the free trial subscription expires.

For telematics to work the car has to have a connection. If customers see no value in what these systems provide they will not subscribe and you have one very expensive radio. For telematics to be useful to anyone the value proposition has to be solved for a much larger portion of late model vehicle owners.

Should we keep our eye on telematics? You bet we should. The main concern, as I see it, is with vehicles that are performing software updates and sharing information from the vehicle’s network by wireless connections. It comes down to ownership of this information.

I expect that if I choose to drive my turbocharged hot rod in a spirited fashion that fact should stay between me, the car and the attentive law enforcement officer. More to the point, problems with the car that come up on the health check option is the area where we need to focus our attention. This is the type of data that a vehicle owner should have the ability to route as he or she sees fit. Maybe they want it sent to their independent repair shop instead of a dealer in their zip code or perhaps a father wants to keep tabs on the maintenance needs of his children’s car or I want to know when my wife has blown by her oil change interval. This is where the wallet gets involved and where the conversation with the aftermarket and the OE’s center stack designers needs to focus.

You might be surprised to know that the center stack is very contentious in the OE world too. It is constantly a source of safety concerns from distracted drivers or in my case, drivers experiencing road rage with their own vehicle.

The effectiveness of the bells and whistles in the center stack can ruin the reviews of vehicles that are otherwise complete successes. OE’s recognize the pitfalls and have been soliciting feedback from the aftermarket on how to manage the data. Of course their franchise dealers think that they should have first right of refusal on vehicle data making a tricky tightrope walk for the manufacturer who also recognizes that the majority of after warranty repairs occur outside of the dealer environment.

Another trip to Washington D.C. to ask the dysfunctional system there to help solve this seems almost certain to create more questions than answers. The time is right for working out the details while these systems are evolving and maturing into something that can send data where the customer directs it.

Watch for opportunities to comment and participate in discussions at upcoming trade events and please take the time to leave the comfort of your shop and get involved by understanding the issue and what your customer’s preferences would be. When we fail to provide thoughtful input to our suppliers and the industry at large we can only blame ourselves if the final outcome is not what we would like.

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