Aftermarket association leaders, OEMs meet to discuss telematics

March 20, 2015
For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, aftermarket leaders sat in the same room with vehicle manufacturers to have a discussion about telematics.

Early in February there was an industry meeting that was significant. For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, aftermarket leaders sat in the same room with vehicle manufacturers to have a discussion.

The outcome was not nearly as important as the fact that almost 70 leaders who have often been described as the Hatfields and McCoys talked for three hours seeking an understanding of the challenges and the aftermarket’s needs related to telematics in present and future vehicles.

One other significant milestone of this meeting was that the presentation made by the auto repair segment was jointly developed by the Automotive Service Association (ASA), New England Service Station and Automotive Repair Association (NESSARA), Automotive Service Councils of California (ASC-CA) and the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of Minnesota (AASP-MN). Rusty Savignac, President of NESSARA presented on behalf of the repair segment.

The rest of the aftermarket was represented by the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA), The Auto Care Association, American Automobile Association (AAA), Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA), The Coalition for Auto Repair Equality (CARE), NAPA, Alldata, The Equipment and Tool Institute (ETI), Mahle, Bosch and The Automotive Industries Association – Canada (AIA).

Twelve auto manufacturers were present including BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, VW/Audi. The majority of the automaker representatives came from engineering or public policy within their respective organizations. The associations that represent these automakers, the Auto Alliance and Global Automakers, were present as well with Steve Douglas senior director, Environmental Affairs for the Auto Alliance making a presentation on behalf of both associations. A presentation also was made on behalf of tool manufacturers by Kathy Kedzior, manager, business development Mahle Powertrain LLC.

Now that I have made it through the alphabet soup part I think you can see the significance of this gathering. So with all of these folks in the room what were we trying to accomplish? The area of telematics could very well become one of the more contentious topics to affect vehicle owners, vehicle manufacturers, repair professionals and the companies that support them.  Security concerns have been at the forefront with each segment offering up various ideas to resolve them. Add in the almost simultaneous action on Capitol Hill, the revelation that BMW vehicles can be hacked and this issue could heat up quickly.

As the driving force behind making this gathering happen, ASA believes that if the industry can find ways to solve these issues together, including all of the stakeholders, we will be much less likely to find ourselves fighting regulations that limit the ability of the entire industry to bring creative and customer friendly new services or improvements to drivers.

What did we accomplish? We proved that it can happen. Competing trade associations can cooperate and aftermarket groups can sit down with OEMs and have a conversation. If you get the unique opportunity that I do to talk candidly with people on both sides of the aftermarket/OE equation you would hear that we have some distance to travel. Years of distrust often lead to strongly held beliefs from both camps that sound, from my perspective, a little paranoid.

While I am certain there are folks in the OEM camp that just don’t want to play with the aftermarket there are many that do. The enlightened people and companies that recognize that nearly 80 percent of after warranty repair happens in an independent shop also recognize that independents are going to recommend cars made by companies that do not create impediments to getting customers cars repaired.

In mainstream vehicles, the companies that have done the best retaining customers from vehicle to vehicle have done so by making the repair of their vehicles drama free. Luxury brands are growing in sales. While many of these vehicles have been niche with dealers having a larger percentage of the repair pie compared to other makes I think that these are manufacturers who are going to have to look very closely at their business model to continue to compete with the mainstream brands that are clearly making better luxury cars every model year.

The aftermarket also has a role in this and I think that the leaders present at this meeting recognize that a little good will can go a long way. We also have to do our best to explain our situation and show that the development of methods for the aftermarket to utilize these vehicle technologies will actually be adopted.  

Back in 2002 OEMs built websites that were going to keep all of us who repair cars in business and 13 years later there are technicians in my classes that still are not aware that they exist. The other side of that coin is that the aftermarket did a really good job of licensing and organizing that information into their various products. By and large that is the desire with telematics; make the data available so that it can be used to create useful products that vehicle owners want, more effective means of predicting service needs, diagnosing and repairing vehicles.

The devil is in the details. I am going to do some generalizing. Certainly there are some who will not agree with my assessment and that is fine. I think most OEMs agree that the information generated by a customer should belong to the customer. I am quite sure that they all agree that it should be protected from those who would do bad things with it.

One logical scheme would be to just open up the data transmission of the vehicles and require certain protocols to read it and place the operational portions of the vehicle behind a firewall. This is not very popular with OEMs because they say it will limit innovation early in the product cycle. Balanced against multiple different protocols and what happened with BMW maybe considering at least a loose set of common security protocols might become attractive to manufacturers.

Another scheme is to route all data through an OE server and parse it out to the aftermarket on demand. Not popular with the aftermarket because it would mean that the OEMs would have an advantage in knowing what is asked for and a good idea of how it is used. Groups like AAA think that it would be too slow a method to be useful in tracking a member who is broken down. They would like real time access and that makes sense too. This is a key component that has to be resolved before any movement can take place but it is only one of the potential issues to resolve.

The parting shot is that these are highly technical issues that should be solved by technical people who are the stakeholders with the driving public as the real test of the outcome. The vehicle owner must feel the right balance between security and technology for any of these products to be viable. Millennials are not as concerned about privacy as their parents so one size will not fit all. There will likely come a time when lawmakers will need to be involved but the more we work together and present a functional plan vetted by the experts the less likely we are to end up with unintended circumstances.

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