Fighting for the touchscreen

Although I am sure that more than one family ends up fighting for control of the touchscreen in their car to get their preferred audio source or climate settings, the fight I am referring to is one that is happening in the background, but which will undoubtedly affect us all as car users, and many of us involved in the industry, regardless of who we work for, or what our role is.  That relates to the various battles being fought out between different players and with regulatory authorities about who provides the interface in the car through the ever-larger touchscreens, and the control of the data that sits behind them.  There have been a few recent events that trigger my interest, all covering different aspects, but highlighting how the superficially straightforward concept of replacing analogue switches and instruments with one or more touchscreens that provide all the information you need in the car and allow you to control almost all the settings.

Most recently, the resignation of Herbert Diess ‘by mutual agreement’ as head of the Volkswagen Group is partially being attributed to delays and budget overruns on the development of a proprietary software platform through the new business unit Cariad.  These problems have also led to slow product launches, delayed roll-out of features and customer dissatisfaction with reliability and promised upgrades.  Such problems are not unique to VW – other brands have also chosen to strengthen their skills and develop their own operating systems that control the vehicle functions and enable new features like ‘over-the-air’ (OTA) updates and new revenue streams like ‘features on demand’ (FoD) – a topic that I wrote about last week.  Despite the technical challenges and the scarcity of resources when most industries are responding to the ‘internet of things’, it is understandable that manufacturers see this as a core competence that they must control, and also unsurprising that they are finding it challenging.

However, other manufacturers have been attracted by the alternative approach of working with companies who are software engineers at heart, with Volvo choosing to develop their Operating System, VolvoCars.OS as an integrating system that links software provided by external parties such as Google and NVIDIA.  Anyone who is familiar with developing and maintaining APIs to link products of different software providers might see that as even scarier than the totally proprietary system – only time will tell as the products arrive.  The announcement last month by Apple of the latest version of CarPlay potentially goes a step further.  Rather than simply mirroring the functionality on your iPhone, the latest version is capable of integrating with the car functionality as well, allowing you to control vehicle functions such as heating, and displaying the status of car systems through the CarPlay display, rather than on the carefully-crafted digital displays produced by the manufacturers.  Although Apple claims to be in discussions with a number of manufacturers, it is unclear who if any will take the potentially giant leap towards surrendering a significant part of their interior imaging to Apple.  They will also have to trust Apple with the information needed to control vehicle functions without them then being able to divert revenue away from their own FoD business to the AppStore, or (hopefully inadvertently) causing issues by changing safety critical functions.

The third related area concerns the continuing battle of independents for the same access to vehicle data as OEM authorised repairers in order to maintain their competitiveness.  This is currently a debate running alongside the Block Exemption Regulation discussions covered by my colleague Andrew Tongue at our recent Summer Meeting, and pitches the OEMs who only want to allow independent access to vehicle data through a remote database against the independents who would ideally like to be able to access the vehicle directly, obtain data and send updates.  In the latter case, the independents would be on an absolutely equal footing with an authorised repairer.  I am sure that they would like this to include the potential to send messages to the car driver with service or maintenance alerts.  A consultation period finished last month, and the Commission’s conclusions will be published in the next couple of months.  That will then lead into a staged implementation process related to when Type Approval is issued for new vehicles.

We therefore have a three-cornered fight under way for control of the touchscreen and the vehicle data between the manufacturers, third party tech giants and the independent repairer sector.  You can imagine the potential for some alliances amongst the parties – repairer chains could favour an expanded role for CarPlay if that gives them a back door (and possibly simpler technical solution) to offer an iPhone app that allows them to build stronger relationships with car drivers.  On the other hand, manufacturers might decide that they would rather work with the devil they know than the devil they don’t, and make concessions on data access to the independents rather than have them team up with the tech giants.

This is not a fight that will be settled in weeks or months, but it will make a fundamental difference to how your car looks and feels when you are sat at the wheel, and the opportunities for manufacturers and their dealers to generate the hoped-for high profit business in this digital age.  Coming up, round one …