The automotive industry is in the midst of its most significant technology revolution in the last 100 years. As a result, automotive manufacturers are heavily investing to modernize all aspects of their business including but not limited to vehicle development, testing, manufacturing, sales, service, and lifecycle management. Although these modernization goals are broad and comprehensive, there is one key commonality that spans each of these domains and that is to unlock the power of data. The connected vehicle is a primary pillar that automotive manufacturers are building their all-inclusive data strategy around.
Yet, this thinking about the need to drive connectivity and data access to and from all vehicle systems and subsystems is relatively new for automotive manufacturers. IDC had previously seen a majority of manufacturers isolate the reach and influence of their connected vehicle organizations to focus on specific critical use cases and regulatory requirements. Thankfully, this changed when manufacturers raised the profile of vehicle connectivity to a board-level, top-down initiative, which in turn forced the people, process, and technology changes necessary to shift connectivity from being seen as a cost to an integral business and customer enabler.