Connected Car Data Is the New Oil
Last November, Intel CEOBrian Krzanichstood on stage at the LA Auto Show and proclaimed, “data is the new oil.” This is not a news, of course.For years, tech companies from Google to Facebook have drilled for data shared by connected devices and tapped into geysers of cash.
Now that cars are becoming connected, automakers and others want in on the data-for-dollars boom. It’s estimated thatover 380 million connected carswill be on the road by 2021 globally,more than double the number now. The data they generate will be red meat to marketers since they’ll be able to log people’s location, driving habits, in-car entertainment choices, and more, while automakers and others will be able to better predict maintenance issues and provide other services to keep customers happy and loyal.
The automotive industry is still in the veryearly stages of figuring out how to cash in on connected car data. Through several partnerships and acquisitions focused on advancing vehicle connectivity and refining data analytics, automotive mega supplier Delphi’s recent moves give a glimpse of what the future of driving data collection could look like—and how automakers could turn massive amounts of car data into big bucks.
Delphi recently acquired a minority stake in two Israeli companies. One, Valens, develops chips that can move data up to six times faster within vehicles than current technology. The other, Otonomo, has designed an agnostic data collection platform that can serve as a broker between automakers and third parties.
These latest investments in connected car big data solutions are part of a larger and long-term strategy by Delphi. In 2015, the company purchased data-analytics start-up Control-Tec, while earlier this year it acquired Movimento, which provides over-the-air software update capabilities for automotive applications.
If you put together the pieces of Delphi’s acquisition strategy, it’s easy to get a larger picture of where the company—and the auto industry—is headed with connected car data.
