Connected & Smart Vehicle Technology

Barry Einsig, Global Automotive and Transportation Executive, Cisco, informs, “As connectivity, computing and storage increase within connected vehicles, they will enable greater machine learning that allows for better predictions and interactions. These will also allow over-the-air updates that will help increase the useful life of the vehicle. For example, by scheduling repairs before a breakdown occurs enhances the life of the vehicle.
Over-the-air updates also enable the vehicle to continuously evolve, becoming more advanced in safety, health maintenance, passenger comfort and convenience over the life of the vehicle.”

Role of the Government

The primary role of the government should be to improve safety, mobility and efficiency of its people. This includes studying what other regions have done and learning the strengths & weakness of those systems, as well as setting proper requirements and standards. There is a tremendous amount to be done but there are decades of research and testing from all regions of the world that can be used to help set the best direction forward. Once the direction is set, the government should focus on the essential role within those requirements & standards, and allow the industry & market to deliver those requirements and innovate on top of them. This will deliver the safety and highest quality systems to the Indian vehicle industry, resulting in the best systems for the country and ideally aligning with the global standards. This way, in addition to enabling mobility for their own country, the participants can become exporters of their vehicles and technologies to the rest of the world.

Sirish Batchu cites, “The Government intervention is also required in a few areas: It needs to look at the potential and opportunities these connected vehicles can bring in through various forums. M2M forum and SIAM are two such forums. SIAM has given lot of recommendations to the different ministries in the past, including the RFID regulation. It was made mandatory for all the OEMs to put the RFID tags.

It is mandatory for all trucks in China to have telematics device for tracking in order to bring overall efficiency at the system level.

Similarly, on the public transport also there is a lot of utility. These are the areas where government can pitch in – not just by bringing in the regulation but also by enforcing it so that it is seen to be utilized.

There is no single company, government or entity that can achieve the benefits of connected vehicle technology on its own. Government agencies can think of the types of data they can make available to support the connected vehicle experiences like making accurate and fresh data available on road construction, lane closures and traffic signals that can facilitate better navigation and traffic flow.