While car makers around the world are developing traditional embedded telematics systems for deployment worldwide, a secondary market in embedded (ie. line fit) and aftermarket modules intended to meet local mandates for eCall, vehicle tracking and road charging are proliferating. Mandates in such diverse locations as The Netherlands and Brazil are feeding this frenzy and new suppliers with new solutions are emerging on the scene on a weekly basis.
The six most prominent applications driving demand and interest - among suppliers, car makers and service providers – are pay-as-you-drive insurance (PAYD), the European eCall mandate, the Brazilian stolen vehicle recovery mandate, eHorizon map-as-a-sensor offerings, road charging (The Netherlands, France, Germany) and buy-here-pay-here solutions. Each one of these opportunities represents millions of devices to be sold and installed although, interestingly, the service opportunities are more limited with only PAYD, SVR and buy-here-pay-here promising any service revenue. Road charging in The Netherlands alone represents an 8M unit build with 300K-500K units/annually going forward.
PAYD is the highest profile opportunity in the industry today with Octo-Telematics leading the way in Europe with more than 1M installed devices in use. Smaller players are multiplying throughout the continent, though, as insurers recognize the opportunity to take customers from competitors, reward their own “best” customers, and gather better data for determining risk. Progressive is the market leader in the U.S., but with competition fierce in the automotive insurance industry, PAYD will be embraced nationwide. Not coincidentally, Octo-Telematics has partnered with Directed Electronics to tackle the U.S. market.
After PAYD, the Brazilian mandate for stolen vehicle tracking and vehicle immobilization has attracted as much attention as PAYD with several companies claiming design-in wins. There were some hiccoughs on the way to achieving a nationwide mandate, but the latest indications are that 100% of vehicles produced in Brazil will be obliged to be fitted with tracking devices enabled for vehicle immobilization. The compromise that allows the mandate to move forward leaves the service provisioning to the customer’s discretion.
Road charging, an application already widely deployed in the fleet industry, is coming to passenger cars to reduce emissions, traffic, and accident rates. The volumes for road charging will be significant and suppliers are circling.
The eHorizon solutions, in module form, offered by Navteq/Magneti Marelli/ST Microelectronics and lately demonstrated by Intermap/Visteon offer to integrate map and road elevation data into advanced driver assistance applications. The volumes here will grow, but the rate will be slow as consumers gradually come to embrace emerging safety systems.
Buy-here-pay-here modules used by both new and used car resellers to track and immobilize customers that miss payments is the most well-established of all the module-related opportunities. Players in the industry have recently coalesced around the Payment Assurance Technology Association (http://www.patassociation.com/index.php) to raise the profile of this vital application as a legitimate segment worthy of attention and respect. No doubt demand has never been higher given current economic decisions.
Supplier approaches to module mania range from application specific solutions to all-purpose devices not only suitable to multiple uses but remotely configurable and integrated with Website access. ABS T&T, which has partnered with Continental, distributes a multipurpose module for tracking and telematics applications ranging from shipment tracking to stolen vehicle recovery and telematics.
NXP offers its ATOP module which it describes as the world’s first single component on board unit (OBU) capable of supporting ITS applications, stolen vehicle tracking, PAYD applications, last mile tracking (automotive black box) as well as enabling ADAS systems. The device can be configured with a wide range of connectivity including GSM, CAN, near field communication (NFC, USB, and GPS and also enables downloadable applications.
Whether purpose-built or all-purpose, module makers are proliferating spurred on by government mandates as well as new and existing commercial opportunities from both the consumer telematics and fleet market segments. This is precisely the right stimulus package for an automotive industry on the mend.