Connected vehicle UX expectations

User expectations are set through interaction with consumer IoT, but why doesn't automotive IoT compare favourably?

Beam Team
Rob
March 12, 2021

I recently sat down with Zenzic, the driving force behind the UK's Connected and Autonomous Vehicle industry, to discuss today's connected vehicle solutions and our progression through the Zenzic CAM Scale-Up programme.

See the interview here on LinkedIn.

Great expectations

In the session I unpack why connected vehicle experiences today are not what users expect and why procurement policy in the automotive industry componds these problems. The expectation of a good user experience is driven by consumer IoT, an industry that iterates faster than automotive and has an end-to-end delivery approach with fewer barriers.

There are two key delivery themes that hold automotive IoT solutions back:

  1. Supplier fragmentation - We have seen the tendency for OEMs to source the subsystems of a connected vehicle solution from many different vendors; as many as 5-6 vendors in some cases*. This leads to a lack of systems engineering, end-to-end understanding and responsibility for performance.  
  2. Lack of iteration - Because every vendor is just focused on doing their job, it creates significant friction to any kind of change resulting in a rigid, waterfall delivered solution. A connected solution, unlike most components of a vehicle, needs to embrace change through its lifetime - even if the OEM's requirements don't change, user expectations, the regulatory environment, mobile OSs and the cybersecurity climate are always evolving.

At Beam Connectivity we provide the complete, end-to-end solution - Connected Vehicle as a Service, CVaaS. Part of our value is understanding and safely managing change to the entire stack through the lifetime of the solution.

As ever, please get in touch at hello@beamconnectivity.com if you want to discuss any of this.

* If you were wondering: TCU hardware, TCU embedded software, cloud platform software, mobile apps, cellular channel management, platform operations

Image credit: UpTop Corp, https://www.uptopcorp.com/blog/makes-great-iot-user-experience/

Internet of Things