Our VP of Automotive Design and Innovation Punitha Sinnapan spoke at the SBD Innovation Week 2020 recently. Several leaders in the areas of technology and mobility came together to discuss the latest industry trends. The event took place virtually over a four-day period and focused on topics such as ‘The future of towns and cities,’ ‘Digital Futurology,’ and ‘Agile Innovation.’
Punitha, Cubic Telecom’s subject matter expert, talked about the convergence of the connected car and smart infrastructure. Lots of industries are investing in digital transformation and connecting their products on a global scale.
According to a McKinsey estimate, connected cars create up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour. That is the equivalent of more than a month’s worth of 24-hour music streaming created in just one hour by the car. With unfathomable data volumes such as these, data farming will play a greater role in providing insights through the patterns that large amounts of data, when visualised, can communicate.
The automotive industry can be at the forefront in strategically using data insights to optimise driver experiences. With cars soon to be able to speak to each other and the infrastructure around them via V2V and V2X, those data volumes are only set to increase.
During Punitha’s talk she explained how we at Cubic Telecom help vehicle manufacturers connect their fleets to the outer world. This could be any transport vehicle, including trucks, motorcycles, and tractors. Cubic connects these via its own network and other world-leading network operators such as Vodafone and Orange. We currently enable this through 4G, and next year we will launch a project in Asia enabling access to 5G cellular infrastructure.
The main service Cubic offers is connectivity management which is designed to service the entire 15 years’ lifecycle of the vehicle. There are various components within this such as device lifecycle, data, and subscription management. Cubic’s connectivity management and insights solution offering comprises several components which are entirely unique, taking manufacturers a few steps further on the connected vehicle journey, such as:
-Localisation: Cubic’s localization feature detects first-time power-on of an IoT device anywhere in the world. It then combines zero-touch device registration and activates right profile to automatically onboard the device onto the local (or private) cellular network and chosen back-end cloud system, all 100% GSMA compliant.
-In- vehicle Wi-Fi hotspot: Cubic’s multi-APN feature, combines with other features from our connectivity management solution to enable an option for drivers to purchase their own data plan and connect all their multiple handheld/portable devices to the internet whilst enjoying their journey.
-Carrier of Choice: This feature provides an option to the driver to connect their vehicle connectivity system as an additional ‘device’ to their family plan (Cubic already live in US).
-Real-time alerting and monitoring: Cubic’s data management and insights solution has been transformed into a real-time monitoring and connectivity status solution. This helps vehicle manufacturers consolidate all network and vehicle data to monitor device connectivity health via a single platform. This solution is regarded as highly valuable by Cubic’s customers as it allows them understand their device deployment and to detect issues easily.
Punitha then gave an example of Cubic’s latest data management and insights solution, an emerging technology that Cubic was first-to-market with – PLXOR. PLXOR segments data traffic generated by apps in connected vehicles to provide manufacturers with a real-time view of the services being consumed by the fleet e.g. telemetry data, Google Maps, Amazon Music, Netflix etc.
PLXOR provides meaningful market insights about service usage patterns and performance through advanced reporting. This empowers vehicle manufacturers to segment service consumption by vehicle line and have a single point of visibility and control over the data flow for every connected vehicle across any market globally and mobile network.
Punitha highlighted that the journey doesn’t stop at the connected vehicle. With these unique service offerings from Cubic, vehicle manufacturers can seamlessly connect their fleets at scale with improved driver experience. With the ability to increase supply, infrastructure can evolve. New use cases such as smart parking, smart fuelling, e-charging and e-tolling are being added to the value chain.
Cubic is creating a global service integration framework connecting consumers and vehicle manufacturers to enable frictionless services. You can watch Punitha’s talk to learn more about the newest connected vehicle infrastructure in full here.
