5. No more delivery or service windows
Everyone has had the experience of sitting and waiting at home for something to be delivered (and waiting, and waiting). Luckily, when it’s just an order from Seamless the delay is little more than half an hour. But with service repair calls or big deliveries like furniture or appliances you can often be stuck at home all day.
Enterprises could benefit from delivery or service apps that let customers track drivers in real time and communicate with the vehicles. A Verizon repairperson runs late on their first job of the day? A quick customer update via a company app lets everyone waiting at home better schedule their time. Better client communication means better business.
6. Geofencing
With federal regulation still lagging behind technology, there’s no clear protocol on just how “connected” cars can be without compromising safety. But safety must be a primary focus for the enterprise. As connectivity increases in enterprise cars, the likelihood of driver distraction also increases: an employee wearing Google Glass, while listening to the radio, while receiving a call on their cell phone, while looking at a GPS device, etc., can lead to accidents.
One solution that’s been proposed is geofencing. This is when a car can sense, based on GPS data, whether it’s safe to be using a device. That means in bad traffic or on busy city streets, internet connectivity could be disabled automatically. Another potential option to increase safety could be the use of preset smart watches that ring or vibrate when the speed limit is being exceeded.
7. An App for Everyone
The automotive space is seeing a huge influx in useful apps - and rather than just letting the tech space fill the void, the automotive industry is taking an active role in their creation.
Ford recently hosted the Connected Car-Connected City App Pursuit which challenged designers to create apps based on data from Ford vehicles while AT&T Drive unveiled six new apps in September from developers like AccuWeather and iHeartRadio - giving car companies a wider option of what to include in its connected car packages and making it easier for businesses to tailor their fleet to their needs.
8. A hacking scandal
While the benefits of connected cars are numerous, the potential challenges include the possibility of cybercrime, of course. Major retailers like Target, Home Depot, and Victoria’s Secret, along with banks and government offices have all been subject to high profile hacks. And as soon as cars are connected they become vulnerable to the same kind of security breach, which raises concerns about everything from compromised in-car payment systems to “hijackers” who could remotely take control of a vehicle. This means security against cybercrime is going to be an important part of the connected car conversation. And the more secure the network - the more attractive that product will be to enterprises.
While the technology for all of the above already exists in some form or another, we’re interested to see how enterprise moves to take advantage of this technology.
