Connected Cars: A Not-Too-Distant Future...

I’m going to tell you a story about someone who lives in the near future. This person could be your neighbour, your friend, you or even me.

This isn’t some extrapolated imaginary world. This is the future that we will all live in. The technology that I mention isn’t a matter of ‘if’ but merely ‘how soon’ it will arrive. In some cases the tech is already available; in others it’s just a matter of years away.

And overall, the whole scenario will be fully operational and functional in just ten short years.

In this future the world might not necessarily appear all that different, but really it’s a world far more connected than you ever thought possible.

You wake up in the morning and the very first thing you do is grab your phone off the bedside table and see if you’ve had any emails, tweets, or messages overnight. The next thing you do is say good morning to your partner and then get out of bed. (This might be exactly how you wake up every morning now…)

As you head into the kitchen, you put your phone down on the bench. Immediately it syncs with your home system; your favourite morning tune pops onto the kitchen speakers, and your preferred morning TV station appears on the screen by the kitchen table.

An alert then pops up on the wall screen that the kids are stirring and about to get up. You faintly hear the sounds of their favourite music from each of their rooms. The alert also informs you to get peanut butter, toast, orange juice and cornflakes ready, as this is what the kids prefer first thing in the morning.

After everyone’s gone through their morning rituals, you get yourself ready for work. You literally speak, to no one in particular, ‘home, almost ready to head to work.’

Although you can’t see it, the car in the driveway just turned on and is adjusting the internal temperature to your favourite setting. And since your partner had driven the car last, the seat and steering wheel are now adjusting to your height and reach settings.

As you finish up inside the house, you ask the house if you’re the last one to leave. The house responds with a calming ‘yes’. As you head outside, the music you had playing during the morning follows you out the door. As you close the front door and get into the car, the house detects your proximity, and locks and turns off everything.

Also as you reached the car, it detected your proximity and authenticated you through your smartphone (biometrically secured to you and you only), and opened the door for you. As you sit inside the car you notice the music that was playing earlier has continued on from the exact same spot as when you left the house.

In your car, you’re still driving, although those new self-driving cars seem to be more common on the roads. On your way to work you car alerts you that you used the last of the peanut butter this morning and there’s none left in the pantry for the kids in the morning.

Your car asks if you’d like to buy some more peanut butter. You tap yes on the centre console. The car also reminds you that you’re out of a list of other groceries, and asks would you like to replenish your order? You’re not sure. So you tell your car to call your partner.

The car immediately dials up your partner and you ask if you should stock up on the new groceries. They agree, and you again tap yes on the car centre console. The order confirms and notifies the supermarket to pick the order. You get confirmation that the delivery will be to your home at 4:42pm that afternoon.

While at work, you get a notification on your phone that the delivery is about to dispatch. The notification asks you if the delivery address is still OK. You realise no one is home, and instead decide to have the groceries delivered to your car.

You select ‘car delivery’. What happens next is amazing. The delivery driver gets a one time remote access code to the boot of your car. With the help of advanced micro-location and navigation systems, the driver arrives at your car. Then using the one-off code to open the boot, they put the groceries in. Once the delivery driver closes the boot, the one off code disappears and the driver leaves.

Now your car knows you’ve got groceries in the boot, so it adjusts the temperature in the boot to ensure it’s cool enough to keep the groceries fresh and chilled.

About 25 minutes after the delivery, you’re back in your car. After a busy day of work, you jump back in the car and head home. You feel like a few beers though…it’s been a tough day. As you head towards your local bottle-o, your car navigation system alerts you that a bottle-o 200m down the road has your favourite beer with a two-for-one special.

That sounds delightful so you follow the navigation to the second bottle-o and grab the two-for-one deal.

I’m going to leave the story there. Take some time to think about some of the tech involved. You’ll realise two things. One, it’s an incredibly seamless, interconnected world.  Two, the huge amounts of data and connective hardware needed is mind blowing.

I could go on with the story, explaining the environment at your office, how you interact at home that evening for entertainment and so forth, but you get the point.

There are a few key aspects above that are really important.

Your home connects to the way you live, your preferences and the preferences of your family. Your car also connects to the way you live, your preferences and the preferences of whoever drives the car.

What you’ll see is that the places you spend the most time — home, work and the car — will be one seamlessly integrated experience.

Your car is now it’s very own standalone device. Yes, it will integrate with your smartphone, and there will be seamless transfer of information between the two.

However, the best way to look at it is your car is as one big drivable, smartphone. It has its own operating system, its own memory, its own hard drive, modem and wireless connectivity. It is truly the most mobile of mobile devices.

And if you think this technology is some way off, then you’re wrong. It’s here and is in the early stages of becoming a normal part of life.

I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen BMW’s ConnectedDrive functionality. In fact, yesterday, Simon Euringer, Head of ConnectedDrive BMW, said that by 2015 every single BMW will be ‘connected’.

When I say ‘connected car’, I’m not just talking about a car’s engine control unit or Bluetooth connectivity. I mean your car has its own hard drive, modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and wireless charging.

The car is no longer just a car to get you from A to B. It’s a mobile device that just also happens to get you from A to B.

That’s the one glaring takeaway from the Connected Cars event in Amsterdam I attended recently. Cars are now entering the world of Information Technology (IT). They’re now at the early stages of really connecting our digital lives with our physical lives.

This coincides with the advances in the connected home and our own array of connected devices.

What are important now for investors are the companies ready to get the connected car off the ground and into mass production. The opportunities won’t be with companies like BMW; you must look beyond the badge that stares you in the face. It’s the companies that make the antennae, the car-specific streaming apps, or the car-specific cyber security software that will really see huge growth.

And what’s so exciting is this is all in its early stages now. Much of it is first or second generation technology. Shortly, we’ll enter a phase where the tech is so easy and abundant that it will be as common as the television or microwave. And for the smart investor, it means they can get in to the right companies on the ground floor, before they really take off.

Sam Volkering+
Technology Analyst, Money Morning

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