Auto Software, Data Innovations Are Now Shadow Vehicle Powertrain

The auto industry is going soft and getting softer. From safety and driver assistance systems to electric car battery management to improving habits of bad drivers, software, and its technical partner, data, are now as important to locomotion as power and torque.

Indeed, there’s a de-coupling of the close marriage between software and hardware as the industry looks for more effective ways to not only manage vehicles, but to mine data from on-board electronics to build new revenue streams by tapping into driver preferences and habits.

Stark evidence is the fact that global automotive supplier Bosch called reporters to its suburban Detroit facility last week for what it called “Software Day,”—a chance to hear about and see demonstrations of more than a half-dozen of its software-focused innovations.

“We talked about creating the term software defined vehicle. I like to call it software defined mobility,” said Paul Thomas, Bosch executive vice president of mobility solutions, Americas, in his presentation to the media. “Bosch software won’t only change how we use and experience cars in the future, it will also change the way the cars are engineered, the way they’re driven, the way they’re built, the way they’re utilized, will change the way the vehicle operates and will add functionality and features that has not previously been seen with hardware only solutions.”

Among the examples Bosch had on display were an interior vehicle sensing system to detect driver distraction and drowsiness along with the presence of back seat passengers, especially, babies.

Product Manager Tyler Warga demonstrated the system for us in the video below.

Another software-based solution is Bosch’s vehicle dynamics control system demonstrating the company’s goal to “allow its software to move out of hardware boxes,” according to Richard Nesibitt, vice president product management, Bosch Americas. “That’s kind of the concept that we’re showing, and we demonstrate to our partners to say, hey look, we have these advanced controls, we can deploy them outside of our boxes, you know within a central controller.

The system uses software to control vehicle motion through motion actuators including by-wire and active suspensions, according to Nesbitt.

An adjunct to software is middleware—the technical middleman between software and hardware to ensure a system is working correctly according to the intent of the software. It’s a key component of advance driver assistance systems.

One company working with Bosch providing middleware is Canadian tech company, BlackBerry—yes, the same company that once produced the pre-smartphone personal device. It’s moved on to developing BlackBerry IVY, a cloud-connected automotive artificial intelligence platform co-developed with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“Once that middleware is there, processing and computing the data actually on the vehicle, it gets what data needs, it sends it to the application,” explained Niko Hammond, BlackBerry IVY vice president, business development, in an interview.

Using a hypothetical driver named Anna, as he demonstrated the system for us, Jasmin Mulaosmanovic, Sr. Director Product Management, BlackBerry, pointed out IVY could help glean information that could include detecting a “her” driving habits which could lead to the need for future servicing—valuable data for an automaker.

“Now we know that a certain time period when she is ready to change the tires and brakes, or you can perhaps steer her to a direction of a dealership that has not had enough business or dealership that you know, it’s not busy at a certain time when Anna’s available, maybe incentivize her so they can help her schedule. So that’s again now the differentiated way of managing your customers and incentivizing them to spend the money with your with your brand.”

Adding another element to its service, on June 6 BlackBerry and cybersecurity firm Upstream Security announced a partnership to integrate Upstream technology into BlackBerry IVY’s platform.

With more software comes more data and that must be safely stored and managed. Data is like gold to automakers providing invaluable market intelligence and including driver habits and shopping and entertainment preferences in developing and offering revenue-earning subscriptions and other services.

While the information data provides is valuable, in and of itself, it may have no intrinsic value, asserts Steve Schwinke, vice president customer engagement at connected vehicle software company Sibros.

“You can get into subscription models and you can do that with our platform or OTA (over the air software updates). But I think every OEMs channel is challenged with how do I generate additional revenue wholesale and selling the data is not the answer. Because I always go, who’s buying, who’s writing a check.”

The check, or more likely, the payment automakers are seeking includes fees for subscriptions for everything from heated seats to infotainment services.

But Schwinke, who was on the ground floor of the launch of General Motors Co.’s OnStar service, believes there’s a smarter strategy to winning that revenue.

“I think if you can show the customer value by not just features but worry free maintenance, you know, interact with your vehicle to make sure that it’s good to go. That predicts health. If there is a service problem they take care of it,” said Schwinke. “So I think the value also comes from that brand loyalty and repeat purchasers and things like that with this car is now part of something bigger, that I can manage in a better way.”

That’s where a company such as CerebrumX Labs Inc. plays a big role. The Novi, Mich.-based company works with automakers to operate a platform that collects, integrates and analyzes real data from more than 15 million vehicles, which it says, accounts for 70% of all connected vehicles in the North American market.

The company also works with third-party partners in insurance, fleet management, among others.

But CEO Sandip Ranjhan observes not all companies are “mature” in the way they look at data, let alone how they use it.

“First you have to understand the consumer behavior, right? Then you can say, well, this is what it is, this is what I can do and sell it in isolation. You can’t just say, well, I’m solving this problem,” said Ranjhan in an interview. “Our our focus is not getting the data, our focus is to understand the business problem and then solve that business.”

On June 5, mobility product company Pioneer Corp. announced an unspecified investment in CerebrumX as well as formation of what Ranjham described as a “strategic partnership.”

The new partnership will not only help give CerebrumX access to the hard-to-crack Japanese market, improve connectivity between vehicles, especially those in fleets and boost data collection from Pioneer aftermarket products such as a dash cam for fleet vehicles.

“A dash cam helps the fleet and then we have a single place where we analyze the data of the vehicle data as well as the data coming in from the cabin monitoring system that all the software of our project so that you can do a complete forensics what happened,” said Ranjham.

So while Bosch staged a single Software Day for reporters, it really portends a permanent new day for the auto industry where regardless of powertrain, the real engine isn’t under the hood or within the chassis, but lurking in a little on-board box or somewhere in the cloud.