The battle for telematics dominance began to heat up in earnest at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as the major automotive giants placed their bets and upped the ante, making the game that much more intense, according to new IHS iSuppli research.
Standing out as potentially the most influential telematics announcement ever, OnStar—after struggling through bankruptcy with General Motors and recovering into a stronger, leaner entity—announced being open for business for non-GM cars within North America. This means that any of the nearly 55 million vehicles on the road today that don’t already have OnStar soon can get the service.
Best Buy is the logical partner for this endeavor, and soon we could see OnStar gracing the cover of weekly newspaper ads, aside from the retailer’s usual mix featuring the newest 3-D TVs, tablets and Xbox Games. Imagine OnStar’s potential for a Black Friday deal.
At the very least, OnStar has any GM competitor without a compelling embedded telematics protocol shaking in its boots. Take Chrysler and Nissan, for example. Their recently released EVTS and VTRS, both basic dealer-installed stolen-vehicle-tracking systems, retail for twice the price of the OnStar retail, and offer a fraction of the services.
Independent telematics offerings like those from Hughes Telematics, WirelessCar, and ATX Group are also in jeopardy, although not as severely.
Furthermore, OnStar has now announced new service capabilities such as Facebook Audio update—a prototype audio Facebook posting app—as well as the Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech SMS Text Message reader app, enabling full text messaging in the car via voice and hands on the wheel. These new functions help to bring OnStar’s business into the Gen Y scope—a generation projected to have more purchasing power by 2017 than the Baby Boomers.
But Wait, There’s More
Yet, OnStar is not alone. In fact, many are taking swings at hitting a “home run” in the telematics and connected car experience at the 2011 CES. Most notable are Hyundai with its announcement of Blue Link telematics and Toyota’s announcement of Toyota Entune infotainment technologies.
Though it has been in the works for sometime, Hyundai’s Blue Link was officially announced by the company’s Connected Car team at CES. The program seemingly takes the best pieces from various other telematics programs worldwide and combines them into one, along with additional unique Hyundai telematics services and features.
The compelling service offerings from Hyundai are likely to make the brand a popular option among any buyer. Notably, Hyundai will make this telematics program standard on all 2012 Sonata vehicles and also on the upcoming 2012 Veloster.
This alone puts the Hyundai Blue Link telematics sales at over 200,000 units for the initial launch year, as the Sonata has sold quite well since its groundbreaking redesign. The total sales of Blue Link are likely to be more than that, as IHS expects to hear of additional models receiving Blue Link between now and service launch later this year. Eventually, this solution will rival GM’s OnStar, as the basic Blue Link Assurance package will be standard on most or all Hyundai models in North America.
Japanese Carmakers Jump on Board
Hyundai is not the only Asian automaker in the United States putting its money into connected telematics and services. While Nissan has shown some light on its Carwings Lite program connected to the Leaf, Toyota has made major connected vehicle services announcements for the second year in a row at CES.
Last year, Toyota announced its Safety Connect telematics service at CES 2010, and this year Toyota announced its new Entune infotainment platform with cloud services and application integration.
The Entune hardware platform will be dual-sourced from both Harman and Denso—the former getting the display audio headunit and the latter sourcing the navigation headunit. Functionality for Entune app integration will be identical between the two with some minor exceptions in services, such as traffic, which will vary between INRIX and XM NavTraffic, respectively.
Tweddle Group also has a large part in this new platform for Toyota as the enabler of all of the cloud content coming from partners like INRIX, OpenTable.com, MovieTickets.com, Pandora, iheartradio and others. Tweddle has created the application that runs on the user’s device, which connects the cloud to the center stack.
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