Automotive manufactures are offering new and innovative services to their customers. Latest technological advancements have been instrumental in bringing about this transformation across the industry. These technological advancements are enabling widescale automation by simplifying supervision and making the operations more efficient. The technology which is playing the key role in this process is the Internet of Things. Implementation of IoT tech has gradually transformed the way mobility was perceived by the end customer. Its implementation in the automotive sector is leading the development of advanced driving assistance systems and autonomous driving by actualizing an all-connected transport infrastructure.
What is IoT?
The Internet of Things is a powerful technology that develops a network of physical objects that can communicate without much human intervention. It can connect millions of complex things into a wireless network. These network devices or things interact with each other to perform specific functions or tasks without supervision.
Earlier, the scope of IoT was pretty limited in the manufacturing and production sector. But now, companies have obtained an increased production rate and a drastic reduction in their overall costs without compromising the quality bit. IoT has allowed automobile companies with opportunities to stamp out various operational complexities. Let's see the current state of technology is the automobile sector and how it is growing.
The current state of IoT in automotive
The implementation of IoT is continuously increasing in the automotive sector. By 2023, automakers will sell more than $73 million connected vehicles across the global customer base. It is expected that by the end of 2025, all the newly manufactured cars will be connected with the IoT. Moreover, an estimated $740 billion will be invested in the field of automotive IoT till 2025. The current state and future predictions about IoT in the automobile industry clearly show the adoption of IoT is rising rapidly; in fact, it is increasing exponentially. There can be countless applications of IoT in the automotive sector. Some of its major use cases are described in the section below.
Application areas of IoT in the automotive sector
-
Communication Between Vehicles
Internet of things can facilitate secure and seamless communication between multiple vehicles by developing a common V2V network. This can especially be beneficial in the prevention of road accidents by allowing the vehicles to share their real-time data about speed, location, and route with other cars. The sensors embedded in the vehicles can generate real-time alerts and send notifications to the driver or the manager of the vehicle in case of an emergency. These real-time alerts help them take timely actions to prevent any mishappening, thereby making real-time monitoring one of the most important features of automotive IoT.
-
Improving car engineering and production timelines
IoT can contribute considerably towards improving the manufacturing process of vehicles. It also reduces the time and cost of production significantly. The data generated by the sensors and gateways can help minimize resource wastage without compromising the quality of the product. The design ideas are generally derived from the historical data collected by the IoT sensors in the fleet. The manufactures can improve the engineering services by getting insights from the collected data. This data-driven approach of IoT devices also helps analyze the product life cycle of the car, consequently enhancing the whole workflow in the automobile industry.
-
Automotive maintenance system
An automotive maintenance system is developed using predictive analytics, one of the most useful features of IoT. Predictive analytics helps to analyze each part of the car individually. For this purpose, IoT sensors collect and preprocess data using smart algorithms. The preprocessed data is used to generate insights and send alerts to the driver if any fault is detected. The alerts are sent on the dashboard or mobile app of the driver, allowing them to take necessary action and avoid accidents anticipatorily. Predictive maintenance can be implemented on both vehicles and fleet to ensure repairment of car parts way before they break down completely.
-
Smart fleet management
The introduction of IoT has led to a major improvement in fleet management systems across the automotive industry. The trucks are now tooled up with smart features like weight estimation, real-time position tracking, and many others. IoT is benefitting the fleet industry tremendously with capabilities like real-time location monitoring, route management, fuel & mileage monitoring, and condition monitoring. The sensors embedded in the fleet collect, analyze, and visualize data on the central dashboards from where the fleet operators can get real-time information for effective decision-making.
-
Smart infrastructure
Roads and routes are also an important part of the automotive sector. The Internet of things is serving a major role here as well by improving the alliance between roads, infrastructure, and cars. It is essentially used to prevent congestions and traffic jams. It also helps in the intelligent road lighting process. Smart parking management and energy management are other benefits of automotive IoT.
-
Futuristic automotive IoT
Looking at the current impact of IoT implementation in the automobile industry , IoT's growing scope and applications are pretty prominent in the coming future. The amount of data gathered by carmakers, third-party observational providers, and insurance firms is increasing exponentially. This data can be crucial in bringing forth great optimizations in the car manufacturing process. For instance, to delete redundant functions that a customer does not need or ensure safety procedures following driving and traffic conditions.
Conclusion
The implementation of the Internet of Things in the automotive sector has put some great improvements into effect. Its application has revised the ability to test and maintain cars and has presented the customers with innovative and intuitive entertainment technologies. Also, long-range data transfer in automotive telematics has helped develop smart fleet management systems that are not just efficient but safer and more economical.
