Cars are becoming more intelligent, that is certainly clear.The average family saloon now has more computing power than Apollo 11, the shuttle that first took man to the moon.
One major aspect of this ‘intelligence’ is how the information a car gathers is transported to the manufacturer and stored. This data is primarily used for logging drivers’ habits for insurance companies, tracking how vehicles perform for product development and providing early warnings of any problems with parts. However, there is now an evolving usage of data in other areas – such as marketing and customer management – that could turn out to be highly valuable for manufacturers and dealerships.
This is not just about what motorists should buy next based on how they drive, knowing when and where they drive, and how long they spend behind the wheel, opens up huge opportunities for the industry to build a more relevant and meaningful relationship with customers.
The amount of information our cars now store, and transmit, is enormous. Every second, a telematics device will produce a data record including information such as date, time, speed, longitude, latitude, acceleration or deceleration, cumulative mileage and fuel consumption.These data sets can represent approximately 5MB to 15MB annually per customer.With a customer base of 100,000 vehicles, this represents more than 1 terabyte of data per year.
