Yes you car’s engine is pricey and so is the shiny rims but your vehicle’s money is in the data.
By just selling trucks and cars, people have managed to make themselves fortunes. For many, the house is the most valuable item they can ever buy followed closely by the car, reports CNN.
But expert analysis suggests that the car itself may soon be replaced by car data when gauging what is more worth.
Digital era currency
Jim Barbaresso, the head of Intelligent Transportation Systems at HTNB, says that the digital era is run by data ‘currency’. The rush to get car data may soon be compared to the gold rush that happened some decades ago.
Modern cars are integrated with cameras and sensors to record how they are performing and also gather info on their surroundings. The vehicle sensor, for instance, can be used to determine when to replace the car engine. The backup camera on the other hand is not just for offering help when it comes to parking. It can be used to determine how many people pedestrians or vehicles are in a block.
The data generated by the sensors can be analyzed and then used to make money. Do you doubt that? Consider Google and Facebook. They provide billions of people with free services and then generate billions for the data they collect.
Each self-driving car generates about 1GB of data per sec as explained by Tom Coughlin, the founder of Coughlin Associates. What this means is that a typical iPhone memory can be filled within 30 seconds of drive.
With immense, lies a huge potential for a variety of businesses.
Car data uses
Eran Shir, CEO of Nexar, a vehicle communication company, says that collecting car data helps digitize the public space thus opening up new possibilities for security, safety and commercial benefits.
The uses for car data are already emerging, with parking apps being among the top one contender. By using the car’s cameras and sensors, it is possible to determine the closest parking spot, making it easy to park in the big busy cities.
Ben Volkow, the CEO of otonomo, an Israeli startup that sells vehicle data, estimates that by 2020, car data will be generating immense amounts of money.
The ultimate reason why car data has generated a lot of interest is to use it in self-driving cars. Vehicle data is needed to train self-driving vehicles for them to function.
“Data is really king in this market,” said Tasha Keeney, an analyst at ARK Invest, which forecasts that the autonomous taxi market could be worth $10 trillion in the early 2030s. (For comparison, vehicle sales are a $2 trillion market today.)
The transportation market will soon be larger than it currently is, thanks to cheap autonomous travel. Third world citizens who are unable to buy a vehicle today will be able to afford the cheaply sold self-driving rides.
It is the responsibility of all stakeholders to figure out how they would collect car data and then device its applications.
