Car networking: How is it good to miss the opportunity?

The car is used as a "giant cell phone" and uses the Internet and the Internet of Things to build an information service industry on wheels. A few days ago, Shanghai officially announced that it would build an automotive information service industry base in Anting, Jiading. The Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission predicts that the output value of this new industry in the next five years is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan.

The "carrying out both hard and soft" new car allows the car to "go on" the information superhighway, and the Chinese auto industry may be both unfamiliar and eager to try it. The automobile industry is the benchmark of the industrial age. In the digital age, its driving force must also be "soft and hard." How to create a good information service industry is a new topic for innovation-driven, transformational development.

At present, only three domestic car manufacturers have introduced models with built-in vehicle information service equipment, of which two are in Shanghai. SAIC has pre-installed tablet-like devices on a model that mainly provide information services, including allowing drivers and passengers to listen to online news and music, get voice navigation services, and make Internet phone calls; and Shanghai GM mainly makes safety articles for car owners. After contacting the call center, the service provider can remotely control the car's door locks and horns so that when the owner forgets to lock the car door or finds a car in the parking lot, he/she will have less trouble; if the car encounters an accident, the car system will automatically alarm. Report directions and earn time for first aid.

However, these information services are still very preliminary. According to the blueprint outlined by the idealist, the future car can talk with the road, perceive the congestion and design the best driving route; dialogue with other cars, perceive the distance between cars to avoid rubbing; talk with the network, and connect the global information node in a close space ... cars will have a lot of intersections with the Internet of Things and the Internet, and a new concept will emerge: car networking. Some experts pointed out that car networking may be the easiest branch of development in the Internet of Things industry.

"Outsiders" are still difficult to knock on the door. Can the domestic automotive industry grasp this trend? Insiders in the industry frankly admitted that it did not appear to be ready. Car networking not only involves a series of technologies not familiar to automobile manufacturers, but also involves services. It is more complex to study consumer needs, preferences, and experience.

Informed sources told reporters that the Internet industry has advantages in these areas, can provide help, but also very much want to get the opportunity to expand, but the current car factory seems to be very closed, it is difficult for outsiders to knock on the door. In his view, since the car is being shaped as a smart terminal, it should be like the smart phone industry today, turning the car into an open platform for R & D personnel, rather than trying to do it on their own. The result is less effective.

The "closed" issue is also not unique to China. Loading information intelligence equipment is the weapon for the next round of differentiated competition in the car. The information service on the wheels is expected to become a new source of profits. Depot manufacturers naturally want more benefits. Their self-defense reason sounds right: The most important thing for the car is safety. Therefore, it is necessary to set a high threshold for collaborators; if it is opened at will, remote unlocking is misused, but at the very least it is a lost car if it is connected to the vehicle-mounted electronic system on the way. Suddenly "blackened" or "poisoned," it would be fatal.

"Cross-border integration" is the strength of Shanghai's information service industry and automotive industry. Therefore, the trust and cooperation of depots and Internet companies have become the focus of the development of the city's car network. It has been revealed that government departments will issue a series of policies and allocate large sums of money from the special funds for high-tech industrialization to encourage and support the docking of both parties. The reporter noticed that after the matchmaking of the Shanghai government department, some new faces have emerged from the automotive industry chain and a group of companies whose names contain "software", "information", and "communication" keywords. They and the depot, auto parts manufacturers have just formed the first domestic "car networking industry alliance."

In addition to "cross-border integration," there are still many links in the development of car networking: There is a need to establish a comprehensive set of technical standards to break through a series of common technical bottlenecks, but the most important thing is to design profitable models for future information services.

The automobile factory excels in "one-stroke sales" of money carts, while the service industry pays attention to "fine water" and continuous charges. At present, SAIC's practice is to pack two years of information service fees into car models. It may be because the pre-installed information service terminal models are still under the market for less than 2 years. SAIC Motor has so far made no mention of the next payment model; but the days of charging will come sooner or later. If the user cannot pay, the car network will become just a selling device. Can not be derived from a flourishing service industry ecosystem. Experts have suggested that the on-board information service may not be able to collect any money, but recommend sellers of restaurants, hotels, shopping malls, etc. in the road passing area to the vehicle owners to collect advertising fees from the merchants. However, there are still a lot of explorations as to how to do it and what kind of profit-making methods it will take.

Car networking is a major new development opportunity for the automotive industry in Shanghai and even China, but whether it can be grasped depends on whether the parties can join hands to cross the “cross-border integration” hurdle.