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品質インサイト/Quality insights

Deloitte University launched a press release about the
future of car technology. One of its highlights was that
“Automakers fear that, should they lose control of the
customer to software providers, cars could become
commodity devices secondary to the software they run.”
With this in mind, tech companies are rumored to be
working on their own cars. For example, Apple had
talks with carmakers including Daimler and BMW about
its codenamed Project Titan. Apple’s plan has been to
develop a highly-networked electric car that would also
be partially self-driving. However, sources said the talks
with both of them collapsed over the key questions of
who would lead the project and above all, which company
would have ownership of the data. Apple wants the car
to be closely built on its own cloud software, while the
German carmakers have made customer data protection
a key element of their future strategy.
Not Only Mechanical Aspect Anymore

Carmakers are now not only competing with other tech
companies, they also have to protect their cars in the
same manner that tech companies protect their devices.
Fiat Chrysler learned that the hard way last year after
it had to recall 1.4 million cars to fix a software security
flaw that could have allowed hackers to takeover
Jeep Cherokees. The hackers who demonstrated the
flaw were able to remotely control the Jeep's engine,
accelerator and brakes on demand and adjusted the
stereo and other internal electronic features.

Fortunately, those hackers were researchers but Chrysler
was forced to issue vehicle owners with a software fix
on USB drives. The cumbersome and costly nature of
that solution has convinced carmakers to invest more
heavily in developing over-the-air (OTA) software update
systems that will eventually allow carmakers save both
time and money on vehicle software fixes and updates.
ABI Research estimates that about one-third of current
recalls are for problems that could be fixed with OTA
updates with savings that would have equated to around
USD 6 billion last year. IHS Automotive estimates that
OTA updates will save carmakers USD 35 billion in 2022.

IoT is the future for carmakers and so far only Tesla
has really tackled it head on. The company has already
made a handful of major performance, safety and
semi-autonomous upgrades to its vehicles via OTA
updates.

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October - November 2016 37