Carmakers to tech partners: Keep your hands off our data

The cars are becoming smarter with the addition of new pieces of tech bits into them each day, but the carmakers do not want to share its data with their technology partners like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. “We need to control access to that data”, said Don Butler, Ford Motor Co’s Executive Director of connected vehicle and services.

As the importance of digital media grows, competition between those who control it is only likely to get more intense, making these partnerships more and more tense.

Auto firms would like to benefit from in-vehicle information in a mixed bag of ways, including the procurement of travel arranging administrations and auto fix and service information. General Motors disclosed earlier this year that the high-speed data connections embedded in their cars would generate an extra $350 million by 2018. “We need to protect our ability to create value” from vehicle data. According to AlixPartners’ automotive vice president Friedmar Rumpel, these companies may “lose the future revenue stream” if another company figures out their business models.

The industry also hopes that they would monetize the data by selling it to insurance companies which can later adjust their rates on the drivers’ behavior on the public roads.

Specialist AlixPartners gauges worldwide incomes from digitally joined autos will develop in worth to $40 billion a year worldwide by 2018, from $16 billion in 2013, and auto organizations might want to clutch however much of that cash as could be expected. Talking about the improved ride, Google aims to integrate data from the vehicle with its Android Auto features to make the ride a convenient one. This would allow for a “business model that completely belongs to the carmaker”, said Audi senior systems architect for connected vehicle technologies Matthias Halliger.

So far consumers have not been consulted on the sharing of their data, and regulators may well see fit to restrict data collection and sharing.

Carmakers believe if they provide access to in-vehicle data to tech companies, they could end up losing considerable revenue in the future.

A VW spokesperson said Apple and Google had “asked for more data than we were willing to share”, but that the automaker is providing access to “data points that are important to providing the best apps performance and user experience”.

Apple claims that it is only collecting limited data to “enhance the in-car services…such as Global Positioning System to make Apple Maps as accurate as possible”.

Apple released a statement in which it specified that CarPlay data “is anonymized, not connected with other Apple services, and is not stored by Apple”. For its part Google offers drivers the choice of sharing data with it and third-party app providers.