SOLVING INDIA'S CONNECTED VEHICLE CONUNDRUM

Manish Patel, Chief Information Officer, MG Motor India speaks on the potential benefits that connected vehicles can offer in Indian context and the current roadblocks faced by the automotive OEMs in unleashing the full potential of it

- Soma Tah

Connected vehicle technologies have a lot to offer to Indian consumers not only in the form of luxury and comfort but in terms of enhanced safety features as well. Some automakers have already launched their connected vehicles in India. But there are some innate challenges with India such as bandwidth and the regulatory bottlenecks in India, which need to be addressed quickly, to realize the benefits offered by these technologies fully.

What are some of the innate challenges that the automotive OEMs come across in terms of connected vehicles?

There are some core challenges that an OEM would have in India when they launch a connected vehicle. What works outside India does not necessarily work in India, and predominantly so from the network perspective. The reason being our networks are different. For example, in India, we have 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, and that doesn’t contribute to the connectivity outside of India.

Roaming profiles also make quite a bit of a difference in how the vehicle latches on to the networks outside the home network. Switching Mobile Network Operator (MNO) is cost-prohibitive in the absence of profile changing option over-the-air. If we had the profile change over the air, then the differential cost could have been absorbed by the OEMs.

There’s a challenge in the application layer also. Most of the apps which are being deployed by the OEMs run smoothly on 4G networks. The moment you step away from 4G or even within 4G, due to a change in the throughput the apps just might lag.