i3 - September/October 2020 - 19

Bosch's Convenience Charging service
- presently offered via the company's own
app in Europe and available to automaker's as a "white label" product they would
brand themselves - encompasses datadriven features, too. Besides range prediction and route planning based on a greater
than usual amount of information gleaned
from the vehicle, plus access to charging
networks, billing and home charging functions, Reichert says, users can plan a route
considering the best price for charging
along the way and includes a new "guardian angel" function that warns the driver
when the vehicle has only enough power
to get to the charging station ahead.

PARTNERSHIPS BRING BENEFITS

"For sure connectivity brings an increased
appeal to EV, making the switch from legacy ICE vehicles more seamless, reducing
the range anxiety, and also allowing access
to favorable conditions provided by automakers like FCA for public and domestic
charging," says Marco Belletti, a spokesman
for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in
Turin, Italy. Belletti says it began selling
seven EVs globally this year: Jeep Renegade,
Jeep Compass, Jeep Wrangler, Fiat
E-Ducato, the second-generation Fiat
500e, and Maserati's first hybrid.
Nevertheless, FCA's strategy isn't limited to its products. "Creating an ecosystem
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of partnerships is critical to providing customers with a full end-to-end
experience of ownership for EVs," Belletti says. "Finally, we also need to
[consider] how technical data from connected vehicles can become a
source of data also for smart cities and the public sector."
In June, FCA announced a partnership with Otonomo, an automotive
data services platform provider based in Herzliya, Israel. Otonomo takes
anonymized, aggregated data from an automaker's fleet of vehicles and
makes it available to third-party application and service providers, who
in turn offer their wares to the vehicle owners. FCA's agreement with
Otonomo covers selected connected vehicle models across the
European Union and is expected to expand as new connected
vehicles are released.
Last year, FCA also announced a partnership with Terna, an electricity provider in Italy, to study how EVs interact with the power
grid (electricity distribution network). It leverages an experimental
two-way charging infrastructure built in Turin's Mirafiori district,
letting EVs return power to the grid when electricity demand is high
and take power for vehicle charging when demand is low.
"There is a lot to come and it's all based on connectivity," says
Mathias Vaitl, head of Mercedes Me and digital services at
Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany. "We want to make it more
convenient to drive a battery car than a combustion car."
By 2021, Vaitl says, Mercedes-Benz will release filtering, reservations and
an availability forecast for charging. The first lets a navigation route be set
to include a preference, such as a coffee shop, when and where a charge is
expected to be needed. The second books a charging session for a specific
date and time at a particular location. And the last informs the user the
best time to start driving, to arrive at a charging station when it's not busy.
The automaker is in discussions with charging networks about the reservations option, Vaitl says.
Volvo, which has pledged to have BEVs compose 50% of its vehicle lineup
by 2025, has formed a partnership with Google, whose Android Automotive
OS is bringing new connected services to those vehicles' infotainment systems - beginning with the Polestar 2 car and Volvo's XC40 Recharge P8
BEV SUV, which arrive at U.S. dealerships this year. Android Automotive
OS is an open source platform that enables over-the-air (OTA) updates to
connected services such as Google Maps, Google Assistant and Google Play
Store, as well as third-party Android apps for autos. Both vehicles are the
first from Volvo capable of receiving both software and OS updates OTA.
(Polestar is Volvo's all-electric subsidiary brand.)
"They are a big step forward in terms of electric vehicles, but also a big
step forward in terms of connectivity and connected services, and of course
that's not a coincidence," says Martin Kristensson, head of digital business
at Volvo Cars in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Connectivity and connected services is "a rapidly moving space with unrealized potential at this point," says Stuart Taylor, executive director of enterprise
connectivity at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, MI. So Ford has many developments in progress, using various data and communications channels ranging
from in-vehicle experiences to apps and online. "The app and the vehicle are
becoming a single view of the world," says Taylor.
"It's about purposeful technology, not just tech for tech's sake. We should
be solving challenges, problems and pain points, and then enhancing the
experience because of that," Taylor declares. "Once you've got a connected
vehicle, your imagination is pretty much unlimited. You can do so much
with these cars then." 
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https://otonomo.io/ https://www.daimler.com/en/ https://www.volvo.com/home.html http://ford.com http://fcagroup.com http://cta.tech/i3
i3 - September/October 2020

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