The manufacturers revealed that cloud services have recently been providing in-vehicle electronic tools and information technology (IT) to greatly and rapidly reduce driver shortage and lighten the driver’s workload in the logistics industry. It is expected that this service will be a new source of income and the competition is likely to intensify. 

Danger Alert
The cloud service consists of a drive recorder installed with a signal transmitter and a server. The drive recorder stores the car navigation and transmits the data onto the server, so that the responsible staff can access such data, send it to the driver, and notify him in case that he may encounter some danger, such as sudden acceleration. Yet, a possible charge of monthly installation fee for this service may apply.

In the past, the driver used to report the data by using a mobile phone. However, the use of the cloud service today allows him to drive more conveniently with no use of the mobile phone as he can directly access the vehicle location and information stored on the cloud. In addition, the data can be transmitted more instantly.

Apart from the notification, the service provider can inform the driver about the most appropriate route for him to take; therefore, the driver does not need to search for the right directions himself. Especially, the new driver can fully concentrate on driving without worrying about directions. This can increase the effectiveness of product handling and can reduce the number of road accidents.

Image Processing Technology
In 2014, car electronics companies began this service before a rapid increase of drivers’ orders on www.amazon.com. That was when the companies came to realize the driver shortage. The cloud service was then developed so as to deal with this challenge and it is likely that the service will be used in other businesses in the future.

In May this year, Clarion launched “SAFE-DR” for commercial vehicles to record images of a full body of cars and send them real-time onto the server in order to prevent accidents. This technology was developed from the image processing and information transmitting technology embedded in the automatic vehicle-driving support system.

Subsequently, Pioneer in collaboration with the Blue Ocean system, a business management system developer for welfare and medical industries, offered the service called “Vehicle Assist” for healthcare providers. In the past, the healthcare personnel often had to drive an ambulance to transport patients due to driver shortage. Thus, there will be a higher demand for vehicle assistance in the healthcare industry, following the logistics industry. Pioneer therefore sees the needs for developing more easy-to-use services.

At present, not only is such service development restricted to car electronics manufacturers, but it also plays a role in automobile and information technology companies. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs projected that those with experience in electronics automotive parts manufacturing certainly have more advantages as they can further improve the quality of high resolution camera technology, a drive recorder, a car navigator system, and so on.

Vitality of SMEs
The higher number of cloud service developing companies has brought about a major change in the car electronics industry. Such change is that the main long-term factors are sales of vehicles as well as the number of aging population, which cannot guarantee whether the car electronics business will be as stabilized as before. Nevertheless, the growing business of electronic cars and connected cars will mainly contribute to more intensified competition in the new technology marketing. Mr. Suzumu Kotani, the president of Pioneer, stated that not only is hardware development essential, but service improvement is also vital for the company to survive in this industry.

However, there has not been a clear direction of how to make the service more popular since the companies that experience driver shortage are mostly SMEs with limited budget. Hence, it is important that they develop services at a reasonable price range. Similarly, Pioneer had the same concept of offering same types of services via smartphones and tablets with no requirement of installing other additional devices.

Likewise, Denso Ten provides the service called “G500 Lite” to especially target at SMEs customers.

It is important for car electronics companies to increase service choices for users, so that they can choose the service that suits them most, which can bring about more profits for the companies as well.