The connected car market has been cited many times as a potentially lucrative one for satellite. On the final day of SATELLITE 2018, speakers debated the future of this market in the panel “IOT on the Road: Connected Consumer Vehicles, OTT, and the Self-Driving Car.”
Greg Ewert, president of connected car at Globalstar, said: “There is no one technology that will provide resiliency and information coming off and on of cars.” Jada Tapley, vice president of advanced engineering at Aptiv, said cars are now the most complicated pieces of technology most people own. At CES, Aptiv partnered with Lyft to deliver over 400 self-driving rides. However, Tapley raised the critical latency concern: “Latency is a huge issue for self-driving cars. A car with no human, we need to get information lightning fast. We cannot afford latency from a safety perspective.”
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Roger Lanctot, associate director at Strategy Analytics, said car manufacturers are looking for carrier-agnostic solutions. “The car companies are looking to be at the forefront of the deployment of 5G technology. They are not in love with wireless carriers. They want different technology solutions. Satellite may have a single box solution which could be of interest.” On OTA software updates, maps and positional accuracy, he said: “None of them [car manufacturers] are satisfied today with the current solutions.”
Tom Freeman, senior vice president of land mobile at Kymeta, said: “We have shipped over 200 units this year in our first commercially available system. We believe the future is in a hybrid connectivity solution.” Kymeta is working with Intelsat and Toyota to bring connectivity to this market. VS
