Wie monetarisiert man die Daten vernetzter Fahrzeuge? Interessanter Artikel, bei dem es nicht nur ums Geld geht.
If you have ever been involved in a used car purchase, you’ll be familiar with some sort of vehicle history report. This report may document any previous accidents, maintenance, and ownership history of the vehicle. While the report is useful in theory, such reports often don’t portray the entire picture because they depend on human sources, which are unfortunately often subjective and unstandardized in their reporting. After all, trusting people to be diligent in reporting their own car crashes may not result in the most accurate history reports. There may be data that’s missing, or the data might be inaccurate to start out. Additionally, there is no way to verify if there were accidents or repairs that went unreported or were recorded with inaccuracies. In fact, providers of such reports like CarFax or AutoCheck explicitly claim no responsibility for errors or omissions.
However, with the development of technologies like data collectors that can be attached to On Board Units (OBUs) in cars, data collection can be streamlined from a much more reliable data source. For example, by proving that the car was under manual control at the time of incident through recorded data, Tesla overturned a Model X driver’s claims that the vehicle had “autonomously” crashed into a building. In the same way, your car may automatically collect a variety of useful data, producing records that are accessible and verifiable by other parties to enhance the services you enjoy, or aid in any claims you file. To this end, data collection standards need to be established to encourage open participation in the decentralized collection and use of data.
Efficiency Along With Data IntegrityYou may be wondering about how data privacy may fit into all of this. After all, with all the app integrations coming to cars, a large amount of personal and sensitive information is going to be found in your car data and it’s guaranteed that there will be companies willing to pay big bucks to get their hands on this information which you may not be ready to consent to.
This is where proper blockchain design for handling sensitive data becomes absolutely crucial. Besides implementing de-identification technology, a separate storage server is necessary for the safe and efficient storage of encrypted data. However, this storage server should not remain controlled by any one entity, not even the blockchain creators themselves. When this is achieved, blockchain management can be optimized, efficiently maintained, and secure.
An Open, Seamless Connected ExperienceThus far we’ve talked about the security or verification benefits of car data monetization, but what does this mean for the driver on the road? The idea of a car data blockchain may induce thoughts of driverless cars racing through roads, sending off data to nearby RSUs, but that’s not necessarily the case… yet. Autonomous cars are still the minority and human-driven cars do make up most of the road’s vehicles. But “conventional” cars with drivers can still be connected cars and through various software and hardware, they are able to send off car data in real time to service providers or manufacturers for optimized services and products.
For example, when at a gas station to refuel, your car could send off data in order to check for its software upgrades with instant feedback on what parts of the car may be due for a check soon (i.e. brake pads, oil change). The driver could automatically pay for the gas with cryptocurrency, finish up the upgrades and head off to the next destination—all without ever getting out of the car. And as more cars become increasingly connected or autonomous, more services will become available.
