Connected car platforms

The car that phones home, through an app and over-the-air updates

Many new cars in India come with an app. From your phone, you can lock the car and check how much fuel or charge is left. You can switch on the air conditioning before you get in, or find where you parked. The car is connected to the internet, and it sends its data back to the carmaker.

How a connected car works. Inside the car sits a small computer with its own SIM card, called a telematics unit. It sends data over the mobile network to the carmaker's cloud. The data includes:

where the car is
the health of the battery or engine
fault codes, which the car's systems record when something goes wrong
how the car is driven: speed, braking and distance

What the data is used for

Remote services

the phone app features, such as locking the car or tracking it if it is stolen.

Updates over the air

A modern car has dozens of small computers, called electronic control units, or ECUs. Each runs one system, such as the brakes, the airbags or the motor. Their software can now be updated over the mobile network, like a phone's. This fixes faults and adds features without a visit to the workshop.

Finding problems early

The carmaker can spot a fault from the data before the owner notices it.

Insurance by driving

Some insurers price cover by how the car is actually driven. The industry calls this usage-based insurance. (More on how insurers set prices in Market Segment 21.3, Underwriting, pricing and claims analytics, in Industry Vertical 21, Insurtech.)

How a connected car works: a telematics unit with its own SIM card sends the car's data to the carmaker's cloud, which uses it for remote services, finding problems early and insurance by driving, and sends updates back to the car's ECUs over the air.

Who buys. The buyers are carmakers. Some build their own connected-car platform. Others buy it from a small group of specialist companies. Carmakers often charge owners a subscription for connected services after the first few years. Companies that run fleets of vehicles use similar data in their own way. (More on that in Market Segment 38.4, Fleet management and telematics.)

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

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Connected-car platforms and updates over the air

Connected-car platforms and updates over the air

WirelessCar

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs a connected-vehicle cloud. Several carmakers operate their cars' apps, remote services and data through it. WirelessCar has the most job postings of any company covered mainly in this Market Segment.

Sibros

with engineers in Bengaluru and Pune, sells software that collects data from every ECU in a vehicle, and updates them all over the air.

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment also works here:

Vecmocon Technologies

with engineers in Delhi, makes battery-management systems and telematics for electric two- and three-wheelers. A battery-management system watches each cell of a battery and keeps it safe. (More on it in Market Segment 38.7, Auto components and EV batteries.)

The car that updates itself.

A car used to be finished when it left the factory. A software-defined vehicle is updated for years, gaining features and fixing faults over the air. The data coming back lets AI models predict failures, and lets insurers price by how people drive. Who owns that data, the owner, the carmaker or the platform, is becoming a legal question.

That is the connected car: a car that sends its data home and takes its updates over the air. Carmakers build the platforms that run it themselves, or buy them from a few specialists.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What automotive and mobility companies hire for.

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