Picture this: You’re checking your friends’ Facebook updates on the windshield display screen while your car drives you to the other side of town.
Suddenly, a coupon for a special deal at the Applebee’s a mile ahead pops up because the car remembers you stopped there two months ago. It asks if you’d like to pre-order your two-for-one special so it’s ready when you arrive. Then it sniffs out the spot closest to the front door and parks you.
It’s a scene that could play out in the not-so-distant future.
The average car already produces enough data from the engine, infotainment system and other components to fill an iPhone in less than an hour. As cameras, radar and sensors on self-driving cars begin to gather even more information, carmakers and auto suppliers are expected to sort that information and sell it to marketers eager to cater to your living-room on wheels. By 2030, some forecasts say all that data could have generated as much as $750 billion.
For now, data generated by vehicles doesn’t leave the automaker, where it is used to monitor performance to improve the next generation — or signal that it’s time for an oil change or other maintenance.
But Ford President and CEO Jim Hackett in May spoke of a time when Ford could pair global-positioning information with traffic data and work with a company like Starbucks so the car could tell the driver that one location has a four-minute wait, but the Starbucks three highway exits ahead has a shorter wait time.
Drivers could order and pay for their Frappucino before getting in the drive-through line, and it would be ready when they hit the window.
Read more of the original article at The Detroit News
