The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming to the car by the end of the year when BMW will link its cars to Amazon’s popular home automation speaker, the Echo. And Ford and Volkswagen are not far behind.
But the aftermarket is also starting to embrace IoT beyond remote start from a phone.
Amazon’s Echo is now a major hub for home automation. It lets you verbally issue commands to a Bluetooth speaker that can control lights, temperature, appliances and soon, car functions. So you can sit on your couch and ask Alexa (Amazon’s voice assistant) to dim the lights, and soon, remote start the car.
BMW will let you ask Alexa to lock your car doors or check your gas level.
Ford will let you ask Alexa to remote start your car or check your battery status. Or, conversely, from your car you can ask Alexa to turn on the house lights or open the garage door. Ford expects to announce more on the project by the end of the year.
Volkswagen also showed this week a system, now in production, that links its car radios with MirrorLink to a video doorbell system. So if you get a delivery while you are in your car, you can see and communicate with the deliveryman via your car radio, and even remotely open the door. For more, click here–https://youtu.be/EVdzYjJc4Ow
New announcements in home automation are breaking weekly. Amazon has already sold over 3 million Echos, which has 50 percent awareness among consumers, said Consumer Intelligence in April.
Aftermarket remote start makers say they are preparing for IoT in the car.
Harman has already installed special ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) jacks on its new amplifiers. In the future, ADAS systems will be able to use the amplifiers to deliver warnings to the car’s sound system. And if an alert is on the left side of the car, the alert will issue through the left car speakers, for example.
VOXX’s Aron Demers said of IoT, “We look forward to the emergence of this category… VOXX will be looking to tie in future product developments as the space grows.”
Last year InstallerNet announced it teamed with PlumChoice to offer an Internet of Things service that helps consumers install and also buy, use and integrate many new Internet-connected devices for the car and home.
Read more on Car IoT here.
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I think that the rush to innovate and integrate all these “wonderful” IoT devices I want to know 1st what protections and securities do they provide. From what I’ve seen is all these devices are designed and tested to “work” but then when questioned about how secure the device is, the answer is “well look how cool it looks”, “how great it works” and nothing about how easy it is for a hacker to hack into the device and use it as a portal into the internet to inject malware, malicious code or key logging software to hijack the rest of the IoT devices including that brand new BMW sitting in the driveway. Thru the freakin’ door bell.