Demand for vehicle connectivity remains strong in all global regions, despite “disappointing consumer uptake” of infotainment-related connected services, reported ABI Research Wednesday. It’s projecting that at least 73% of new vehicles shipped globally in 2027 will have embedded connectivity, but only 43% of them will have an “active infotainment subscription.” Though embedded connectivity in new vehicles is expected to become “ubiquitous” within the decade, “most active connections today are of essential telematics services only,” said ABI. Connected infotainment services are struggling to gain consumer “traction,” it said, estimating churn rates run as high as 90% “in mass-market models after the free trial period." ABI forecasts that cellular connectivity will be in 53% of vehicles shipped this year, with 83% of those equipped with connected infotainment systems. Only 24% will have active infotainment subscriptions, it said.

The 5G Automotive Association urged officials from the FCC Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology to act on a public notice on a streamlined waiver process for cellular vehicle-to-everything roadside units. A “thoughtfully designed” process “would provide road and infrastructure operators an opportunity to accelerate the deployment of C-V2X safety services to travelers,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-138. The notice should “reflect the realities of C-V2X technology,” they said. Qualcomm and Ford were represented.

Public-private partnerships will help drive mobility-as-a-service ride-hailing deployments to “displace” more than 2.2 billion “private car journeys” globally by 2025, from 471 million trips displaced this year, reported Juniper Research Monday. “As the pandemic wanes, MaaS solution providers should view the increasing demand for travel as an opportunity to disrupt established transport provision ecosystems by demonstrating the cost-effectiveness and efficiencies of their platforms.” It cautioned that the need for vendors to rely on high penetration of mobile devices and internet connectivity to fully exploit MaaS offerings “will limit adoption to developed regions.” Juniper forecasts that more than 70% of the displaced private car journeys will occur in Europe and the Far East by 2025.

Chinese automakers are retaking the domestic connected car market from foreign OEM competitors, helped by Chinese consumers’ appetite for higher-tech vehicles and “decisive government action” to nurture a domestic industry, reported ABI Research Tuesday. It estimates nearly half of all new vehicles sold in China this year will have connectivity, and the penetration rate will increase to nearly 80% by 2025. Nearly 40 million cars on the road in China will have connectivity by year’s end, it said. Chinese automotive OEMs historically operated as manufacturing hubs for their foreign joint venture partners, but they became more “self-dependent” in recent years, said ABI. They're increasingly seeking ways to compete against their “incumbent Western counterparts” by offering high-end infotainment systems with smartphone-like interfaces in partnership with local internet giants, it said. With vehicle connectivity now a key selling point, Chinese carmakers are increasingly offering connected services subscriptions for longer free trial periods than in Western countries, sometimes even for the vehicle's lifetime, it said. The typical three-year trial period in the U.S. can last up to a decade in China, it said.

Garmin bowed its first connected dash cams, “pocket-sized” devices that can be located "unnoticed" on a windshield, said the company Wednesday. The voice-controllable cameras record and automatically save video clips to Garmin’s online vault for 24 hours with options to store clips longer -- $4.99 monthly for seven-day storage, $9.99 for 30 days, it said. Parking Guard and Live View features monitor parked vehicles and remotely alert drivers of activity via the Garmin Drive app. The four cameras range $129-$259.

Honda and AT&T extended their connected car relationship, offering premium WarnerMedia content at no additional charge to vehicles on unlimited data plans, they said Thursday. Hondas from model year 2018 and later are eligible, as are Acuras from 2019 on. This allows up to 10 passengers to connect devices and share content.

Update rules on unlicensed use of the 60 GHz band, said Facebook, Intel and Qualcomm in a Tuesday posting in docket 14-177. “To the extent the FCC proposes to revise this Part 15 unlicensed rule” to allow radar operations in the band “at higher power than presently permitted and with a 10% duty cycle in a 33-millisecond period, the agency should also propose to include a provision to ensure such radar operations do not completely occupy the … band and inhibit communications applications,” they said. Tesla and others sought waivers to use the spectrum (see 2103160059).

Connected vehicles sales are on a recovery path, despite chip shortages, reported ABI Research Thursday. Consumers are becoming “more demanding” about in-vehicle infotainment, “driving strong interest in connected vehicles and boosting growth opportunities,” it said. ABI projects 20% growth in connected vehicle sales in 2021 from 2020, and a 10.4% compound annual growth rate through 2026. The recently announced Ford-Google partnership (see 2102010062) “shows a considerable migration to Android OS,” which will have more than doubled penetration in production vehicles by 2024, said ABI: Shipments of vehicles with “connected infotainment” will return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels this year.

DTS announced what it called the first neuromorphic driver monitoring solution (DMS) to detect gaze tracking, head pose, identification and eyelid opening. AutoSense, which includes a DMS and an occupancy monitoring solution, is projected to be on the road in 2021, said the company Wednesday. It uses a raw feed from Metavision’s event-based Vision sensor. Neuromorphic sensors capture information at an equivalent frame rate of 10,000 per second without requiring active illumination, enabling sufficient low-light performance for driver monitoring features and capabilities such as rapid eye movement or micro-expressions, DTS said. The training data set was based on Xperi’s computer vision infrastructure, “reusing ground-truth from the visible and near infrared spectrums,” it said. “Being able to instantaneously detect the subtlest, almost imperceptible, face and eye motions can be lifesaving,” said Xperi Chief Technology Officer Petronel Bigioi.

Harman announced Tuesday the Ignite Store Developers Portal, a hub that gives Android Automotive developers access to toolkits, technical documentation and application programming interfaces to create apps for a Harman's Ignite store. Carmakers can more easily “infuse technology, control experiences and implement digital revenue generators” through a curated store with apps Harman pre-certifies, said the company. The portal connects Android developers with carmakers “to increase the effectiveness and availability of in-vehicle applications on the cloud,” said Sripriya Raghunathan, SBU senior vice president-automotive services. Android developers can more easily engage their target audience, OEMs have a streamlined way to drive new experience opportunities around their brands, and consumers can enjoy what Harman calls “enhanced experiences per mile” with access to their favorite content, she said. OEMs can benefit from digital revenue streams and “minimize traditional costs associated with pursuing new technology solutions,” said the company. Search and delivery platform Audioburst on Tuesday announced availability of its app at Harman’s Ignite store. Through the app, drivers and passengers can say what they want to listen to, and Audioburst generates relevant and personalized podcast and digital radio playlists, it said. The company’s APIs give OEMs user analytics for content consumption, which can be used to inform subscriptions or ads, creating new revenue opportunities, it said. The company’s AI technology constantly listens to thousands of podcasts and radio stations, analyzing and indexing millions of minutes of long-form content, then cutting it into short-form audio clips called “bursts,” it said. Keywords, entities, sentiment and other metadata are extracted to ensure accurate topical segmentation. The bursts are grouped together into playlists to provide listeners with a recommended content stream based on trending topics, past behavior and defined keywords and interests, it said. Categories can be broad, such as technology, or specific, such as a sports team.