Call me silly but one of my biggest thrills as a homeowner is pulling up the driveway and clicking the remote that opens the garage door. Or leaving to buy milk and closing the garage door automatically as I drive off to the supermarket. So you can imagine how giddy I think I’ll get with the thought of IoT (Internet of Things) technology that imore closely links my car to my house. The concept of a smart home hasn’t even dried yet and now here comes the smart car and the two are inextricably linked.
Not your father’s power steering
An article on Telematicswire.net points out that “An application linked to a vehicle’s GPS data can instruct the home activate or disengage appliances.” For example to turn off the air conditioning before we move out of home and enable them to turn it on remotely when we come back.
What’s impressive, reveals Telematicswire, is how many companies have already stated their hands to implement this convergence and making it a reality:
– Denso and Sharp are collaborating on new technologies to improve the comfort, safety and convenience of vehicles by integrating connected vehicle technologies with home electronics.
– Mercedes-Benz is also planning to add Nest support to its vehicles and letting drivers to able to tweak the temperature at home right from the dashboard of the car.
– ADT Security has built a model where cars and our homes are fused together. They have integrated it into Sync, Ford’s connected car model that allows customers to totally control their home from the connected vehicle.
Harmonic convergence
Meanwhile, automobile powerhouse Toyota teamed with Panasonic in late 2014. The technology links Toyota’s cloud-based telematics service with Panasonic’s home automation and control service, which is also hosted in the cloud, in a way that will allow drivers to control their home appliances from their vehicles using Toyota’s connected car platform. Toto, we are definitely no longer in Kansas.
More vulnerabilities
Forget mind-boggling, this is mind-numbing. My big concern though is data privacy. How do you protect all this cross-pollenization from falling into the wrong hands? Heck, my personal data can be compromized just turning on my computer. Now you’re adding a smart car and a smart home into the mix. And as Telematicswire so succinctly asked: “How do you disconnect all of your personalized electronics and reset the car for the new owner?”
#SmartCarSmartHomeSmartPeople
