Connected Car Apps: State of the Art Analysis

Trends such as Digitalization and the Internet of Things have brought about many changes to modern society. People around the world are more connected than ever. Likewise, people strive to combine things intelligently, creating the Internet of Things (IoT). These trends are very present in the automotive industry where we see similar developments. The industry is changing, and complying with recent trends is necessary for staying viable. The main device people dedicate their lives to, is the smartphone: a deeply personal mobile device. It is the center of communication for most people and plays a vital role in the Internet of Things. OEMs acknowledge this by providing connected car apps for communicating with their vehicles. While these functionalities within the apps are helpful, they are still very limited. More intelligent and relevant functionalities should be implemented in the future in order to stay attractive and evolve with the changing mindset of the people. The purpose of this work was to investigate the state of the art in the automotive field within the German market regarding the functionalities provided by the relevant connected car apps available. Additionally, a survey was conducted in order to assess the current usage and the users’ level of satisfaction with these apps, while examining the acceptance and doubts for various potential features for future versions of connected car apps in form of scenarios to the participants. Hereby two groups were compared in their responses: the experts and the novices. In this case the experts fulfill requirements such as being familiar with connected car apps and the development thereof; the rest of the participants are considered novices. The expectation was to see a clear difference between the two groups regarding the satisfaction levels of current apps as well as in terms of the expectations for future features. Indeed, the results showed some significant differences between the experts and the novices. There were no significant differences between the two groups regarding the level of satisfaction in terms of the perceived usefulness of current connected car apps. In general, low ratings can be observed when it comes to the state of the art. This also reflects in the calculated net promoter score. Concerning future features of connected car apps, differences can be observed between the experts and the novices. The features and scenarios are, in general, rated more positively by the experts, while the concerns about privacy were rated higher by the novices across the scenarios. A portion of the differences between the experts and the novices were significant.