Yeah, it's pathological.
From the Wall Street Journal, August 18:
Car makers are collecting massive amounts of data from the latest cars on the road. Now, they’re figuring out how to make money off it.
With millions of cars rolling off dealer lots with built-in connectivity, auto companies are gaining access to unprecedented amounts of real-time data that allow them to track everything from where a car is located to how hard it is braking and whether or not the windshield wipers are on.
The data is generated by the car’s onboard sensors and computers, and then stored by the auto maker in cloud-based servers. Some new cars have as many as 100 built-in processors that generate data.
Already, some car makers are gathering this data to provide feedback to help improve a car’s performance, refine features and alert them to any potential quality problems early on. They’re also using it to create new and more personalized services for drivers.
But many car makers have bigger plans, including using the data to craft targeted in-car advertisements or selling it to mapping firms looking to provide more accurate traffic information.
General Motors Co. , Ford Motor Co. and other major car makers are hoping these connected-car services will generate new revenue streams that can help them diversify beyond their core business of building and selling cars. While it is still early days, McKinsey & Co. estimates monetizing data from connected cars will be worth up to $750 billion by 2030 as more cars are shipped with pre-installed modems and other internet-connected devices.
“To some extent, the sky is the limit for what could be done with the data,” said Cason Grover, Hyundai Motor Co.’s senior group manager for vehicle technology planning.
Hyundai early next year will launch a new program that gathers data from vehicles on driving habits—such as how hard a car brakes or the miles it travels in a day—and use it to help owners get discounts on auto insurance. Hyundai says the data is only collected with the owner’s permission and shared with the auto insurer as a score rating the driver’s performance. Ford, GM and other car makers are also working with auto insurers to offer discounts based on driving data.
GM, through its Marketplace app, uses location and other vehicle data to help drivers find parking and schedule service appointments at nearby dealerships. The auto maker also uses location data and a vehicle’s keyless entry feature to offer in-car delivery of Amazon packages.
Later this year, GM also plans to introduce a new feature that can detect when a vehicle’s fuel tank is low and then offer a coupon on the car’s display for a discount at a nearby gas station, said Brian Hoglund, a business development director for GCCX, GM’s connectivity unit. Retailers then pay GM a fee for steering customers their way.
The Marketplace app is currently available in more than 2 million GM vehicles in the U.S. That number is expected to expand to 4 million by the year’s end.
Mr. Hoglund said customers benefit from sharing the data by having access to these services. But they must opt in first to each new app or feature before it can collect any data.
Ford recently launched a new service that contracts with companies and municipalities to gather data generated by vehicles used in fleets, such as police cars and delivery vans. The service can track fuel consumption and miles traveled, as well as monitoring driver behavior, such as whether the car is speeding or the seat belt is in use. The auto maker then sells the data and analytics to the fleet operators as a service.
Employers determine whether a driver can opt out of the monitoring, a Ford spokeswoman said.
Ford is also looking at other ways to monetize vehicle data, estimating that in the longer term, the effort could generate up to $100 per vehicle each year in additional value, said Don Butler, Ford’s executive director for connected vehicle and services....MUCH MOREAfter the AP reported that Google is tracking your location even if you turn off location history the GOOG said:
“There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,”That's pathological.
