Connected Vehicles Really Aren’t Connected (Todd Thomas - AiDEN)

Connected vehicles have long been an industry buzzword, but true connectivity has remained elusive. That's changing now thanks to new technologies like the Android Auto OS and AiDEN Automotive. In this episode, we talk to Todd Thomas, CRO at AiDEN, about how OEMs can finally collect and securely transmit data to and from vehicles while remaining GDPR compliant. This opens up endless opportunities for services and revenue streams for both OEMs and fleet operators.

https://ridecell.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridecell/
https://twitter.com/ridecell

Transcript

Angela Simoes:

You're listening to the Mile Marker podcast where we explore trends and innovations in fleet automation and shared mobility, helping fleet-based businesses make better-informed decisions and achieve full digital transformation.

Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of the Mile Marker podcast. My name is Angela Simoes, and I'm here with my co-host, Mark Thomas, EVP of strategic alliances with Ridecell. Hi, Mark. How you doing?

Mark Thomas:

Great, thank you.

Angela Simoes:

Good. Our guest today is Todd Thomas, chief revenue officer at Aiden Automotive. Aiden is a connected services platform that provides bidirectional communication between vehicles, services, and infrastructure. Welcome, Todd.

Todd Thomas:

Thank you so much, Angela and Mark. Glad to be here.

Angela Simoes:

Very cool. So I'm excited about this conversation because we'll be talking about connected vehicles. And everybody talked about connected vehicles. We were just talking about them for years. But they really truly aren't connected perhaps until now. So Aiden has a really interesting origin story, so can you tell us about that?

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, certainly. It is kind of a neat story. Our founders were essentially the initial Volvo connected car team and they were given an assignment to connect the Volvo vehicles with their insurance partner, Metromile. Metromile had a couple of new use cases that they wanted to bring to life in the vehicles. So they were working to solve that.

Volvo has an OEM cloud architecture, much like all the other OEMs. They're all a little bit different, but they're all primarily the same. And there are some limitations to that. The data points that are pulled from the vehicles are predefined, they are typically one-way communication, and oftentimes the majority of the data is anonymized. So it creates challenges in delivering services. That's really not what the architecture was built for. OEMs built their architectures for their own purposes and the intent wasn't really to deliver services into the car.

So the Volvo team trying to connect the cars to Metromile and get the data that they needed to deliver services into the car really wasn't working. They were struggling and having the same challenges that everybody across the industry have had in delivering services into the car. Simultaneous to that, the same team, the same connected car team was also working with Google and they were working to develop the first Android Auto Operating System vehicles. Volvo was the first one to roll those out in 2020.

Now, when I say AAOS vehicles or Android Auto Operating System vehicles, I'm not talking about Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And I know the naming convention is confusing. It's a terrible naming convention. But Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are essentially mirroring services that allow you to listen to the music off of your phone or to use your phone's navigation in your car. Android Auto Operating System is a deeper technology. It's actually operating system that runs the infotainment stack. So that's what the Volvo team was working with Google to do was roll out this first Android Auto Operating System vehicles.

So the team kind of had an epiphany and said, "Look, the cloud architecture wasn't designed to deliver services. It's not allowing us to really solve this problem for our insurance partner. Let's basically bypass the OEM cloud. Let's build a two-way communication platform directly on top of the AAOS." And so they did that and it worked beautifully.

Now, all of a sudden, they had a direct connection to the car, they had access to all of the different data points that were flowing through the operating system, and they could actually have two-way communication. So not only could they monitor the car and see what was going on in the car, but when something occurred, they could send communication back to the vehicle and communicate with the driver. So it was a big breakthrough.

Another big challenge is the anonymized data. So OEMs for decades have really tried to avoid personalized data so that they can kind of avoid GDPR conflicts. This team decided to take the exact opposite approach. So as they built this communication platform, they built consent management into the heart of the platform. So no data leaves the car without the driver's explicit consent.

Now, all of a sudden, they are free to use personalized data. They don't have to avoid personalized data. They don't have to anonymize data. So now, all of a sudden, you've got a communication platform with a direct connection to the car. You've got consent management, so you can share personalized data and you can do it two-way.

So it really changed the way that services can be delivered into cars. Metromile was thrilled and loved the outcome. Everybody was very happy with it. They quickly realized that this solution will work on any Android Auto Operating System car, not just Volvo cars. And so they actually spun Aiden out as a standalone company to bring this new communication breakthrough to the automotive world. So that's how Aiden came to be.

Angela Simoes:

So you absolutely addressed two of the biggest challenges when it comes to connected vehicles. So the technology part, but then also the privacy issue. So that's amazing. So when you say that you can stream services or you're talking directly with the car, does that also mean you're connecting with other systems or other services that are either within the stack or in the car? It's not just Aiden, right? You're connecting with other things, right?

Todd Thomas:

Absolutely. Aiden is really a platform. You can think of us really as just the pipes. So we can connect the car to really any outside party that wants connection to that vehicle. It could be an insurance company, a parking service, an EV charging network. It could be infrastructure. It could be anybody that wants to receive data off of that car and also allows them to communicate back to the car. So it can be anybody, service providers, infrastructure, anything.

Mark Thomas:

Todd, a car is not an individual. So how does Aiden work when you've got three drivers in your house. The one driver says, "Sure, this is great," but then my son's driving it and he doesn't want that. How do you handle different kinds of opt-in versus opt-out?

Todd Thomas:

So that's a fantastic question and gets really straight to the heart of the current GDPR issue that's going on. So for the standard right now across the industry, when you buy your car at point of sale, somebody puts a piece of paper in front of you and asks you for your permission to share and you check a box and you sign and that's it. The decision's done. Your car is connected. I actually just recently bought a car that someone had previously owned and I'm sharing data and I don't know who I'm sharing it with and I can't turn it off. That's kind of the state of the playing field.

Angela Simoes:

How crazy.

Todd Thomas:

Aiden changes.... Yeah, it is crazy. Aiden changes all of that. So through the services platform, it is dynamic. So if I get in and I want to share my data with an EV charging network, I turn that on and away I go. And it'll be on until I turn it off, so it persists in the background. Now, if my wife gets in the car or one of my kids gets in the car and they don't want to share that data, they can very easily toggle that off and not share data. It's as simple as that. It's an on-off toggle that any driver can get in and change at any time. So it is in fact then GDPR-compliant.

There is another layer if you are say a fleet vehicle. So the fleet owner...

Angela Simoes:

Going to ask that. Yeah.

Todd Thomas:

... could make a decision for the whole fleet. So for example, the fleet owner decides to get insurance from Progressive. So the fleet owner turns on Progressive in every vehicle throughout the fleet. Now the individual drivers will get notified. Each time they turn on the car, they'll get a notification that they are being tracked for insurance purposes. So the drivers notified, but the individual driver won't have the ability to turn that on and off. But the fleet manager does. The fleet manager can turn that on and off anytime that they would want to do that.

Mark Thomas:

Are the fleet vehicles themselves then pre-installed with a B2B or fleet version, or how does one then activate fleet mode when somebody gets a vehicle with Aiden?

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, great question. So the Aiden platform is really primarily two pieces. There is a system app that is installed by the OEM on top of Android Auto Operating system in the vehicle. And then the second piece is our cloud portal. The data comes off the car. The portal essentially works like a router to send the data to whoever is receiving that data. So as a service provider, fleet management, a fleet owner, you would log into that portal and you would be able to make decisions for your fleet and manage your fleet through that portal. So it's the same software that's in the vehicle itself, but you would have different permissions and different authorities as you'd log into the portal.

Angela Simoes:

Right. So that was going to be my question, is that you could connect with fleet management systems so that even though you have different drivers driving different cars, but through the fleet management system, you can see who was driving which vehicle at which time if you needed data for a particular window of time. Correct? Since the drivers can't turn, or if I guess the company decided that drivers can't turn on or off the tracking, but you could still see which driver was driving that car because you're connecting with fleet management systems, correct?

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And it creates... Because you are persistently tracking each vehicle and you have the ability to communicate back with that vehicle, it really gives you quite a bit of power in terms of how you manage that fleet. I would say one use case that we talk about more and more relates to EVs.

So EVs create some additional challenges and need for additional management because you have a couple of additional pieces. So for the average, let's say you're managing a sales and delivery fleet across a city. You need to control their schedules and see where your drivers are. If all of your vehicles also happen to be electric vehicles, you have an additional challenge in you need to manage the range and where they are. And there's kind of the third challenge, which is the infrastructure. Our infrastructures are still building up to support EVs, so it creates another level of complexity for a fleet manager.

So by being able to see every truck, the state of charge of each truck, and to have information on how well that truck charges, you can make decisions around where you want to modify your delivery schedule to have a truck pull over and charge. You can communicate with the driver and say, "We need you to go to this charging station. We need you to charge from 20% to 60% and then move on with your schedule because we've got another truck coming behind that's going to need to charge there."

So it gives you a lot more data on each individual truck, their state of charge, where they are in their schedule, and allows you to communicate back and manage those folks. So it's really helpful in those types of use cases.

Mark Thomas:

So then what do you do in a situation, so a fleet manager typically likes to have a system that works across their entire fleet, not a system for some of the vehicles. Do you have an aftermarket component or a way to retrofit or upgrade the vehicles that aren't being purchased pre-installed with Aiden?

Todd Thomas:

So yeah, the one prerequisite for us is that it is an Android Auto Operating System vehicle. It can be over- the-year updated. So there's a pretty large population of vehicles that are out there that are AAOS vehicles that don't already have Aiden, but we can be over-the- year updated and update that and then that data from those vehicles can be fed into any system.

But if you have a mixed fleet, which most people do, that goes across multiple brands and multiple years of trucks, our system will work for any of their AAOS trucks. But if they have older trucks that are not AAOS ready, they'll need to continue to use whatever systems they have in place for that. So Aiden will be able to augment and improve the communication and the management for the newer vehicles, but the older legacy vehicles, they'll have to use their existing systems.

Angela Simoes:

Right. And so it's good to really clarify that it works with yes, old ICE vehicles, fuel vehicles, as well as EVs because I think one of the use cases we had talked about previously was fraud prevention in a number of ways, but in fueling. So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that and some of the other ways that you are working with some current fleets.

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, the fuel use case and fraud is a huge one. That's something that every fleet deals with regularly. And one of the classic tricks is the driver pulls it into refuel the truck, he starts fueling the truck, and then his friend or his wife pulls in behind him and they fill up her car too. And it all goes through as one transaction. So being able to monitor the fuel level in the vehicle in real time and compare that against gallons pumped versus gallons received to the vehicle allows you to in real time identify that and stop that. So it's a great way to address that very common form of fuel fraud.

Angela Simoes:

Clearly, the value to consumer vehicles, there's so many different ways there that we could talk about, but fleets, while they may have some similarities are different and we've talked about some of that already. But what are some of the other unique challenges or needs of a fleet that you've discovered and are addressing through the system?

Todd Thomas:

For most fleets, the biggest cost to them is when their fleets are down, when their trucks are unavailable for whatever that reason may be. And so predictive maintenance programs can really help improve the efficiency and profitability of a fleet. So if we can get better data off the vehicle and monitor say, for example, the mileage and the road conditions and the weather and therefore be able to predict it is time to rotate these tires or change these tires before there is a problem, that is hugely valuable to the fleets.

And that could be tires is a big issue for every fleet. And so tire maintenance and predictive services around tires are, again that's one of those use cases that gets a lot of conversation and previously it's been a challenge to get enough data. So again, that's an area where Aiden is definitely helping, and that's definitely going to help keep some fleets rolling.

Mark Thomas:

For the Aiden cloud, is there a set of APIs that other providers are able to programmatically integrate and interface with what you're doing?

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, so there's a portal. Someone can log in and manage their fleet and manage their data directly through the portal. But there are also APIs available that they can connect with and use it directly through their system. So yes, both.

Mark Thomas:

So that's exactly one of the nice complimentary things with Ridecell is being able to take those insights that you're generating that pop up and in cases where there's some urgent action required having the Ridecell fleet transformation platform sort of listening for those things, getting either a push notification or just a polling periodically to understand the state of the vehicle and then automatically either dispatching somebody to tow a vehicle or automatically scheduling the repair, things along that nature.

So it's great that you're really able to provide a richer, deeper, real-time source of information about those vehicles, which can then act as triggers for automated actions that Ridecell is able to pick up and do.

Todd Thomas:

Yeah, it should work perfectly in that circumstance. That's a perfect application of it.

Additionally, we have one more layer of intelligence in the platform that will hopefully also reduce some of your costs around that and that we've got triggers that are built in as well. So you can set up triggers for the data so you don't have to receive data that you don't need or isn't useful for you. So essentially you can go in through the portal or through the APIs and you can select exactly which data points you're interested in receiving and you can set up triggers for exactly when you want to receive them. So you're only receiving data when it's of value to you.

So say, for example, back to the EV example, we can monitor, or the Aiden system can monitor the battery charge level and you will get a notification when that battery charge level gets to a threshold that you set, say 30%. Then we're going to share that data with you. So as long as the level is above 30%, we're not going to send that data to you. So you don't have to receive and store data that isn't of value to you. We're only going to send data at the time that's most valuable to you and you're going to want to respond to that. So it really minimizes the amount of data that you're going to receive and store, therefore minimizing your costs.

Mark Thomas:

That's great. I mean, we think of triggers as the things that trigger workflow automations, so being able to have at your level establishing and setting up the trigger so that the notification pops over into a system that then kicks off a bunch of pre-configured intelligence for how you solve things. Thinking of intelligence, have you done AI?

Angela Simoes:

You stole my question, Mark.

Mark Thomas:

Anything related to AI in the platform?

Todd Thomas:

So Aiden is actually an acronym. It stands for Artificial Intelligence Data Enabled. So the concept behind it is let's provide all of these AI services with the data that they need to bring these services to life. I mean, one of the biggest requirements for data for AI services is typically large sets of data. And so we can now provide massive amounts of data off of a car, real enabling all sorts of different AI experiences. And so yes, there are tons of different services out there that are AI-based that can work really well on the Aiden platform.

I would say one of the areas we see a lot of that is kind of talking about co-location. And what I mean by that is it's more than just in-vehicle commerce, it's in-vehicle commerce that is co-located with multiple opportunities. And you see that, or probably most of the conversation about that right now is around, again, EV charging.

So when your car hits 30% and the Aiden platform is going to send you a notice that your car's at 30%, here's three places that you can charge your car, you may want to choose one based on other co-located services. So I want to pick the charger that's next to McDonald's and I want to go ahead and open up McDonald's as well. So I would like directions to that charger. I also want you to order me a Big Mac and a Coke, have the car go ahead and pay for it so when I arrive I just walk up to the window, pick up my Big Mac and eat that while my car charges.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah.

Todd Thomas:

Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

[Inaudible 00:19:27].

Todd Thomas:

And AI can make that all already smooth and proactive. Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

So AI was built into the platform from the beginning and it seems that the AI capabilities just keep growing and growing. Where do you see or how do you see the AI capabilities evolving over the next couple of years, five years, 10 years if you can think out that far? Where do you see this going?

Todd Thomas:

Cars are basically super computers on wheels, and for years they've been limited in what they can provide you because they're not really connected. So that was kind of the beginning of our conversation today is that the Aiden platform now connects that car, turns the car into the next connected device. So that's fantastic.

So now with all of this data that's now available and with people able to choose, with drivers to be able to choose which services they want and which they don't, they can now turn these things on and we can then further use AI to really create proactive services for drivers. Right now, if you think about everything that you do in your car, you have to make a decision, pull out your phone, pick the service that you want, and make whatever action to make something happen. Between the data that's on the car, your consent to receive services and the AI, we can build really proactive services.

So you can imagine, Angela, you're on the way home tonight and it's 5:30, your car knows it's dinnertime, knows you're on the way home, and knows you'd like to stop at that one pizza place on the corner. The car can think of all of that in advance for you and say, "Angela, would you like us to order that pepperoni and sausage pizza? It can be ready, we'll have it paid for, you can just drive through the window and pick it up." And the car can make that suggestion to you. So it becomes proactive and intuitive instead of you having to do everything yourself.

Maybe a better example is the parking situation, right? Everybody has dealt with the difficulty in finding a parking spot in a city that you're not used to. So you use Google Maps and it directs you into the city, but then oftentimes it brings you to the back of the parking lot, not the front, or it brings you to a private parking lot, or it brings it to a parking lot that's already full. All of that should be really proactive for you. So as the driver, again, the car knows you're approaching your destination and knows you're going to need to park the car. So the car should automatically suggest couple of different parking options of parking spots that are public parking, that have available parking, let you pick which one of those you want before you get there so that you can go straight to the parking lot that works for you. If you need charging, pick a parking spot with charging.

Then when you arrive, the car should go ahead and take care of payment for you. So you don't have to pull out your phone and open an app or pull out your wallet and stick it in that little thing. Just let the car take care of payment automatically for you. Kind of like your Uber experience, right? One of the great things about Uber is you arrive your destination, you just get out and go.

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Todd Thomas:

You have the same type of thing with parking and/or charging and so many other services. So the car knows you need to park, it helps you find the right spot for you, takes care of payment. So you simply pull in, park your car, and walk off to do your business. And it all becomes a simple and intuitive and proactive experience for the driver. So that's all powered by the connected device and the AI.

Angela Simoes:

Right. That's also contingent that the parking garage in question is connected as well, has a system or has an app that you can connect to, which is the bigger conversation around connected infrastructure, which is a whole other podcast topic, so we won't go down that rabbit hole at all.

But the way that you're describing how the car predicts and reacts and suggests, it's kind of like an AI agent or an AI assistant, something that is talked about in the industry where, like you said, whether you're driving or wherever you are, the AI is suggesting something based on your past behavior. So yeah, so your car now becomes your agent suggesting things.

So with regards to fleet, we've talked about insurance, predictive maintenance, the charging experience, even fraud prevention. Are there any other use cases relevant to fleet that you think is important to mention but we haven't covered here?

Todd Thomas:

I think there's so many different aspects of fleet management. Fleet management can become very complicated very quickly. Just the scenario we talked about earlier where you've got a delivery fleet of electric vehicles and you've got a infrastructure that is less than what you might want, so you've got balance all of that. Imagine you've got a hundred trucks or you've got a thousand trucks, managing all of that becomes really complicated and that I think there's great opportunity there for AI to help manage that and balance that and kind of optimize making sure that all of your trucks are moving and all of your trucks are charging and you keep them all moving on the go.

So that's just one example. But anytime you talk about fleets, the larger the fleet, the larger geography, the more complicated it gets, and AI can bring a lot of value in that world. And that really, I guess, Mark, that's more your world than mine. So I'm sure you can probably speak to that better than I can, but there's a lot of opportunity there.

Mark Thomas:

Speaking of which, which cars can I go find this on the day? I'm getting excited. Which one should I get? Which marquees are using it?

Todd Thomas:

So our first big client is the Volvo Group. So we have launched our initial fleets of Volvo trucks in Europe. And over the second half of this year we will be scaling up with Volvo trucks across Europe and Renault trucks. And then early in 2024, we will be rolling Volvo trucks here in the United States as well as Mack trucks. We are also live with Lynk & Co's, which is, if you're not familiar with Lynk & Co, it's a very cool new EV auto manufacturer that's currently available in Asia and in Europe. And what's really cool about it is it's a subscription-based service. So you don't buy a car, you subscribe to a car. And so the Lynk & Co actually still owns the car and takes care of all the maintenance for you and insurance. So it makes it a really simple way to have access and use a car.

The thing I like about it is once you've subscribed to a Lynk & Co car, you get the Lynk & Co app on your phone. So if I subscribe to a car in Barcelona and then I travel for the weekend to Paris, I can simply pull out my Lynk & Co app in Paris and rent one of those Lynk & Co's for an hour or two or a week or two. So it's really subscription to a car and car sharing and total cost of ownership all wrapped up in one package. So it's a cool new OEM and a cool new service. So that's our second live OEM. We've got a couple of other big names that aren't public yet, so I'll just have to tease you that there's a couple more big OEMs that are coming soon.

Angela Simoes:

Very cool. The Lynk & Co thing, it's like almost a completely new business model for OEMs, so that's very cool. Well, this has been a great conversation. I think the Aiden platform is just super cool, great to see the traction that you guys have made. Any final thoughts that we'd like to share before we wrap it up?

Todd Thomas:

Well, love to talk more with you, Mark, about integrating and getting our partnership with Ridecell and Aiden up and going so that as we bring on new fleets in the US we can immediately deliver all that Ridecell value. So that would be wonderful. So we should follow up.

Mark Thomas:

All right. Looking forward to it.

Angela Simoes:

And with that, we'll say thank you both Mark and Todd for your time today. Another great conversation about the future of fleet and the innovations happening in the industry.

Thanks for listening to the Mile Marker podcast. If you liked what you heard today, give us a like, share this episode on social media, and even take a minute to give us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe to our channel so you can join us for future episodes full of insights and ideas to keep the mobility industry moving forward.