Mobile Services for Vehicles

In recent years the modern vehicle has developed into a sophisticated sensor and computing environment. This development has been motivated by an ambition to enhance operations. In order to increase customer service and revenues, vehicle manufacturers are now interested in using the sensor data generated in the vehicle for remote vehicle services, i.e., mobile services connecting the vehicle to service stations while on the road. Our results from three years of case studies in collaboration with a vehicle manufacturer indicate, however, that it will not be possible to make such services profitable unless the vehicle manufacturer is willing to open up the vehicle for external service providers. The reluctance to do so, we argue, is a consequence of the product focus still characterizing vehicle manufacturers, in spite of a growing understanding of the need for a more customer oriented service perspective. Using information infrastructure theory, we argue for an open information infrastructure that can distribute costs, and support the development of both product and customer oriented services across different business sectors. Our paper is a contribution to information infrastructure theory and to a theory of services, by pointing out some important dependencies between services and information infrastructures.