In the past, getting a vehicle meant that you were stuck with its original features — unless you were ready to shell out on expensive upgrades at the service centre. But as automobiles became more software-defined, this seemingly immutable fact changed. Today, your smart car or two-wheeler can likely receive new features or upgrades overnight, while staying parked outside your home. This ‘silent revolution’ is driven by over the air (OTA) updates: a game-changing technology that is reshaping the connected mobility landscape.
In this article, I will explore how OTA updates are helping automobile OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and fleet operators to develop more innovative, responsive and profitable business models, while also being a win-win for user safety, performance and value. I will also share insights on how the instant, centralised and scalable nature of OTA updates enables Yulu — whose 45,000+ rental electric two-wheelers travel over 2 million kilometres daily across 13 cities — to run its fleet operations with high reliability and efficiency.
A giant leap in mobility technology
The technology behind OTA updates arrived close on the heels of upgradable smartphones, laptops and other connected devices. In 2012, Tesla became the first OEM to deploy an OTA software update. Over time, falling costs and rapid improvements in connectivity infrastructure and data networks saw the tool being deployed in two- and three-wheelers as well. However, the biggest boost for OTA came from the rise of software-defined electric vehicles (SDEVs), whose hyper-connected arrays of electronic control units (ECUs), battery systems and telematics units made them a perfect fit for this revolutionary technology.
In simple terms, an OTA update is a software upgrade or patch that is released, via a cloud server, to a connected vehicle’s onboard telematics unit through mobile data or a WiFi network. The telematics unit transfers the data instructions to the respective component’s firmware (software embedded in the hardware), to carry out whenever the vehicle is stationary. Finally, the vehicle sends the server a digital ‘nod’ after the upgrade has been successfully executed.
OTA updates in the automotive context are critical for optimising vehicles and responding faster to customers’ needs. These updates may be targeted at enhancing user convenience or efficiency — e.g., by upgrading the vehicle’s maps feature or driver assistance systems — or at fixing non-mechanical issues like powertrain or battery management problems that impact the vehicle’s range, energy efficiency, running cost, etc. The fact that these improvements and fixes can be done remotely and ‘over the air’, i.e., without bringing the vehicle back to a workshop, enables automotive companies to achieve quantum jumps in efficiency and scalability while building more customer-centric and responsive brands.
Success levers of fleet-based businesses
To grasp the benefits of OTA updates for automotive safety, performance, cost, and time-to-market, it’s essential to first understand the industry’s key performance levers.
Fleet-based businesses like Yulu that offer Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) operate widely-distributed fleets of vehicles across multiple geographies and use-cases. Keeping these vehicles safe, well-maintained, fully-charged and always available for users is their top priority. OTA updates play a pivotal role here in providing a consistent and reliable customer experience.
Here are five critical performance levers within fleet-based MaaS businesses, wherein OTA updates can make a significant impact.
- User and asset safety: Features and components infleet vehicles that directly determine safety — such as brakes, headlights, tyres, etc. — need to be constantly monitored and maintained. Component health and vehicle tracking systems must also work perfectly to prevent misplacement or theft of vehicles.
- Performance: Given the general concerns about range anxiety in EVs, fleet vehicles need to deliver an optimised and consistent performance in terms of power-to-range ratios, timely access to battery charging or swapping, energy efficiency, etc.
- Maintenance: Minimising downtime for non-mechanical issues, i.e., software fixes is critical. Every moment a vehicle is out of circulation reduces the availability for customers and leads to a revenue loss for the business.
- Cost: Constantly recalling individual vehicles from the field to the workshop and returning them is manpower-intensive and cost-inefficient on a city-wide scale.
- Go-to-market speed: Fleet companies need to put out new vehicle models and updated features quickly in order to attract users and grow their market share.
Benefits of OTA updates for MaaS users and operators
Being able to upgrade an entire fleet over the air has huge benefits for MaaS users and fleet operators. Pretty early on, Yulu realised that developing the in-house capability to remotely configure vehicles would be central to its promise of making mobility safe, accessible, affordable, and eco-friendly.
Today, we track 200+ parameters of our vehicles – everything from battery charge levels and component health to the vehicle’s location and physical orientation, its performance, energy efficiency, loading weight and much more. This enables us to proactively spot opportunities for improvement, or issues that can be fixed through an over-the-air upgrade.
Based on Yulu’s experience of running a pan-India fleet, here are some of the key benefits of OTA updates for safety, performance, cost and time-to-market.
Safety: Moving from periodic servicing to proactive and predictive maintenance
In a connected vehicle, a malfunctioning component can usually be repaired with a software patch without the vehicle having to leave the field. In addition, the wealth of diagnostics data generated by the on-field vehicles enables companies to predict safety-related risks or faults and fix them preventively — if needed, for thousands of vehicles simultaneously. Thus, the operator can ensure that user and asset safety are never compromised. In addition, as exciting new features like autonomous driving become mainstream, OTA updates based on emerging technologies and real-world inputs ensure better safety and regulatory compliance.
Performance: Adopting continuous improvement for customer delight
Shared EVs like Yulu are routinely ridden over 100 km or more daily. Regular monitoring of parameters like acceleration, braking, battery efficiency and more enables us to continuously tweak and optimise each vehicle for its location, usage and context. For instance, in a hilly city, the EV’s motor power might be enhanced to handle slopes, whereas in another city with flatter terrain, the power can be slightly reduced to extend range. Similarly, updates can help EV users to find swapping stations more easily on their apps. Over time, these ongoing improvements boost vehicle lifespans, customer loyalty and business profitability.
Cost: Using resources smartly to improve operational efficiency
If vehicles rarely have to be brought to a service centre for upgrades or repairs, it drastically reduces the operator’s rebalancing-related costs. This is especially true for larger companies like Yulu, whose vehicles are widely distributed in the field. In our own experience, a whopping 95% of software issues can be fixed through a firmware OTA upgrade. This helps keep our costs low, while ensuring uninterrupted service for our users.
Time to market: Gaining a competitive advantage
With OTA updates, a company can launch a vehicle with the minimum viable features, and then upgrade it over time. This makes it possible for operators to speedily launch new models before their competitors. It also allows them to unlock specific vehicle features — like additional speed modes or AI assistant capabilities — based on the user’s journey or rental plan. Thus, OTA creates room for significant business model innovation and customisation.
Over-the-air update technology has come a long way in recent years. And as vehicles become increasingly connected, OTA will be a crucial tool for OEMs and MaaS businesses that seek to usher in the future of mobility.
