Automakers will be big consumers for next-generation telecoms networks, helping to justify investment in 5G, but the requirement to be more innovative if the technology is to take off, Spain’s SEAT stated on Monday.
The deployment of 5G promises to associate everything from vehicles to household devices but will need prodigious investment and the telecoms industry is attempting to agree on if and how 5G can facilitate enough innovations to be profitable.
Luca de Meo, chief executive of Volkswagen-owned SEAT, stated applications were right now “pretty limited”, before revealing what he described as Europe’s first 5G-connected concept car at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Still, he stated connecting a car with a passenger’s mobile phone, or external infrastructure or retailers could result in billions of possible transactions.
“I think personally the automotive industry will play a big role in justifying the investment so we will be one of the major customers but we need to be creative,” De Meo informed Reuters.
“We need to experiment and look at functionalities and hopefully the market will say, OK, I want to purchase a car like this because it can prevent an accident or it can see around the corner and I value that and I (will) pay for it.”
5G will help to progressively develop autonomous driving, where the expenses of installing sensor technology are already declining, De Meo stated. That market is expected to be worth as much as $95 billion in next year.
But ethical questions, concerns of infrastructure and how conventional cars will coexist with driverless ones make it very hard to say when the market will take off, he stated.
SEAT expects the next version of the Minimo concept car, an electric model in which one passenger sits behind the driver, to be geared up for autonomous “L4” regular driving in cities.
“We see the potential in the car-sharing platform,” De Meo stated adding costs could be cut 50 percent if cars could be tracked, did not have to be moved and were frequently running and so did not pay for parking.
