All car manufacturers are saying [the vehicle] will now be the key mobile device. It’s connected, smart, it has machine learning
Andrew Lo, Kanetix
There are always plenty of impressive gadgets coming out of the annual Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas – the Segway Advanced Personal Robot, Parrot’s latest UAV and LG’s rollable display all come to mind. But for Andrew Lo’s money, the most innovative devices at CES 2016 were the cars.
This might seem like a biased choice for the CMO of Kanetix, which offers an online comparison-shopping service for those seeking insurance coverage. But Lo is hardly alone. In fact, speaking to Marketing by phone from the show floor at CES 2016 recently, he said a number of colleagues in the financial services sector had suggested the event is becoming as much of a next-generation car show as it is a place for smartphone, smart watch and tablet users.
“All car manufacturers are saying [the vehicle] will now be the key mobile device. It’s connected, smart, it has machine learning,” he said. “There’s even been a lot of questions about who is going to build the car of the future — a car company or an electronics company?”
This helps explain why Lo felt it important to put CES 2016 on his event calendar.
“We always want to educate the consumer about insurance and the issues surrounding it,” he said. “We also want to help the insurance companies understand what will be important to their customers.”
THE HIGHLIGHTS
Lo noted that Volkswagen – probably wanting to reposition itself following its recent scandal — unveiled details about a car with zero emissions, which would also be autonomous (self-driving and packed with other smart features). Similarly, he was impressed by a US$500 million investment by Chevrolet in ride-sharing app Lyft to create fleet of driverless taxi services. Even relatively newer players in the auto sector, such as KIA, announced plans to spend US$2 billion on autonomous vehicles by 2018. Executives from GM shared similar plans in CES 2016 sessions, Lo added.
Andrew Lo,
Kanetix
“They all have autonomous car strategies, but to get there is going to take quite some time,” he said. “Realistically, the technology is really going to be used to add value to consumers now by offering things like automated breaking, collision avoidance or ways to tell you if something’s in your blind spot and so on. It’s partial automation that is being applied now.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Besides products ready for purchase or in production, CES often offers a preview of technologies that are still in the earliest stages. Lo noted that execs from Toyota, for example, suggested that a fully driverless car isn’t feasible without artificial intelligence capabilities. “That’s why they’re investing a billion dollars,” he said, and partnering with both MIT and Stanford University to make it happen.
In the near-term, Lo said he was eager to see how IBM, which did a keynote at CES for the first time this year, will integrate its Watson cloud-based analytics platform with customers in the auto sector.
THE FOLLOW-THROUGH
Lo said the things he learned at CES 2016 will have a direct and critical impact on the one area that does the most to drive consumers to the Kanetix site: content marketing.
“Rather than have people see insurance as a grudge purchase, we want to show them how to use cars and devices to influence your life, and how insurance plays a part in that,” he said.
For example, Kanetix recently conducted a survey on driverless cars that showed four out of five Canadians would be interested in the idea. Of course, what was launched at CES raises many potential issues around liability – when you’re using a ridesharing service and get into an accident, who end up paying? Kanetix can build on the “cool factor” of CES and use it to explore answers to these questions.
“We can build content out of that and make a show that is seen as a worldwide event become much more Canadian-relevant,” he said.
