These days, our cars are computers. During the 2021 pandemic chip shortage, car manufacturing ground to a halt and for the first time since the invention of the automobile, car owners could sell their car for more than they bought it for. 

Cars are ever-evolving complex systems, with sophisticated features that are reliant on software, data-availability, and internet connections. We’ve reached a stage in human history whereby if your car doesn’t have an internet connection - it may not even work. You may find yourself locked out - or in.

The Rise of the Rolling Computer

This is because the computer systems that support the advanced features that come equipped with new smart cars - app-based lock and unlock systems, integrated infotainment and voice assistants, AR displays, predictive maintenance, and so on. All of these are dependent on the same monopolistic and vulnerable server-client data model that our PCs use, meaning they are as prone to software bugs, glitches and outages as our PCs are. 

Your computer bugging out while sitting at home at your desk is a nuisance, your smart car powering down when you’re out in the desert is a disaster. Of course, there are failsafe systems in place, but the truth is that smart cars are vulnerable to the traditional attack vectors that any computer system now faces - attack vectors that might be a huge problem should, say, the car be autonomously driving while you’re distracted. If this doesn’t make you realize we need distributed data management and P2P data availability for smart car software, nothing will. It’s not conscionable that in a post Crowdstrike world, we rely on one central server, and one proprietary database, for our modern transport. 

How Smart Cars Can Power Modern Cities

Despite that potential threat, smart cars can ultimately be a massive evolution for all our transport needs if we can unlock their data processing capabilities through decentralized data management. The current trend is V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything), with your car acting as a node in a larger symbiotic system, with cars able to talk: to one another, to traffic lights, to road sensors, and even to local community infrastructure as it potters around town - delivering real-time alerts about traffic jams and accidents, but also integration with the smart cities of the future, gathering and providing data to and from its environs in a way to make them more efficient utilitarian. There’s even a chance a car could donate its spare processing power to the upkeep of local network systems, and yield a return to the owner when doing so.

Put simply, there is an unimaginable benefit to the advantage of using the advanced computer hardware in a car to connect to its digital surroundings. It has sensors of all types. Every car on our road - if we break centralized governance of their systems - can be turned into a public good while simultaneously benefiting its owner in very tangible ways. Range optimization, in car payments, perhaps even free electricity from charge points in exchange for the data collected and provided by your car as you drive. The potential is astonishing, but there are hurdles to overcome in order to protect those owners.

The Hurdles Smart Car Fleets Need to Overcome

The problem, as always, is data. The problem is interoperability, and the problem is privacy. The very problems that DefraDB is built to solve, acting as a powerful data management substrate that would allow the data collected and emitted by smart cars to be used effectively. A smart car collects enormously diverse data types from its GPS and sensor data, and some of that data is sensitive. There is a major threat to privacy that the issuer of your car’s computer systems can track your location at all times - what if they are breached? What if their systems are unknowingly traced by malicious actors who sell that data to modern day highwaymen? It’s quite easy to steal a car when you know for a fact it’s on its own on an open highway and no other cars are within two miles. All information that is currently stored on central servers that are open to assault, an ongoing asymmetrical attack against you, the consumer. 

On a less alarmist level, do you really want your car-provider to know where you are parked at all times? By using a distributed data management solution like DefraDB, smart car providers can prove to their customers the sanctity and sovereignty of their privacy, whilst also maximizing the way car-generated data can be used. By providing the ability for manufacturers and third parties to collect and process data, smart cars capture on a granular level, so that each vendor only gets a portion of the data it needs rather than batch-buying data wholesale against the customer’s wishes.

How Source Network’s Tools Evolve Smart Car Fleets

Effective data management across smart car fleets will be unlocked by Source Network’s tools. When dealing with the base practicalities, for smart cars fleets to live up to their promise, they need to maintain data integrity and accessibility at all times - something that’s incredibly difficult to do from a centralized server, especially in a way that doesn’t end up charging other potential utility applications for access. Ensuring that data remains intact, accurate and accessible in real time is crucial - but it’s something centralized models of data management truly struggle to do - and is a major bottleneck to the rapid growth of smart car adjacent utility from third party software developers.

By maintaining smart car fleets via interoperable P2P data sharing - as it would have at all times if built with DefraDB - then that data will remain available at all times, and any other sovereign application can sync up with it if permission is given - without needing to create bespoke data funnels that are costly and unwieldy. A smart car fleet whose data is managed by DefraDB can very quickly create conditions for additional utility offered by third party developers without having to sacrifice the sovereignty and privacy of the car’s owner, with transparent data usage at every stage. DefraDB’s data management also breaks vendor lock and ensures each vehicle can talk to every other on the road and the sensors that surround it, not just isolated ecosystems or particular vehicle makes or models.

How Source Network Creates Exponential Advance

It also means that rather than each new smart car added to a fleet of vehicles acting as a further burden on the network and a further demand on the centralized provision of software and data support, instead each new smart car added is just that, additive - boosting the overall efficiency of the network as a whole. Smart car manufacturers can benefit from better cost efficiency and better reliability, while also ensuring their data usage is compliant at all times with the appropriate local regulations. The scaling potential when using DefraDB for smart car data management is thus technically infinite and exponential; two very exciting words when dealing with a brand new hardware class. 

As this will reduce the latency between each edge device - in this case cars - meaning core features like traffic alerts and accident updates work better. As Source Network’s data management tools can integrate and orchestrate access to data across the network, it provides the ability for real-time analytics whilst also giving local edge devices communicating with the car appropriate data access. This also facilitates real-time insights for applications like predictive maintenance, traffic management and potential autonomous driving. For example, an insurance provider could, in theory - without breaching your privacy - offer you bespoke premiums based on your driving behavior, without needing to actually pruriently browse through your driving data.

Driving Towards Progress

Smart cars and their potential are in their infancy. Already manufacturers and developers are running into problems on how to effectively manage data across their fleets and how to evolve smart cars from automobiles with a few extra fancy features into true computers on wheels that power unique distributed systems with radical new potential. Tools like DefraDB help developers and manufacturers manage the data across their smart car fleets easily, and drive us forward towards a utopian horizon.