As we approach the end of the year, we can begin to reflect on the most important movements, trends, and technologies delivered over the course of 2024. From the growing number of use cases demonstrated for AI in automotive, through to the new services and features being launched to extend and expand the EV lifecycle, as well as the more widespread integration of consumer electronics devices into the vehicle lifecycle through dedicated companion apps.
While making rapid progress so far this year, these three trends are set to proliferate further in 2025, impacting even more consumers, automakers, suppliers, and governments around the world. As such, a deep understanding of how these trends are already disrupting the industry, and how they will continue to deliver this impact in the future, will be crucial to any automaker, supplier, or start-up looking to secure competitiveness and maximize profitability as they continue to evolve.
In this article, we will explore three of our major upcoming report releases that speak to each of these trends: our Vehicle UX Evaluation: Companion Apps report, the AI for Automotive Guide, and our EV Apps & Digital Consumer Experience Guide. While outlining the contents of each report, and exploring their key benefits, we will also highlight the ways in which they can support strategies around connectivity, electrification, and the end user experience.
Vehicle UX Evaluation: Companion Apps
A common trend among many new vehicle releases, especially those launched in 2024, is the number of innovative technologies and connectivity features being offered as standard equipment. Designed to elevate the user experience, while also extending it beyond the vehicle, the way in which these features and systems are implemented and deployed plays a crucial role in delivering satisfactory user experiences and fostering customer loyalty.
In recent years, a growing number of OEMs have utilized vehicle companion apps to help them achieve these goals – integrating their brand-specific user experiences more deeply into the consumer’s digital life. Available for modern smartphones and smartwatches, these apps broaden the scope of the vehicle user experience and enable the remote control of key vehicle functions, while some facilitate new experiences altogether. With these apps presenting automakers with the opportunity to strengthen brand loyalty among new and repeat customers, any OEM developing or utilizing such an app must ensure that it provides the satisfactory user experience needed to secure this trust.
Building on the deep automotive UX insights offered in our Vehicle UX Evaluation: Hands-off Driving report, this report sees our usability experts perform a further UX deep dive into the companion apps offered alongside the models reviewed in our 2024 Vehicle Evaluation Report Series. For these apps, the report highlights the experiences they offer on smartphones while understanding the ways in which they interact with various connected vehicle features. An expert-led deep dive provides further insight into how these apps are implemented and what their key differentiators are, while more broadly assessing their USPs.
AI for Automotive Guide
In 2024, Generative AI made significant inroads across the consumer electronics, advertising, and many digital industries while also finding footing within automotive. Here, its initial use cases include product development, image classification, path planning, in-car personalization, and, in the future, could extend beyond applications and reach a functional level. As the potential for generative AI within automotive continues to grow rapidly, OEMs, suppliers and start-ups looking to capitalize on this growth must be well versed on the strongest, most lucrative, use cases for AI within automotive and understand both the impact this technology will deliver across the value chain and the obstacles it will face as this impact is delivered.
In recognizing its truly disruptive potential, our AI for Automotive Guide explores the current and future automotive use cases for generative AI while mapping out how it will impact the industry at large. Here, it understands the functional application levels where it will deliver this impact in the next five years and highlights case studies on the technology in both upstream automotive applications and functional verticals. The report’s scope extends further to account for generative AI’s short, mid-, and long-term use cases in automotive, empowering planning and IT teams with a range of actionable use cases to consider for the next five years. It similarly provides these teams with an extensive list of potential AI partners, and detailed comparisons on how AI is being approached by various industry players today.
EV Apps & Digital Consumer Experience Guide
EV adoption continued to grow in 2024 through the rollout of new incentives and the launch of new models being offered across more segments and at more accessible price points. At the core of these models, and the EV landscape more broadly, is a rapidly developing ecosystem of apps and services dedicated to supporting the overall EV experience.
Here, a multi-channel communications approach incorporates a combination of smartphone apps, owner portals, and in-vehicle systems that together inform owners on battery status, charger availability, digital payments, EV value-added services and more. With EVs continuing to rely on this approach to deliver essential experiences, highlight USPs, and facilitate innovation, it is critical for any OEM developing or delivering new EVs to balance a rich ecosystem of EV-focused digital apps and services with a holistic consumer journey that informs, supports, and maximizes the end consumer experience.
In the EV Apps & Digital Consumer Experience Guide, our domain experts break down the ways in which EV apps and digital consumer experiences are being delivered through five key steps. While delivering deeply informative insights into how digital tools and services can help drive EV adoption, our experts highlight the best practices for digitizing the most essential elements of the EV user journey and identify how the remote and in-cabin vehicle experiences work together to deliver information and support new, digital-first, EV experiences. These insights together help planners and engineers prioritize new EV-focused features and services, facilitate digital innovation, and drive EV adoption.
Next Steps
As shown throughout this Insight, each of our upcoming report releases offer reference points for trends that have grown rapidly in 2024 and are set to gain further momentum in the coming years. With these trends developing under domains that will each play a key role in the future of automotive, these upcoming reports together provide an invaluable resource designed to strengthen and accelerate your strategies around electrification and connectivity – allowing you to future proof your technologies and innovate ahead of the competition.
Want to learn more about the trends and topics discussed in this article? Then be sure to click below to secure your copies of our AI for Automotive Guide, our EV Apps & Digital Consumer Experience Guide, and the Vehicle UX Evaluation: Companion Apps report today!