The Honda Connected Car Experience

Driving into the Future of IoT with the Honda 'Connected Car’ experience

The Problem Statement

Ever wish you could ask your TV to find the remote for you? Imagine requesting your fridge to do a quick shelf-check, so you know just what items to order, all from the comfort of your couch!

Such everyday nifty applications of IoT technology promise to radically alter our lived reality. At Agrahyah, we helped bring one such futuristic application of IoT to life with the Honda Connected Car Experience, which allows car owners to control their automobiles just by speaking to their Voice Assistant powered by Alexa or Google Assistant.

About Honda

Honda Connect is a mobile app for car owners to get telematics from their Honda cars. However, in a fast-evolving market where consumers are rapidly adopting newer ways of getting things done, a mobile app alone won't cut it.

Voice assistant adoption was growing in India exponentially, and Honda had to act first & act fast. In keeping with brand perception, Honda wanted to take the lead in developing a never-before feature and offer Voice Controlled functionality – seamlessly embedded into the driving experience.

The Agrahyah Response

To this end, Agrahyah’s team consulted with the Honda Car Division, and over multiple meetings with the embedded technology team we conceptualized an exhaustive list of features to make life easier for car buyers who wished to control their cars from the comfort of their homes - and build a revolutionary Home to Car (H2V) experience.

What Did We Do

  • Outline the cloud and connectivity architecture
  • Conceptualize and validate features that are relevant and useful to car owners
  • Design and development of voice apps for both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa
  • Exhaustive testing for safety and certification

For existing customers, we offered the convenience of having a variety of queries answered with just their Voice. For instance, car owners could say:

  • Alexa, turn on my Car AC
  • Alexa, Locate my Car
  • Alexa, When was the last service / when is the next service due?
  • Alexa, how is the battery health / engine health
  • Alexa, what is the odometer reading / tyre pressure
  • Alexa, please lock/unlock the doors / car / start the engine / stop the engine
Remote Operations
  • AC + Engine Start/Stop
  • Doors Lock/Unlock
  • Trunk (Boot) Unlock
  • Car Finder
  • Safety Mode On/Off
Service
  • Service History
  • Validity Check (RSA, PUC Card, Insurance, and more)
Car Status
  • Car Status
  • Engine Health
  • Battery Health
  • Light Status
  • Fuel Status
  • AC Status
  • Seat Belt
  • Odometer Reading
  • Doors Status
  • Trunk (Boot) Status
  • Tyre Pressure
Remote Operations
  • Honda Model USPs
  • Ex-Showroom Price (On-Road Price)
  • On-going Offers
Car Location
  • Locate My Car

What makes this cool + challenging

Security

Imagine your nosy neighbor casually asks Alexa in your living room to turn on the car and forgets to turn it off? What if you are driving on a highway and a curious child at home asks the voice assistant to turn off the car? Well, that’s where both Honda and Agrahyah took security seriously. Neither of the above scenarios would work. Similarly, we have anticipated and built gates to stop harmful or unauthorized usage of the voice experience.

Varid use cases and multiple cars

Making sure that the voice-activated command controlled the right vehicle. Imagine a household with multiple cars or an apartment complex basement with many cars in the lot; we need to get the right actions performed on the right car.

Time

Auto OEMs have complex path dependencies. Even a delay of small proportions by a single unit affects their entire supply chain. We had to not just quickly build and test but also factor in the time required for certifications from Amazon and Google.


The Outcomes

Honda cars was the first OEM in India to launch connected cars experience. It revitalized the sales of their most successful sedan- Honda City into newer heights.