Written by Steve Tengler. Originally published on Forbes.com.
Thirty years ago, the word “trust” was invoked in automotive realms only when gauging the vehicle’s overall quality. Yes, reliability or quality were consistently amongst the top five drivers of purchasing decisions in 1995 (along with price, safety, brand, and styling), but there weren’t multiple definitions of trust and few quantifications beyond JD Power’s Initial Quality Survey (IQS) or recalls.
Then in 1995, the mass-produced, connected car became a reality with the launch of OnStar, and both the opinion of trust and the nomenclature expanded. In a recent study by Perficient, manufacturers of connected products ranked trust as the absolute lowest of influential factors for a customer’s purchase decision, whereas consumers ranked it the highest, and commercial users ranked it the second highest. “It’s alarming that the manufacturers and their customers don’t value trust in the same way,” summarizes Jim Hertzfeld, the Area Vice President for Strategy at Perficient.
And just like the number of words describing snow in Inuit and Yupik (a.k.a. “Eskimo”), the societal focus on automotive trust is birthing a combination of prefixes to articulate nuances about how the noun feels. A few possible prefixes defined herein shall explain a portion of the perplexing landscape: Fail-forward (trust), Cyber (trust), Personal (trust) and Nightengale (trust).
The Fail-Forward Trust
In a now famous, previously-internal corporate mantra, Mark Zuckerberg (CEO and co-Founder of Facebook), coined the phrase “Move fast and break things.” To some extent, this has been the mentality of Silicon Valley’s influence on software development over the past 5-10 years: don’t worry over pesky defects since more and more vehicles – just like cellphones – can reflash all of the software post-production and, therein, fix any launched mistakes. Fail forward.
This Over-the-Air (OTA) capability of reflashing is arguably the most confusing of the trusts since it invokes one of two opposing reactions from consumers: faith in software prowess (e.g., the automaker has impressive development capabilities that will defend me) or misgivings about bad behavior (e.g., laziness of upfront rigor via “We’ll fix it later” mentality).
“There’s still a wide span of capabilities in the marketplace for Over-the-Air updates and conscious choices to be made on how frequently each automaker chooses to exercise it,” states Jeffrey Hannah, Chief Commercial Officer of SBD Automotive, an independent automotive technology research and strategy firm that tracks such automotive reflashing. “This is really an evolving area of confidence which sits between the manufacturer and end consumer.”
“We have seen a noticeable uptick in initial quality problems, especially in software,” states SBD’s North American Director, Alex Oyler, “It is enabling bad behavior. What’s happening below the surface there is that [automakers] are trying to increase the cadence of product development to launch new products, but they haven’t been able to simplify the complexity out of their business.”
The Cyber Trust
The most ephemeral of the earned faiths is cybersecurity trust since all parties understand that new threats evolve every day, that any well-funded hacker can penetrate even the securest of designs, and that global automotive attacks continue to rise. And yet the customer’s expectation is quiet, bulletproof protection.
To sustain that confidence, the automaker must pivot by utilizing that same reflashing capability. “You are no longer necessarily building a vehicle for all of what it shall be able to do for its entire life,” states Bill Mazzara, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Chairman of the Vehicle Electrical and Hardware Security Taskforce. “Instead, you’re now building for [intended, future functionality] one day. We’re headed towards a world where products will get updated, grow, and live their life. Of course, good intent never leads to actual security. Hackers will hack you for your faults in implementation rather than your cult of intent.”
The Personal Trust
The most obvious trust issue is “Will the corporations be good stewards of my personal information?” For instance, one recent vulnerability discovered within twelve brands permitted employees and possibly hackers to understand exactly where a vehicle has been over the past year within the accuracy of a parking space.
Some 2024 vehicles from BYD, a leading Electric Vehicle (EV) automaker in China, had internal SIM cards that could transmit audio from inside the vehicle (e.g., the Atto 3) without the driver’s knowledge.
And a portion of OnStar’s service that enables an insurance discount based upon drivers’ habits for safe behavior shall be discontinued in 2025 since numerous privacy complaints, lawsuits, and a Federal Trade Commission ban (for providing precise geolocation data and driving behavior without adequate, affirmative consent) have made the business prohibitive and likely strained trust with some General Motors’s customers.
These are just a few examples from the past year, let alone the last thirty.
The Nightingale Trust
On the positive side, digital information has the ability to provide an additional safety value. OnStar had a long-standing ad campaign called “Real Stories” – and still has a devoted website – which featured customers’ real-world accounting for technology saving their lives. Additional, innovative post-crash services have been birthed using digital information to improve the outcomes of the crash’s victims.
Even from a preventative standpoint, a whole sector of product development called Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) relies upon digital information going to and from the cloud to improve maps, algorithms, responses, etc.
Yes, akin to Florence Nightengale, the social reformer, statistician and founder of modern nursing, the vehicle’s flow of information can provide a heathier outcome and, therein, improve the digital trust.
Author’s Note
This discourse probably confuses and frustrates the reader even more. “Which ONE vehicle can I trust? How do I parse through this to make a buying decision?”
I’d love to give you the decoder ring or point you to the window sticker’s 5-star rating for trust. But they don’t exist. And it would be outdated tomorrow.
Here’s my best advice: watch the number of software recalls. If a brand has to keep cleaning-up its messes, it obviously hasn’t figured out how to prevent the messes.