Auto Industry — A Blockchain Solution
The Auto-industry has got a number of challenges and blockchain can resolve some of the major issues making use of its inherent characteristics like immutability, security and distributed nature. The following article explains how some of those issues can be resolved. The following section details some of the existing problems and possible blockchain solutions.
Immutable Vehicle History
An immutable ledger between the manufacturer, dealer, repair shop and customers can bring a delightful experience for all the parties involved.
The latest example of this blockchain transparency across interactions is launched by Renault. The French automaker is piloting a digitized car maintenance program, which uses blockchain as a shared ledger to log all car repair and maintenance history in one place. The next step is going to be collecting and integrating the vehicle history parameters using IoT devices.
Genuine Parts
Parts suppliers can be part of a blockchain ledger, working with the manufacturers and repair shops. This helps the repair shop to make sure that they used genuine parts. Repair shops can be incentivized to report the replacement of a part. It will help the supplier to figure out easily if parts had any quality issues.
In an ideal solution, Manufacturer can create a distinctive ID for every part, and as the car goes through its life cycle, the history of its part and hence of the car is being recorded in an immutable ledger. This system will also immensely help the manufacturer or supplier, in case of any recalls.
Reduce Fraud in Reported Vehicle Data and Incidents
The vehicle manufacturer can fit IoT sensors that will report incidents like driving road conditions, customer driving behaviors, parts replacement, and service history. The Smart vehicle sensors will send the information to an immutable ledger and this measure will make sure that even the repair shop or the customer can’t manipulate or report an incident wrongly to the ledger.
Automotive Financing
The vehicle history data will be invaluable to auto finance providers and they can be participants in the blockchain and can request access to the vehicle data before approving finance on that Vehicle.
Other Parties of Interest: Auto FInancing and Auto Insurance:
The vehicle history data will be invaluable to auto finance providers and they can be participants in the blockchain and can request access to the vehicle data before approving finance on that Vehicle.
The vehicle insurance providers will be delighted to have the customer driving behaviors to provide better insurance services. The insurance industry also can use Smart Contracts in blockchain technology to make accident settlements fast, transparent and user-friendly.
TrustedAuto — Proposed Block Chain Solution
The above advantages mentioned are amazing, but hard to get it implemented in a manner that will make it attractive to all the parties involved. The program should be designed in such a way that it will incentivize the parties involved in joining this program through a Smart token system. The car manufacturers have to come up with an initiative to have the car and parts data in a ledger.
So in reality, different manufacturer s may come up with their own blockchain solution. It is hard for all the manufacturers to come up with a common platform that fits everybody’s requirement.
Here I am proposing a solution — TrustedAuto, which will allow even an existing car, who is not part of the blockchain will have an opportunity to do so and could be initiated by any one of the participants: dealer, repair shop or customer. A new agency or platform can come up with schemas for different transactions that occur in the lifetime of a vehicle.
Incentive — AutoCoin
Now to incentivize the players, a utility crypto coin will be created. Different transactions will earn predefined number of coins. Say for example, when the manufacturer or the customer register a Vehicle to the system, they earn a few coins. When the user reports a vehicle service, both the repair shop and the user earn a few coins.
These incentives will encourage the user as well as the repair shop to keep track of a vehicle history. Reporting proper and regular service will motivate the customer to maintain a good vehicle maintenance track of record. A trusted maintenance record will help the customer to ensure a good resale value for his vehicle.
IoT and Blockchain
New IoT devices can be developed that support this system. These IoT devices will report various incidents to the ledger. The incidents will be reported automatically by the device, but before it gets added to the ledger, the current owner will be notified about the data that will be added to the ledger. The owner can’t modify the data, but can only add his comments. The smart IoT devices will help to add more credibility to the reported data.
Smarter IoT devices can record more data like vehicle speed and driving conditions. The customer can receive incentives from the insurance company for installing these devices and based on his driving record, deductions can be provided.
Interaction with other Blockchains
TrsutedAuto platform will be working with other blockchains collaboratively to provide a better user experience. For example, a manufacturer might have its own blockchain ledger, and it can communicate with that network to bring complete vehicle data to the requested party.
Endless possibilities
TrusutedAuto has got endless possibilities when the three emerging technologies are combined: Block Chain, AI and IoT. The intuitive platform will be helpful to every party involved in the history of each vehicle. I am sure we are not very far from that.