Chevrolet, the American automobile division of General Motors, has released some figures today regarding in-car usage of its OnStar 4G LTE data connection. The company revealed a sensational 200 percent hike in is usage in 2016 against 2015 figures.
Auto makers have recently shown great interest in incorporating data connection as a necessary component in their vehicles and Chevrolet has now released the results of these efforts. The maximum spike has been observed in its popular SUV Tahoe and Suburban which recorded around 260 percent increase in usage.
In 2016, Tahoe and Suburban drivers have used a total of 713,669 GB data, which is same as 3 million hours of video streaming or 25 million hours of music streaming, says Chevrolet. Hopefully, the figures will increase in grow in future as well considering 4G LTE connectivity is growing to become a default equipment in Chevrolet’s car lineup. However, users will have to make an additional data subscriptions for the usage.
OnStar 4G LTE is a subscription based data connection service by Chevrolet facilitating communication, vehicle security, hand free calling, navigation and remote diagnostics.
Chevrolet’s global head and president of GM North America, Alan Batey says:
As a strategic plan to grow retail sales, Chevrolet has continually invested in new safety, convenience and connected technologies across our trucks, utilities and cars. We are attracting new buyers to Chevrolet by offering technologies like OnStar 4G LTE not available on competitive models. New owners are in turn more likely to become repeat Chevrolet customers as these features become an integral part of their day-to-day lives.
The hikes in in-car usage are remarkable considering the fact that they could drive post-purchase revenue for the car owners. As per a recent industrial survey, the cars with data connectivity drive 10 times more revenue than an ordinary car in their lifetime.
With the advent of autonomous vehicles and driver assistance technology in the market, data connections are about to be a very prominent factor in the cars for in-car and inter-car communications. Though we are still a few years away from such vehicles running on the roads in abundance, once these vehicles are dominant on the road, the tech could earn a lot of revenue for the car makers — at least that is what the recently released data suggests. Particularly when you stop to consider the fact that GM sells in-car data for between $10 for 1 GB and $40 per 10 GB.
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