Connected cars, a market worth 1.2 billion euros (+ 14%)

Last year, the market for solutions for the 'smart' and connected car reached a value of 1.2 billion euros in Italy, with a growth of 14% compared to 2018 in line with the increase in the main western countries ( between 10% and 15%), for a total of 16.7 million connected vehicles, equal to over 40% of the cars in circulation. The most popular devices were the GPS / GPRS boxes for the location and recording of driving parameters for insurance purposes, 63% of the total (10.5 million, + 9%), but growth is driven by natively connected cars via SIM (2.2 million, + 47%) or via bluetooth systems (4 million, + 33%). These are numbers that fully reflect consumer behavior: 75% have heard of Smart Cars, 61% already have at least one smart functionality for the car, such as solutions for assisted parking, voice assistants and assistance systems. driving, over half of consumers plan to buy a connected car within the next three years. This is what emerges from a study conducted by the Smart & Connected Car Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano presented today at the online conference 'Connected Car & Mobility: a new beginning'.

In particular, the study underlines how the Covid-19 emergency has hit the automotive sector hard, also slowing down the development of the Smart Car for 2020, but in the next few years the market is destined to start again on the push of the new needs for social distancing , to which the private car more than any other vehicle is able to respond. Further acceleration will come from legal obligations, with the effects of the entry into force of the legislation related to the 2018 eCall and the entry into force in 2022 of the European legislation that requires the adoption of ADAS systems, such as automatic braking or keeping in lane. The growing number of companies that can collect large amounts of data on smart car users and use them to improve services or offer new ones will also have a positive impact on the market, if you consider that the service component already in 2019 is worth 330 million. euros, + 20% on the previous year.

Smart Mobility is becoming increasingly important in Italy: 87% of local PAs consider this area of ​​great importance; 36% of the municipalities over 25 thousand inhabitants have activated at least one project, in 58% of the cases they are initiatives at an advanced stage and extended to the whole urban area; 39% of users have used a shared mobility service at least once, especially car sharing (21% of users) and car pooling (25%).