A Connected Vehicles Veteran With "the Energy and Spirit of a Startup" - Niklas Florén, CEO WirelessCar

Formed twenty-three years ago, Sweden's WirelessCar is a specialist in connected vehicles. It works with OEMs, such as BMW, Volkswagen Group and Volvo Cars, to leverage the full value of connected services to achieve safer, smarter and more sustainable mobility,

"Twenty-three years later, we still have the energy and spirit of a startup, but today we’re in a much larger mobility ecosystem where connected vehicles are a must going forward. Just last week we reached 10 million vehicles in our systems, which enables us to create safe, smart and sustainable mobility on a much bigger scale than when we first started over twenty years ago," says Niklas Florén, WirelessCar's CEO.

The company's aim is to help OEMs not only to provide the services end users really need, but to achieve scalability. Its services  are available in over 100 markets worldwide.

"To start, it’s very important to establish that it’s not our data. It’s the OEM’s data or the driver’s data, and that’s been a cornerstone of WirelessCar from the beginning," explains Florén. "We don’t own any data; rather, we help the OEM to use their data in a smarter way. It could be used to predict how long it will take to arrive at your destination, or how long your battery will last - using both the data from the car but also other external data like weather or road conditions, for example."

"We also use automotive data to improve services, of course, so your car is heated and warm when you start your morning in Sweden, or cool and comfortable when you start your day in other countries," he adds.

The market for using data to benefit drivers is still in the early stages.

"If you have more insight into when and how you travel, EV journeys can be optimized more effectively. It will be easier to make sure that electric vehicles are charged to the right level, resulting in cost savings and better battery usage. This kind of optimization isn’t something you can do by yourself - you need to use the car data together with the environmental data and driver data," says Florén.

The Ten Million Milestone

Many of WirelessCar's solutions help to create more sustainable mobility, whether it’s by increasing the usage rate per vehicle through shared mobility or digital services that extend the lifetime of vehicles. One example is its Smart EV Routing product, which helps drivers remove range anxiety.

"By providing tailored navigation tools that match the EV driver’s needs, our product addresses a major concern for drivers switching to electric vehicles - feeling confident that you will reach your destination in the time you need. As a result, we’re easing the transition to EVs and helping to reduce CO2 emissions," says Florén.

WirelessCar has also collaborated with partners to study driver behavior.

"We all know that the driver can significantly impact the amount of CO2 emissions by how they drive, so providing insights and services that promote eco-friendly driving can make a real difference."

Reaching ten million connected cars in over 100 countries, this growth allows the company to continously adapt and evolve.

"We use the 100 million connected vehicles milestone as a statement both internally and externally to address the size of this market. By recognizing how large the market is, we can benefit both OEMs and drivers by making connected vehicle services widely available at the right cost and the right quality," he says.

"This is a much bigger challenge than most people realize. It requires a great deal of work to handle all the data from just 10 million connected vehicles because we need to manage the different requirements of over 100 markets. It’s certainly a difficult technical challenge, but one we know we can solve."

Wireless Cars' first customer was Volvo Cars. It helped it launch emergency call and Volvo On Call back in 2000. In June, 2022,the company announced it's working with another Swedish brand and Volvo Cars' partner, Polestar, to develop new Android Automotive OS-based (AAOS) applications for its cars. 

"Polestar really led the way in adopting AAOS, which provided a great opportunity for us to quickly go to market with our services. More specifically, we are delivering different in-vehicle applications and connecting those to our services in the cloud. In doing so, we can shorten the time to implement new services for the end customer from years to months - and in some cases, even weeks," explains Florén.

The Next Big Leap Forward

WirelessCars' Florén believes that AI will help OEMs develop even more services for their connected cars. The company has signed up to a project called 'FREEDOM' to conduct research and development on how AI can be used to make mobility more sustainable. 

"AI is already extremely important, especially as we move towards autonomous and more complex services involving safety within the car, but in the long-term it will be very dominant as the industry develops even more complex services. We see demonstrations of open AI and other fantastic showcases right now in everyday life, but it will of course take a big leap forward. When that will happen is very hard to predict of course, but AI is here to stay," he says.

Finally, we asked Florén what will the 'in-car' experience will be like by the end of the decade.

"I think the in-car experience will still be quite similar to what it is today. We’ve seen the development of bigger screens and more possibilities to use that screen when you have large, maybe level three autonomy; where you can use the in-car screens to get some office work done or to play games."

"The car, then, will become much more like a room where you can join Teams meetings or watch Netflix. But 2030 is not far away enough to see some dramatic change to pods for general consumers, so I expect that the cars will still largely look like they do today," he predicts.