In the case of Tesla and their rapid ascent to the top of the global automobile business, this might be true. After all, the electric vehicle company somehow manages to spend $0 on advertising year after year, despite the fact that marketing is typically a significant expense line item for most other auto manufacturers. On the flip side, Tesla is spending an average of $2,984 per car sold on research and development (R&D)—often triple the amount of other traditional automakers. On this per vehicle sold basis, Tesla’s $2,984 in R&D spend per car is far greater than that of other car manufacturers. It’s even higher than the collective amount going to R&D per car from three of the other automakers (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) combined. When it comes to advertising, the average spend among traditional automakers is $495 per vehicle. And while Tesla technically spends nothing on advertising, the company is a marketing machine that is rated as the world’s fastest growing brand, and Tesla often dominates press mentions and social media chatter.
Capital Allocation: R&D and Advertising
The balance of expenditures between R&D and advertising is part of capital allocation, a decision every business needs to make. Generally speaking, more R&D can improve and advance the quality of either your goods or service, relative to your competitors. If executed correctly, it has the potential to lead to greater pricing power that will reflect in the margins. In contrast, advertising can spread awareness and promote the business. But it’s a tricky balance that isn’t always easy to get right. While capital allocation is vital, one factor that differentiates Tesla from the rest, is Elon Musk himself. With over 60 million followers on Twitter, his wild popularity has no doubt aided in Tesla’s brand recognition, where they’ve arguably become synonymous with the electric vehicle revolution.
Automobiles Of Tomorrow
For Americans, 85% still use an automobile as their primary method of transportation to work. As a result, automobiles will likely undergo a serious shake up as the world continues on its path towards a greener future. With increasing investments made in the electric vehicle space—poised to be worth a trillion dollar market by 2028—how will R&D and advertising budgets of tomorrow look for major automobile companies? Source: 10-K Filings Notes: Data covers automobile figures for 2020 on Today’s connected cars come stocked with as many as 200 onboard sensors, tracking everything from engine temperature to seatbelt status. And all those sensors create reams of data, which will increase exponentially as the autonomous driving revolution gathers pace. With carmakers planning on uploading 50-70% of that data, this has serious implications for policymakers, manufacturers, and local network infrastructure. In this visualization from our sponsor Global X ETFs, we ask the question: will connected cars break the internet?
Data is a Plural Noun
Just how much data could it possibly be? There are lots of estimates out there, from as much as 450 TB per day for robotaxis, to as little as 0.383 TB per hour for a minimally connected car. This visualization adds up the outputs from sensors found in a typical connected car of the future, with at least some self-driving capabilities. The focus is on the kinds of sensors that an automated vehicle might use, because these are the data hogs. Sensors like the one that turns on your check-oil-light probably doesn’t produce that much data. But a 4K camera at 30 frames a second, on the other hand, produces 5.4 TB per hour. All together, you could have somewhere between 1.4 TB and 19 TB per hour. Given that U.S. drivers spend 17,600 minutes driving per year, a vehicle could produce between 380 and 5,100 TB every year. To put that upper range into perspective, the largest commercially available computer storage—the 100 TB SSD Exadrive from Nimbus—would be full in 5 hours. A standard Blu-ray disc (50 GB) would be full in under 2 seconds.
Lag is a Drag
The problem is twofold. In the first place, the internet is better at downloading than uploading. And this makes sense when you think about it. How often are you uploading a video, versus downloading or streaming one? Average global mobile download speeds were 30.78 MB/s in July 2022, against 8.55 MB/s for uploads. Fixed broadband is much higher of course, but no one is suggesting that you connect really, really long network cables to moving vehicles.
Ultimately, there isn’t enough bandwidth to go around. Consider the types of data traffic that a connected car could produce:
Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) Vehicles-to-people (V2P) Vehicles-to-infrastructure (V2I) Vehicles-to-everything (V2E)
The network just won’t be able to handle it.
Moreover, lag needs to be relatively non-existent for roads to be safe. If a traffic camera detects that another car has run a red light and is about to t-bone you, that message needs to get to you right now, not in a few seconds.
Full to the Gunwales
The second problem is storage. Just where is all this data supposed to go? In 2021, total global data storage capacity was 8 zettabytes (ZB) and is set to double to 16 ZB by 2025.
One study predicted that connected cars could be producing up to 10 exabytes per month, a thousand-fold increase over current data volumes.
At that rate, 8 ZB will be full in 2.2 years, which seems like a long time until you consider that we still need a place to put the rest of our data too.
At the Bleeding Edge
Fortunately, not all of that data needs to be uploaded. As already noted, automakers are only interested in uploading some of that. Also, privacy legislation in some jurisdictions may not allow highly personal data, like a car’s exact location, to be shared with manufacturers.
Uploading could also move to off-peak hours to even out demand on network infrastructure. Plug in your EV at the end of the day to charge, and upload data in the evening, when network traffic is down. This would be good for maintenance logs, but less useful for the kind of real-time data discussed above.
For that, Edge Computing could hold the answer. The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium has a plan for a next generation network based on distributed computing on localized networks. Storage and computing resources stay closer to the data source—the connected car—to improve response times and reduce bandwidth loads.
Invest in the Future of Road Transport
By 2030, 95% of new vehicles sold will be connected vehicles, up from 50% today, and companies are racing to meet the challenge, creating investing opportunities.
Learn more about the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF (DRIV). It provides exposure to companies involved in the development of autonomous vehicles, EVs, and EV components and materials.
And be sure to read about how experiential technologies like Edge Computing are driving change in road transport in Charting Disruption. This joint report by Global X ETFs and the Wall Street Journal is also available as a downloadable PDF.
