Q&A with Car Connectivity Consortium: Using NFC to Drive Innovation in the Automotive Industry

Following a recent joint webinar between NFC Forum and Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) providing a Certification Workshop for the CCC Digital Key, we sat down with Glen Stone, Technical Director at CCC to delve deeper into the organization’s partnership with NFC Forum and hear his thoughts on the role NFC technology plays in driving innovation in the automotive industry.

1. Can you tell us a bit about the Car Connectivity Consortium and its goals?

CCC is a cross-industry member organization dedicated to advancing technologies for smartphone-to-car connectivity solutions. Our 200+ strong membership consists of leaders across the automotive and smartphone industries, including Charter member companies Apple, BMW, CARIAD, DENSO, Ford, General Motors, Google, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, NXP, Panasonic, Samsung, Thales, and Xiaomi.

CCC’s current effort is to drive implementation of the CCC Digital Key™, allowing users to unlock and start their car using their smartphone. We want to make this process as convenient as possible for consumers, ensuring they understand the technology and are confident enough that they don’t need to carry an accompanying key fob ‘just in case’.

2. How is CCC achieving its goals?

We launched CCC’s NFC certification program last year to instill confidence between vehicle and smartphone manufacturers that the CCC Digital Key ™ technology will interoperate across the entire ecosystem. At CCC, we require certified NFC technology to be used within vehicles and the devices interacting with them and so to achieve CCC certification, manufacturers must use NFC Forum-certified NFC technology within their products.

3. How is NFC technology helping to accelerate innovation in the automotive industry?

Innovation in the automotive industry is now much faster, with reduced development cycles between technology updates in a car. This has driven car manufacturers to expand their horizons on what a vehicle is and what it can do. However, in the automotive industry, you must be careful about how much change you try and implement – consumers need to be comfortable adopting and using new innovations. NFC technology is reliable, familiar to consumers, and it’s been proven to work in a number of markets.

Adding NFC to the car has opened up a new world of opportunities based on its robust connectivity, and car manufacturers are constantly exploring new use cases for NFC that can help bring convenience to consumers. Even as technologies such as UWB and Bluetooth are adopted that enhance user convenience when unlocking a vehicle, NFC will remain an integral technology thanks to its ability to unlock a car even when a phone has run out of battery charge, and is considered foundational for innovation in the automotive industry.

4. What was the driving force behind the decision to partner with NFC Forum?

We saw the great work NFC Forum has done to drive global standards and specifications and recognized its vital role in the NFC ecosystem. Our partnership was a natural fit to ensure strong and secure certification of the NFC technology within vehicles and the devices interacting with vehicles, ensuring they are interoperable and compatible with digital key software.

5. What are some of the benefits from CCC’s partnership with NFC Forum?

As part of our liaison relationship, CCC and NFC Forum are in tune with each other and we benefit from sharing our knowledge of what’s happening in our respective ecosystems, emerging NFC use cases and any issues arising that need to be addressed. Working together has been seamless, and at CCC, we benefit from the maturity of NFC Forum’s certification program, which gives us peace of mind that NFC technology used to enable the CCC digital key is tried and tested.

Both the CCC and NFC Forum certification programs align on our overarching goals – setting the foundation for interoperability, quality assurance and delivering the best possible user experience. These symbioses resulted in NFC Forum and CCC working closely together to establish an NFC certification track, adapted for the automotive industry and our digital key use case. The certification was opened up to non-NFC Forum members for CCC certification, and CCC Digital Key Reader and CCC Digital Key Card Emulation device classes were introduced into the NFC Forum testing process. NFC Forum’s Certification Release grace period was also extended to 72 months in recognition of the slower development cycles in the automotive market compared to consumer electronics.

6. What do you think the future holds for connected cars and how will NFC technology help achieve that vision?

It is an exciting time. According to McKinsey, 95% of all cars sold will be connected cars by 2030. Looking beyond the CCC Digital Key™ specification that helps lay the foundation for additional features and functionalities, we are poised to take on the future of vehicle connectivity. This includes everything from electric vehicles to fleet management to motorcycles and beyond.

However, future innovations must be underpinned by interoperability and the importance of standardization can’t be overemphasized. Key to this is understanding where to standardize, where to innovate on top, and the importance of certification to test interoperability and ensure everyone interprets specifications and standards in the same way.

Interested in finding out more? Visit NFC Forum and Car Connectivity Consortium to discover how to certify your products and ensure they work flawlessly with one another.