- A former Tesla engineer and former Faraday Future engineer have teamed up on a connected car startup.
- Sibros says it can help make possible electric and self-driving vehicles.
- Here’s how the founders plan to tap into a $160 billion industry.
To date, just one automaker has made the most of its vehicles’ connections to the internet. Tesla regularly uses over-the-air software updates to give its cars (and customers) new capabilities, includer ever evolving autonomous driving skills.
This smartphone-like capability is only becoming more attractive, especially as vehicles go electric, start driving themselves, and allow for more safety updates and user features. While automakers have been slow to embrace it — due in part to a lack of expertise and hesitation to invest serious money — changing paradigms mean they have to.
“Imagine an autonomous vehicle that cannot get a software update. That’s a useless car from day one,” said Hemant Sikaria, an early Tesla engineer formerly responsible for over-the-air and software management systems.
Now, Sikaria has moved to help automakers compete with his former employer. His startup, Sibros, works with car makers to develop better software updates, collect more data, and manage their fleets with those exact goals in mind.
These updates could be an improvement to an existing system, but it could also be adding a new feature, like the ability to subscribe to heated seats, said Daniel Davenport, senior director of automotive at consultancy Capgemini. Regardless, consumers will soon expect automakers to seamlessly embed these capabilities into their vehicles.
“The companies that are investing and leaning into it are going to end up to be a lot further along than the companies that are lagging behind,” Davenport said.
Based in San Jose, California, Sibros, founded in 2018, is going after a $160 billion industry focused on connecting cars and making these updates possible. The company, which is looking to partner with legacy automakers, new age startups, two-wheeler companies and larger commercial vehicle fleets, is aiming for its software and data products to be in 100 million vehicles across the globe within four to five years.
Sikaria said Sibros can also help car companies differentiate from one another through the use of data or subscription services.
“You can have tremendous revenue loss if you are not collecting that data,” Sikaria said. “You also miss out on tremendous revenue opportunities because you can’t do those kinds of subscriptions.”
Automakers “never realized the power of it until Tesla really demonstrated it, and even that, they discounted for many years,” Sikaria said of these updates.
Only in recent years have automakers attempted to shift gears on their approach to updates, given their importance for safety and reliability in vehicles chock-full of new, connected tech.
“There’s a huge need now for having that software update system that works reliably,” added Sibros CTO Mayank Sikaria (the two are cousins). He previously spent three years at the EV startup Faraday Future, focused on system software engineering and EV battery management software.
Startup automakers, especially, might need a hand. “They’re launching their vehicles within 3 years or 2 and a half years from when they started their journey,” he said. “They need someone who can move fast with them.”