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Tech in Automotive Service
Satya EVO
Porsche is now using augmented reality glasses to repair cars
Porsche prides itself on its high-tech sports cars. But now it’s bringing that passion for the cutting edge to its service departments.
The German automaker announced Tuesday that it is supplying its 189 U.S. dealerships with augmented-reality glasses that can help mechanics solve issues that arise on today’s increasingly complex automobiles.
With the AR glasses on, a service technician can conference in a Porsche specialist located at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Atlanta and be talked through a repair job — the technician can stream live video of the problem area, while the remote support worker can post helpful repair tips in the worker’s peripheral vision.
Every dealership service department knows the situation: A customer’s vehicle has an unfamiliar or complicated problem that can’t be promptly diagnosed and fixed.
The standard response: time-consuming examination of possibly outdated service manuals, potentially lengthy correspondence with the automaker, even a visit from a factory technician. All the while, the car or truck sits idle in the shop.
But new technologies are speeding the resolution of these problems. Service techs at some Audi and Porsche dealerships can call on a factory tech to join them, virtually.
Through the use of connected devices such as robots at Audi and augmented reality glasses at Porsche, the automakers’ specialists enter the service bay via connected cameras and microphones. Their virtual aid means fewer in-person tech visits, shorter work turnarounds and more-satisfied customers.
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“Our job is to get out there and support the dealer as quickly as possible,” says Jamie Dennis, senior vice president of product quality and technical service at Audi of America.
“With the Audi Robotic Telepresence, or ART system, “we can be there in minutes to hours.”
Audi’s system was the first initiative by a North American automaker to connect dealership service bays directly with experts at the company’s technical center.
Working with the robotic telepresence company VGo, Audi developed ART — a mobile robot equipped with microphones, cameras and a TV screen.
The system can connect with onboard diagnostic devices in vehicles. It enables experts at Audi’s tech center in Auburn Hills, Mich., to see everything the dealership tech does, discuss diagnosis and repair options and link up with the vehicle for software updates.
Audi employs 89 ART robots across its dealership network. When it launched the system in 2014, the automaker was getting about 8,000 dealership calls a month to its service hotline. About 6 percent of those calls led to store visits from factory techs, which could take days to arrange.
By the end of 2017, such in-person visits had fallen by 30 percent, Audi says.
“It’s like having an Audi engineer standing there with you,” says Rick Fortnam, service manager at Audi Atlanta, which has used ART since 2015.
Fortnam says that with the system, complicated repairs that might previously have taken a week can be turned around in two or three days.
“We do 70 to 80 [service] appointments a day, and I can’t give everyone a loaner,” Fortnam says. “If ART can save me a day or two, I can turn that car two days faster and get another customer in.”
“By solving issues fast, our dealer partners can get their customers back into cars with less disruption,” Porsche Cars North America CEO Klaus Kellmer said in a statement.
Called Tech Look Live, the new feature connects Porsche dealerships with dedicated repair technicians at headquarters. Tech Look Live can also be used by the company’s roving Field Technical Managers who may be executing repairs on the road.
Porsche says today’s cars — now considered rolling computers often with complicated propulsion systems that combine gasoline and battery powered engines — prompted the decision to use AR glasses to help mechanics. The company is working on its first all-electric Tesla competitor, the Mission E sedan.
In addition, Porsche is also trying to win back to its dealership repair centers customers of older cars who currently might service their vehicles with independent mechanics. The infrequent nature of dealership repairs on Porsches that are decades old makes Tech Look Live valuable to a new car mechanic perhaps seeing an older component for the first time.
Porsche says 70% of all the cars made during the company’s 70-year history are still on the road. Fixing such older cars at dealerships would represent a significant new source of revenue.
The glasses mechanics will use are ODG R-7 smartglasses, made by San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group. Unlike virtual-reality glasses such as Oculus Rift, which block out the real world, augmented-reality glasses such as the R-7s allow wearers to see the real world while other images can be overlaid in the periphery.
Most industry experts expect AR glasses to be a much bigger market than gamer-focused VR, but neither tech application has taken off as was previously predicted. Part of the reason for VR’s slow adoption is the lack of non-gamer applications, as well as the sometimes disconcerting nature of blocking out real-world inputs.
Augmented reality also still lacks populist use cases. But it has slowly gained popularity in business enterprise cases where workers need to keep their hands free to perform a task. Workers on remote oil wells, surgeons and, now, mechanics are good use-cases for AR glasses.
Another big factor in keeping AR in its infancy is price. Glasses such as the R-7 cost in excess of $2,000 a pair.
Porsche’s technicians won’t be using R-7s for every repair. In fact, the company estimates that of the several hundred repairs each dealership handles every month, only a few particularly complex or unusual repairs will warrant the AR assist.
Porsche dealers began signing up for R-7 glasses last month, and 75 outlets are expected to receive the specs this year with the rest coming on board in 2019.
