The dealer represents a significant part of our business, says Toyota s Bucci. With telematics the same is true. We need to go to market together on this. How much, where and when is still not answered. Revolving around a multimillion-dollar subscriber base, OnStar is viewed as a differentiating product feature that sells cars.
Revenue sharing is under discussion at the dealer advisory council level.
Absolutely, says Frakes. We re still in the investment period. Toyota is continuing to look at service costs, hardware, consumer retention, tolerance and payment elasticity. We re trying to be very pragmatic with respect to installation rates and looking at each model individually, says Bucci. New revenue streams can appear sexy on the surface, but ultimately telematics may be somewhat of a cost to us.