EHNINGEN, Germany and ARMONK, IBM and Mercedes announced the development of “Urban Guard – Stolen Vehicle Help”. It is recently launched in the Mercedes me app, which is designed to help find and recover stolen vehicles.
According to National Insurance Crime Bureau, car thefts saw a 9.2 percent increase in 2020. Digitally connected car services offer a solution to help in this situation. This service is designed to help customers and law enforcement, to track and recover stolen vehicles. With the speed in the event of a theft, this service collects relevant vehicle and customer data. This data, along with the vehicle position data is then shared to the law enforcement through a service partner. This is authorized to communicate with world-wide police stations.
IBM Global Business Services along with Mercedes analyzed and defined the end-to-end process. IBM Global Business Services developed the back-end using cloud-native open-source technologies, such as the Red Hat build of Quarkus. They also deliver the technical interaction between the various involved parties and existing systems, such as customer data APIs and call center tools. Juergen Braun, Vice President and Industry Leader Industrial, Automotive IBM DACH said that increasingly, the consumers value digital, connected services equally to the drive performance of the vehicle, which means that connected car experiences are as important as horsepower or handling.
By developing connected car services for safeguarding the owner’s investment is a meaningful way for Mercedes to deepen its bond with their customers. The “Urban Guard – Stolen Vehicle Help” service was initially made available to European customers in November 2020. Now it is available to eligible customers in selected countries of North America and Asia Pacific.
