The Plugfest - Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) in a practical test
The Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) is an organization that focuses on the development of the digital key standard in the automotive context. The CCC has developed the "Digital Key" standard. This standard ensures that mobile devices such as smartphones serve as digital keys for vehicles. The digital key enables vehicle owners to manage their vehicles via mobile devices. Instead of conventional physical keys, vehicles with digital keys can be unlocked, locked and started via wireless communication technology such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). You can find examples of the resulting use cases here.
The advantages of the CCC standard at a glance:
- Comprehensive industry standard between both the global players in the smartphone market and the leading vehicle OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.
- The Car Connectivity Consortium Standard offers the highest level of security thanks to its native integration into the smartphone wallet.
- Native integration into the respective smartphone wallet without an additional app ensures a comprehensively positive and simple customer journey.
As a member of the Car Connectivity Consortium, doubleSlash also relies on this international standard in the digital key
Only through the interaction of hardware manufacturers such as NFC systems, BLE systems, secured elements in the vehicle and in the smartphone as well as a cloud backend (such as that of doubleSlash), a CCC-compliant eco-system is created (in accordance with Release 2 and 3). One of the biggest challenges here is the complexity of the interaction between the systems and ensuring interoperability between the systems. In addition to detailed specifications, practical tests are also required to ensure smooth cooperation.
The Plugfest - testing the interoperability of digital keys in practice
And the Plugfest comes into play for these practical tests of the digital key. The CCC's Plugfest is an event where companies and developers come together to test the interoperability of their products. During a Plugfest, participants have the opportunity to present their hardware and software solutions and interact with other companies' solutions. This makes it possible to identify and solve compatibility problems and ensure that different systems can work together seamlessly. To this end, the OEMs and hardware manufacturers are in individual rooms and the smartphone manufacturers rotate between the individual OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. This is accompanied by specialized companies that support the analysis, for example in the area of NFC or Bluetooth.
The test sessions will take place in parallel. Participants with prototype implementations are just as welcome as participants with a vehicle or a vehicle test bench.
There is a short briefing in the morning and evening where general topics can be discussed. Participants also have the opportunity to submit bugs or suggestions for improvement. These can be, for example, ambiguities in the overarching CCC specification. Identified problems are then improved or corrected in the technical specifications, test suites and test tools. In addition, topics can be derived which are then developed in the corresponding CCC working groups.
The Plugfest takes place every few months and rotates between locations in Europe, the USA and Asia.
We were also present in Palo Alto with our doubleSlash Digital Key product and tested the integration with the vehicle hardware and smartphone manufacturers such as Google.
The absolute Plugfest advantage
All parties on site are physically sitting at the table: hardware manufacturers, smartphone manufacturers and us as the backend. What would otherwise take weeks of tedious ticket ping-pong and trial-and-error can be solved together in just a few minutes. During the execution of the tests, everyone can see the results directly or go troubleshooting together in their respective logs and recreate the error scenarios. The atmosphere is a bit like a hackathon. This collaborative approach makes it possible to work very effectively.
In addition to testing, there is of course also an intensive exchange on future topics with the various stakeholders and associated perspectives. Developers have the opportunity to share their experiences and best practices. This promotes a common understanding of challenges and solutions in the industry.
What have we learned about the Digital Key and the Car Connectivity Consortium?
- The CCC standard is the established market standard for digital vehicle keys.
- The Plugfest is a valuable live event to test the backend solution with various smartphone manufacturers to ensure the functionality of the Digital Key product from the backend side and to ensure compatibility with CCC Release 2 and 3.
- As described above, the CCC Plugfest is a "speed run" for development and testing. Thanks to the exchange of experts on site, many topics can be solved quickly.
