A First-Ever Ambitious Endeavor to Measure the Consumer Mobility Experience

Our Experiences Per Mile (EPM) Advisory Council reveals its charter for the automotive space – an Experience Per Mile metric

A rapid transformation is ongoing right now as consumers think about the latest automotive technologies and their expectations in shaping their mobility experiences every day, all year round and during the whole car ownership timeline. In addition to enabling technologies like cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Over-The-Air (OTA) updates and 5G Telematics that are leading the automotive space’s development, the CASE movement (Connected, Autonomous, Shared Mobility and Electrification) are reshaping how consumers think about the automobile and interact with services as we approach a new era in the automotive industry’s transformation.

With the automotive industry’s move from RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) to EPM (Experiences Per Mile) to meet and exceed consumers expectations, the implications of this shift on every OEM, supplier, technology provider and partner need to be evaluated. No established metric has been created in the automotive space for consumers to evaluate and judge their mobility solution to indicate how any company within the ecosystem is delivering on the underlying promise of a remarkable in-car experience. 

Through a strategic partnership between 34 stakeholders from 23 global OEM and auto technology players, the Experiences Per Mile Advisory Council took on the task of addressing the challenges within the mobility industry —reflected in a new report that delves into a vision to create a brand new metric for the automotive sector. In a report that is aptly titled, “Experiences Per Mile: Charting an Ambitious Course to Measure the Mobility Experience for the First Time,” the EPM Advisory Council discusses the changes impacting the industry and the motivations behind the development of a new metric.

This report talks through the parameters of sound measurement, different methods to create a metric and the conditions required to satisfy today’s consumer and the broader industry. The report also discusses additional changes and tools that the industry needs to evaluate to effectively measure Experiences Per Mile and ways to improve this metric to meet the needs of consumers around the world.

This report is the result of several months of collaboration between the EPM Advisory Council members and thoughtful efforts of a “Metrics Committee”, which included volunteers who were passionate about creating this groundbreaking new metric. While this newly released report highlights some critical goals that the EPM metric will aspire to meet over time, some of the important characteristics of a successful industry metric are:

• Simplicity – Easily understood by all stakeholders, including consumers (users) and executives/engineers (providers).
• Efficiency – Contributes to an easier and more fulfilling experience.
• Value-based – Details the consumer’s experience-focused value for money.
• Intelligent – In time, the metric shows capabilities to understand how the experience “taught” and educated customer experiences in the future.
• Transparent – Dissimilar to proprietary algorithms that guide dating sites and music apps, the EPM metric’s calculation method must be clear to all.
• Holistic – The parameters of measurement should include the beginning, middle and end of a journey, and all significant in-between moments.
• Objective – An objective basis must be used to assess the metric’s ability to deliver an ideal and seamless experience, but without any bias to the “how.”
• Contextual – With every journey being the result of several moments, usually guided by the context surrounding the driver or a consumer’s state of being including external influences such as traffic, weather conditions, time of day, uncertain areas and more -- all influencing the context that evaluates the mobility experience.
• Scalable – An ability to scale and cover experiences including all automakers and various modes of transportation over time.
• Flexible – Enough flexibility to accommodate the radical changes that will be underway as a result of the advances in features and technology.
• Actionable – “Diagnosing” the source of a failed or inferior journey is essential, ahead of developing an experience “cure”.
• Credible – The future “gold standard” for consumers and providers to fully trust and rely on to guide their immediate or long-term decisions around vehicle purchases, leases and more.
• Established – Growing recognition as the go-to source and accomplishing broad distribution of its ratings and data.

The EPM Advisory Council‘s next course of action is to develop a proof of concept for a new measurement, with the help of select vehicle models delivering distinct experiences and consumer benefits across varying types of journeys. The proof of concept is a critical first step as it attempts to acquire early consumer feedback and analyze the metric process by the 3Q 2021. Expansion plans following the initial testing phase will be undertaken to approach market development and gain adoption in the industry. Backed by HARMAN and SBD Automotive, the EPM Advisory Council aims to install the one experience metric that will be used alike by consumers, automakers, technology providers and suppliers—with the end goal of putting the consumer experience in the driver’s seat.

For more information, download the report and visit www.experiencespermile.org.