For the second consecutive year, Sonatus sponsored Omdia’s Software‑Defined Vehicle (SDV) Survey, and it arrives at a moment when the industry is reassessing what “software‑defined” and “AI‑defined” actually mean in practice.
After years of ambitious roadmaps and aggressive data‑monetization plans, the 2026 data shows a decisive shift toward something more grounded — using vehicle data to improve quality, reliability, performance, and ultimately the customer experience. This aligns directly with the report’s framing that the industry is moving from broad ambition to disciplined execution.
Across regions, company types, and job functions, the survey reveals a clear pattern. Smart diagnostics and predictive maintenance now outrank data monetization as the most valuable use cases for vehicle data. Predictive maintenance leads globally and smart diagnostics remains the top non‑autonomous AI priority. Meanwhile, data monetization continues its downward trajectory, falling almost 14%.
This shift signals a broader industry reprioritization — a reframing of what intelligence‑driven SDV value creation looks like.
For years, monetization was positioned as the inevitable next frontier: selling telemetry to third parties, licensing vehicle data, and building additive revenue streams outside the core hardware product. The survey makes clear that the economic and regulatory realities haven’t kept pace with the hype. Privacy concerns, regional data‑sovereignty rules, and limited revenue potential all contribute to today’s more sober outlook. As the report states, “selling vehicle data is neither as profitable nor as straightforward as initially imagined.”
In contrast, the value of internal use of operational data is rising. OEMs are prioritizing applications that directly improve their vehicles: early fault detection, recall avoidance, warranty‑cost reduction, and continuous product refinement. These are capabilities that strengthen the core business rather than distract from it. This framing is fully aligned with the report’s emphasis on internal value creation over external monetization.
Regional differences tell an even sharper story.
- China shows the most dramatic pivot, with monetization dropping 25 percentage points, while predictive maintenance has become a priority for 51% of respondents.
- North America follows a similar pattern, with monetization falling to 32% and diagnostics and usage analytics rising.
- Europe remains an outlier, maintaining vehicle‑data monetization as a top priority, but even there, ADAS improvements and cybersecurity are narrowing the gap.
In this context, the shift toward predictive maintenance and smart diagnostics is both strategic and pragmatic. These use cases deliver measurable ROI today while building the foundation for more advanced AI‑enabled SDV capabilities in the future.
From the Sonatus perspective, this shift aligns with what we see across our ecosystem. OEMs are prioritizing data strategies that strengthen product quality, accelerate iteration, and build long‑term customer trust. The era of the intelligence‑driven software‑defined vehicle won’t be defined by how much data a vehicle generates, but by how effectively that data is used to improve the vehicle itself.
Download the report for a deeper dive into the findings.