Following reliability challenges with its legacy database, Toyota Connected sought a database that would deliver its services swiftly and reliably.
Toyota Connected, an independent Toyota company, provides services such as Safety Connect, which includes automatic collision notification; Service Connect for Vehicle health reports, maintenance alerts and vehicle diagnostics, among many other mobility services. With many life-saving/dependent and real-time communications services, unreliability and latency can’t be tolerated.
Database availability, performance and resiliency are crucial for telematics safety systems. Low latency and high reliability ensure timely responses to critical events such as when an Automatic Crash Notification is triggered, or a vehicle occupant activates the SOS button,” Kevin O’Dell, director of engineering, Drivelink Telematics Services Platform, Toyota Connected North America, told Digital CxO. “Poor performance can cause delays, data inconsistencies and incorrect event sequencing, leading to less safe or poor outcomes. Efficient, scalable and predictable database operations are essential to maintaining event-based vehicle safety systems,” O’Dell said.
Based on telemetry data and transactions, Toyota Connected’s event-driven architecture, telematics service platform (TSP), must be resilient —even if TSP is temporarily unavailable — because it underpins potentially life and death responses within the Safety Connect service. According to Toyota, Safety Connect is within more than 9 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in North America.
To attain that resiliency, such as during a crash when there may be intermittent availability issues, the TSP relies on redundancy and failover systems, offline abilities: Vehicles are equipped with cached data and independent onboard systems that function separately from the TSP cloud platform and can initiate emergency calls. There’s also cellular network fallback and other capabilities designed for resiliency.
However, following reliability issues, Toyota Connected sought a new cloud architecture, and the company migrated to Amazon Web Services and MongoDB Atlas. Cloud-based database MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed data service suite that improves uptime and resiliency. The company said that during Toyota Connected’s four-month-long migration to AWS, the migration to MongoDB Atlas proved straightforward.
Improved Availability Without a Dedicated Database Staff
“Toyota Connected chose MongoDB for its reliability, which has led to 99% availability. This is crucial for supporting its Safety Connect suite, especially when drivers may need it most. The platform’s high uptime and efficient data processing—handling telemetry and geolocation data in as little as three seconds—enables Toyota Connected to provide potentially life-changing assistance to customers,” O’Dell told Digital CxO.
O’Dell also explained that MongoDB made it possible to create and manage their TSP databases without dedicated database staff. “Toyota Connected quickly adapted to the new platform. Because it’s using MongoDB Atlas, the company doesn’t need to maintain a dedicated database team. “MongoDB Atlas is a developer-rich platform,” said O’Dell. “It’s self-explanatory, so any one of our developers can create new databases, collections, and services without figuring out the data model. They love that they can simply and quickly get work done,” O’Dell explained.
“Additionally, MongoDB Atlas helped provide a seamless migration and self-explanatory interface, making it easier for developers to create and manage databases without needing a dedicated team. So, by using MongoDB, Toyota Connected increased its resiliency, uptime, reliability and availability, ultimately helping drivers stay safe on the road,” O’Dell said.
Toyota Connected TSP relies on several AWS microservices with 20 MongoDB Atlas databases today. According to the company, when a vehicle sensor detects a crash or a customer uses the SOS button, the vehicle can automatically send telemetry and geolocation data to one of Toyota Connected’s North America-based safety agents. That data is processed and presented to safety agents in at least three seconds.
“By adopting an event-based microservices approach, Toyota Connected has been able to implement iterative changes and updates to the system over time. Leveraging MongoDB and a NoSQL model has provided significant flexibility as the platform evolves and vehicle capabilities, such as telematics data, increase. Also, MongoDB being multi-cloud provided huge benefits to Toyota Connected as we migrated to AWS,” O’Dell explained to DigitalCxO.
The company explained that Toyota Connected achieved the reliability it needed with the safety services it provides to its customers with 99% availability. According to Toyota Connected’s internal measurements, the company aims to reach that number monthly. With AWS and MongoDB multiregional support, Toyota Connected can perform maintenance and upgrades without downtime.
The company explained that hundreds of sensors can deliver important data about occupants, seat belts, fuel levels, and even air quality in a vehicle. However, as vehicles get smarter, Toyota Connected expects that cars will soon be able to send even more data in emergencies.
Toyota Connected hopes now that its MongoDB implementation is complete, AI capabilities will help better utilize that data and advance future services. “We consistently strive to improve and expand our services at Toyota Connected, leveraging our current systems as much as possible. Adopting a modern approach to architecture and tools has enabled us to future-proof our vehicles,” O’Dell said.
