This report provides Transforma Insights’ view on the Roadside Assistance market. This segment comprises two sub-applications: Roadside Assistance Head Unit and Roadside Assistance Aftermarket.
Car breakdowns are a common occurrence on the roads, disrupting the traffic flow and causing frustration and inconvenience amongst drivers. There are about 69 million vehicle breakdowns every year in the US, affecting approximately one in every three Americans. Roadside assistance may be required for reasons such as flat tyres, discharged batteries, electrical issues, overheating, mechanical failures related to engines and brakes, and vehicles running out of fuel. One of the significant advantages of IoT in roadside assistance is the capability to deliver diagnostic information (such as engine status, error codes, tyre pressure, fuel level, and others) in near-real time, enabling technicians to arrive at the location with the necessary tools and replacement parts.
A significant barrier to the Roadside Assistance market is the increasing popularity of on-demand smartphone applications. They have become a popular mode of summoning roadside assistance for drivers because they do not require any additional hardware installation or integration with the vehicle head unit and can be carried between vehicles. Moreover, smartphones are a cost-effective solution compared to dedicated devices or OEM-provided software for roadside assistance. Regulatory requirements are also driving greater exposure to dedicated connected roadside assistance devices. For example, Spain’s mandatory connected V-16 emergency beacon requirement has introduced millions of drivers to cellular connected emergency devices, making such solutions more familiar to consumers and supporting growth in the aftermarket roadside assistance market. However, both of these solutions typically provide richer features for roadside assistance as they have access to detailed vehicle diagnostics data that can provide service providers with crucial information before reaching the location.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used and revenue. A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector breakdowns and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
The report examines key factors that are influencing the development of the market, including:
This section first talks about the impacts of car breakdowns and their aftereffects (like disruption of traffic flow and wasting of drivers’ time), which justifies the need for roadside assistance solutions, since these solutions can instantly notify the service teams to instantly address vehicle emergencies. It then discusses some significant advantages of IoT in roadside assistance, including its ability to deliver diagnostic information (like engine status and tyre pressure) in near-real time.
This section highlights multiple ways of using roadside assistance services, including roadside assistance applications hosted on vehicle head units, aftermarket devices, and smartphone apps. It also talks about how enabling roadside assistance through an application hosted on the vehicle head unit is another source of revenue for automotive manufacturers and why it has become important to provide these services to customers as well. It then explains how recovery companies and communication service providers are getting increasingly involved in the market. For example, for CSPs, roadside assistance is an opportunity to generate additional recurring revenue from connected car services by combining cellular connectivity with vehicle diagnostics, location tracking, safety features and access to roadside assistance providers. However, for them, the market has proven to be difficult to penetrate and monetise sustainably. As a result, companies like Verizon has discontinued its Hum connected car service at the end of 2025, while Sprint has also retired its Sprint Drive connected car service in 2023.
This subsection first defines roadside assistance head unit and then discusses how roadside assistance can help OEMs improve customer experience and generate additional revenues. For example, OEMs can charge a subscription fee to give access to the services and they can sell the opportunity to third-party recovery firms as well. In a tabular format, it then lists some OEMs (including BMW, General Motors, Audi, Kia, Volvo, Lexus, and Hyundai), their features, and their subscription prices. For instance, Volvo’s Volvo Roadside Assistance Plus costs USD99.99 per year after the first four years. It also provides a few examples of relevant IoT deployments in this application, such as Honda selecting Bosch to provide roadside assistance capability.
This subsection explains why the roadside assistance aftermarket faces stiff competition from smartphone applications. For instance, smartphone apps that are provided by insurers and roadside assistance services connect users to nearby towing and assistance providers, and mostly, these apps rely on the host device’s GPS for location. It also explains the advantages of roadside assistance aftermarket devices over smartphones. For instance, these devices can offer more functionality as they can be connected to a vehicle’s diagnostics port.
It also adds that recently, this market has experienced rapid growth, mainly due to regulatory compliance. Case in point, from January 1, 2026, Spain requires all vehicles to carry a connected V-16 emergency beacon, which uses NB-IoT connectivity and is activated when a vehicle breaks down or is involved in an incident and transmits the vehicle's location to Spain's Directorate General for Traffic (DGT) 3.0 platform.
It also highlights relevant IoT devices, such as T-Mobile SyncUp Drive, an OBD-II vehicle diagnostic device that uses GPS, Bluetooth, and 4G connectivity to monitor vehicle health, location, and maintenance needs via a mobile application. It also supports roadside assistance services, including towing, battery jump-starts, and fuel delivery. The device costs USD96-108, with an optional USD10 monthly subscription for additional services such as in-vehicle Wi-Fi.
This section of the report focuses on the existing barriers that may hinder the prospect of the roadside assistance market. For instance, many consumers prefer using smartphones to summon roadside assistance since they don’t require any external hardware, don’t have to be integrated with the vehicle head unit, and can be carried from one vehicle to another. Besides, smartphones are more cost-effective solutions, when compared to roadside assistance applications that are hosted on vehicle head units or aftermarket devices, although smartphones lack access to detailed vehicle diagnostics data. Besides, increasing vehicle reliability could also reduce the frequency of breakdowns, negatively impacting the market.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the market, such as Bosch, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, BMW Group, Toyota, Agero, and Allianz Partners. The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of devices, which will grow from 24 million in 2025 to 60.1 million in 2035. Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the Roadside Assistance Application Group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Roadside Assistance Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 13%.
