Once upon a time, gadgets knew what they were really for. Toaster? Toast your bread. Smartphones? Connect your user. But the Ring Car camera? Since its inception, it has been in an identity crisis. After three and a half years, Amazon’s page for the camera he says now, “We don’t know when or if this product will be back in stock.” Which, given that Amazon bought the Ring in 2018, is a pretty solid indication that the bell has rung for this little gadget. (The news was previously reported by The lip.)
The decision wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who follows this industry.
At its core, the Ring Car Cam promised more than just surveillance. aimed to be an always-connected guard on wheels – an extension of the home security ecosystem into the car space. However, the question “Who is it for?” remained like a persistent mist. Was it for the safety-conscious homeowner, the tech-savvy car enthusiast, or perhaps a broader demographic? This ambiguity in the target audience became one of the device’s most significant obstacles.
Startups are often famous for disrupting stagnant markets, and – just as the connected doorbell pioneered before the car camera – you could certainly argue that this was a market worth disrupting. You need to know who your customers are, though, and that’s where you do ite Ring Car Cam was found in many areas with no clear basis in anyone.
Was it a dash cam, tasked with documenting the epic journeys and minor mishaps of everyday commuting? Maybe — but in this category, the $199 price tag was steep, and the required $6 monthly fee to keep the device “connected” was hard to swallow. Reviews posted soon after the device started shipping said the same thing: You can buy a great dashcam with a much higher resolution than the Ring 1080p camera for a quarter of the price.
Ring Car Cam had some exciting innovations. Instead of USB, it used the OBD-II port on most cars. It also had a “traffic jam” feature where users could say, “Alexa, record” so you’d have a record of what the fuzz was as you were pulled over. Interesting, yes, but the truth is that for most users, USB works fine, and most cameras record continuously anyway, so you can just highlight the clip to save your run-in legally.
Users who opted for the Ring version would have to be especially big fans of the Amazon Alexa ecosystem for the purchase to make sense — and while Alexa has no user restrictions, it’s hard to imagine anyone so dedicated that they’d want to. the security of their second highest investment in the hands of the tool, too.
Amazon won’t say whether it has additional products in the works to replace the Ring Car camera, but it seems unlikely that the company will be able to add enough value to the user experience to make it worthwhile, especially in a market where there’s a price race to the bottoms.
In addition, the Ring Car Camera discontinuation may lead to a reevaluation of consumer expectations regarding in-car security cameras and devices. Consumers are becoming more familiar with integrating technology into every aspect of their lives (eg, modern EV drivers are accustomed to always having active video coverage of what’s happening in their cars).
Tesla, by the way, promised to make Sentry Mode easier to access remotely through its Ring Car Connect product, but has been silent since the initial announcement. I never got it to work and promptly forgot about it — and if any Tesla user ever managed to get it working, there seems to be remarkably little coverage of it on the Internet. Which of course seems strange, in a world where there is no shortage of YouTubers dissecting Tesla’s every move. The discontinuation of Ring Car Cam is likely the final nail in the coffin of this project.
