Digital Media Buzz > Car 2.0: Where Silicon Valley Meets Detroit

Car 2.0: Where Silicon Valley Meets Detroit

By Sheila Shayon

“Imagine a dashboard that reconfigures itself for each driver, or a car infotainment system that tells you where your friends are, or that points you to the nearest gas station when it notices you are running low on fuel - that’s the kind of user experience the QNX CAR application platform is making possible,” says Andy Gryc, product marketing manager, QNX Software Systems.

The QNX CAR application platform is already being designed into next-generation vehicles and includes Internet radio, video on demand, games, dynamic navigation, location-based services, climate control and a virtual mechanic. QNX provided the software foundation of ng Connect’s LTE Connected Car concept vehicle. The platform provides all of the car’s system software and infotainment applications. More than 50 cooperating technology partners and automotive customers, including Adobe, Cisco, Daimler, Delphi, Freescale, General Motors, Google, Gracenote, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Panasonic, Pandora and Volkswagen, make this the largest collaboration of its kind, to date. The motive? To encourage mass applications and the healthy growth of the underlying development ecosystem.

Ultra high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity will replace heated leather seats, traditional GPS or sunroofs as must-have options for new cars. A revolution for drivers and passengers, the in-vehicle experience will provide consumers access to network and cloud-based applications - available by touch and voice activation.

The LTE (Long Term Evolution) Connected Car operates in the 4G world - actually, 3.98, as it’s still in prototype and not ratified - but the performance gain is four to five times the speed of the 3G-networked world. Unlike 3G, which is a voice-based channel with data as an afterthought, 4G puts data capacity first, and is an IPV6 mobile platform. Furthermore, LTE has a lower latency making applications such as networked gaming and 1st person/player interactivity quicker — particularly across continents.

Vehicles connected to the cloud become private networks — Wi-Fi hotspots. An obvious question arises about safety — or as the industry has named it, the ‘driver distraction issue.’ According to Gryc, “The vehicle’s integrity systems isolate the Internet content. It’s really about additional technology such as adaptive cruise control - a radar system that alerts a driver to slow down when approaching another car, or voice control of radio stations or climate control. It uses TTS (text-to-speech) — a complete language.”

As for the privacy/security issue, it will be the same as personal privacy on your cell phone — no better, no worse.

In addition to in-vehicle entertainment, ng Connect 4G services will take a development leap forward and include e-Health: Home monitoring and instant connectivity with doctors and personal health history records; Digital Signage: Kiosk-based billboards connected to the Internet for remote-controlled changes of content — such as updating advertising or locale-based messaging; and M2M — machine to machine.

“The appetite for data services is not diminishing. The number of devices will shrink - and there will be an ultimate smart phone device that will service various other devices,” Gryc says. QNX software is the leader in the Connected Car platform, presently operating in 12 million vehicles worldwide. The reason for its success? “We’ve had the ability to understand the automotive companies ‘pain points,’ and develop reliable software that is production ready. Traditionally, once the consumer drives a car off the lot, there’s no more relationship between the manufacturer and the customer. ng Connect applications allow a longer-term loyalty and the ability to update customer software through cloud connectivity.”

Is the car industry ready? “Video streaming will be one of the major drivers to bring broadband connectivity to cars,” says Dominique Bonte, practice director, Telematics and Navigation, ABI Research. “The auto industry, however, has a number of concerns such as the lack of consistent 3G/4G cellular coverage, the lack of standards in hardware and software, driver distraction issues, etc. As a consequence we might see third-party providers from the CE space bring portable solutions to the car.”

In 2007, at the Detroit auto show, Ford Motor Co. displayed a large-screen video projection of Bill Gates instead of a car. It was seen as a sign that selling cars in the future would take so much more than attractive sheet metal and powerful engines.

Ford is now working on a project with the University of Michigan dubbed American Journey 2.0. The project offers students open access to a developmental operating system to help bring cloud computing and social networking to Sync, the company’s in-car connectivity and communications/entertainment system. The goal is to have the students - the next generation user-base - help figure out what’s next. As Silicon Valley meets Detroit, and Gen Y takes the driver’s seat, it’s definitely time to fasten the seatbelt and see what consumers and their cars will be doing together in the near future.