The Fully Networked Car workshop ended today with cautious optimism about the future of telematics (see this link for presentations and bios). However, most participants agreed that it is not clear how telematics will expand in the automotive world. There are at least two issues that need to be resolved. One is people in the automotive and telecommunications industries haven’t yet figured out too many business models that have a good shot at making money. They want to know who will do the R&D? Who will pay for the deployment? How much are consumers willing to pay for the service? With the global market for vehicles leveling off car manufacturers, as well as parts suppliers, may not feel like they have the resources for the innovation that’s necessary to make telematics ubiquitous.

The other major issue is related to the idea of the automobile becoming a place where consumers, or other companies, plug in multiple aftermarket devices. Car manufacturers place a huge premium on safety and they feel that they need to be in control of what goes into a car. This way they can guarantee that safety will not be compromised. Will that new in-car gadget distract the driver and cause him/her to crash his brand new car made by company X? If the answer is yes, the reputation of company X will take a hit.

However, participants also agreed that telematics will save car manufacturers money in the long run and that consumers will be willing to pay for the new services. For example, savings are expected to come from remote diagnostics. Using remote diagnostics, car manufacturers can reduce warrantee costs since they can catch problems as they start developing and not when they have fully developed on thousands of vehicles. For example, if a car company receives data from tens of its model Y cars about a particular problem that developed after the first 5000 miles, they can immediately check the manufacturing process and prevent the problem from reoccurring in the future. Consumers are also willing to pay for services like OnStar. OnStar’s new vehicle diagnostics service has over 2.5 million customers and they are adding over 3000 new customers a day.

Andrew Kun

I am attending the Fully Networked Car workshop in Geneva and this workshop is collocated with the 2007 Geneva Auto Show. I have to say that the auto show is a flashy affair! The car companies exhibiting here spared no expense or effort to present their products. Many have giant booths with custom built platforms, a multitude of shiny vehicles that are dusted and polished every few minutes, stage lighting that makes camera flash unnecessary in this indoor environment and (not politically correct, but still a fact of life) booth babes.

Many car companies are addressing global climate change head on. For example, all around Geneva one can see VW company cars displaying the (relatively small) amount of CO2 these cars release into the atmosphere. I also saw a hydrogen fueled car, a natural gas fueled car, small city cars with excellent gas mileage, as well as many hybrid cars, for example by Honda:

In general, small cars are very common in Europe and this is something that I would like to see more of in the US. Full disclosure: my wife and I drive a Ford Focus and a VW Jetta.

I was interested in the use of speech input in cars. I saw three manufacturers who offer speech input in their cars: Jaguar, BMW and Mercedes. All have a press-to-talk (PTT) button which is used to signal to the car the beginning of speech however the end of speech is detected by the car (not by the release of the PTT button as for example in the Project54 system). See, for example, a picture of the Mercedes S-class steering wheel with a PTT button:

Demonstrations of speech technology were not available. In fact the very helpful representatives of the car manufacturers that I talked to clearly did not expect questions about speech input. The person at Jaguar was confused when he tried to change the input/output language of his system. The system was originally set to understand and respond in German. He tried to switch it to English but the system didn’t want to cooperate. His colleague blamed the problems on a low battery in the car (why not connect the car to a charger?). The person showing me the S-class Mercedes had to ask where the microphone is in the car and the person who helped out only pointed out a general area. And I only have my own guess as to where the microphone is in the BMW.

Andrew Kun

The famous “Jet d’eau” of Geneva

I’m writing from Geneva, Switzerland where I’m attending the Fully Networked Car Workshop and Exhibition. The workshop is organized by the ITU and its aim is to bring together telecommunications and automotive companies in a discussion about creating the networked car of tomorrow. The workshop is collocated with the 2007 Geneva Auto Show. Turnout is excellent – there are around 350 registered participants.

When people talk about a “networked car” they mean both networking devices within a car and networking the car to other cars or to an external infrastructure. This is of course what the Project54 effort addresses and why I was interested in giving a presentation at the workshop.

Very appropriately, I experienced the state-of-the-art in car-to-car communication immediately on arriving in Geneva. My wife and I took a taxi from the airport. As the taxi was flying through the city (we were glad we had seatbelts) another car cut us off. Our taxi driver swerved and stepped on the brake avoiding a collision. This is when the car-to-car communication commenced. Our cabbie rolled down his window and started yelling at the driver of the other car (he also made some hand gestures). The other driver yelled back and this went on for about 30 seconds at which point the communication link was broken and we sped off.

One interesting prediction I heard at the workshop is that cars will become “docking ports.” Gone will be the CD players, radios, etc. Instead cars will provide infrastructure for aftermarket devices (makes you think of Project54). An example of a device that was once predicted to be in many cars that’s now nowhere to be found: the car phone.

Andrew Kun