Google’s recent release of its Android operating system is keeping the telephones-do-everything trend alive and well. Google already supplies its Google Map data to third-party navigation developers, but Android’s open development strategy is fueling the car-phone fusion like never before. And as with all tech innovations (especially the open development kind) there are as many head scratchers as killer apps among the Android car programs previewed by the Headlight blog. One concept that makes a lot of sense is the KEI, which uses 128-bit encrypted connectivity to connect your car with your phone. KEI allows your Android-equipped phone to unlock or start your car wirelessly, with a wide range of diagnostic functions also possible down the road. Everyone loses a key at some point, so merging phone and key functions makes tons of sense. Which must be why Delphi has already previewed a similar app for the iPhone.
Category: Gizmology
Mercedes will debut new “DualView” technology on its S-Class, when the luxobarge receives its 2009 face lift, reports Motor Authority. The system, developed by Bosch and Blaupunkt, allows driver and passenger to view different content on the same screen. The eight-inch display has touchscreen functionality for the driver side only, while the passenger side is controlled by a mini remote. Passenger audio can also be routed through headphones, so your pride and joy can watch Dora the Explorer in peace while daddy swears at the GPS. No word on pricing yet, but it’s an option on an S-Class. If you have to ask, it ain’t gonna happen.
BMW’s second generation MINI convertible will offer an optional ‘Openometer.’ It records the time spent by the car driving around with the top down. Kind of an interior conversation piece, I guess, providing the same service a Dada coffee table book might in your swank bachelor – or bachelorette – pad. Number of G’s pulled. [ED: Number of birds pulled?] Top speed, and time spent there-– these interest me. Though they should be password protected. Instantly purgeable. Anything but open, really. Does anyone think an openometer is useful in anyway?
Nuclear fusion is the preferred deus ex machina in the minds of some who long for cheap, abundant energy, although fusion will never be either. The challenge: containing the plasma fuel that heats to millions of degrees inside a “bottle” made of magnetic fields produced by a superconducting magnet kept at absolute zero a few feet away. The concept’s been likened to trying to hold water inside rubber bands. A press release from MIT News entitled “New Insights on Fusion Power” celebrates the kind of esoteric advances that indicate that fusion lies somewhere beyond the Hubble Deep Field in the cosmology of future energy sources (i.e. just as distant as when I first wrote about it in 1978).
Recently, firms like Tesla have launched themselves into the public eye by trumpeting the meme that Silicone Valley’s innovation-driven culture will show the way for Detroit which remains mired in old-economy faults. And it’s a storyline that has yielded millions in venture capital and free media attention. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman unintentionally brought this line of thinking to its point of absurdum by calling on Steve Jobs to “do national service and run a car company for a year.” But as our ongoing Tesla Death Watch consistently demonstrates, Silicon Valley automakers could still stand to learn a thing or two about, you know, actually producing cars from even Detroit’s most dismal. And then there’s this story from The San Jose Mercury detailling the extent to which Silicon Valley is dependent on business from Detroit. “As soon as the automotive industry coughs, a lot of other companies get a cold,” Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski tells the Merc. “That includes companies in the semiconductor industry and that includes a lot in the Bay Area… It’s a relatively big market for them in Silicon Valley.”
“It’s gone,” said (an anonymous “high ranking Nissan executive”) when asked if launch control would return in 2010. “We just don’t want to deal with the warranty nightmare anymore. It’ll make the 2009 GT-R really special. It’ll be the only R35 with launch control.”
Does the future of going green mean packing gravel into the tailpipe of your car? Maybe. MIT’s Technology Review reports that Columbia University researchers have discovered that magnesium rich rock formations know as peridotite absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The rock reacts with carbon-dioxide to create calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate. The researchers optimistically predict, “that the carbon-sequestration rate in rock formations in Oman could be increased to billions of tons a year–more than the carbon emissions in the United States from coal-burning power plants, which come to 1.5 billion tons per year.” The rock is also found in California and New Guinea. Researchers believe that fracturing and heating the rock would increase its ability to trap large amounts of CO2. Right now, the researchers are only looking at large-scale commercial applications. But who knows, the time may come when a peridotite filter might find its way under your car.
True dat. We’re looking for one of our Best and Brightest to write 800-word automotive videogame reviews for TTAC. We’ll pay $100 per published piece plus free videogames (disclaimed at the bottom of the review, of course). Send your magnum opus (within the body of an email) to robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com with SAMPLE REVIEW in the subject bar. Rate the game from one to five stars and include a one sentence summation. Again, the review must be exactly 800 words (not including title, star ratings and summation sentence). Remember: ‘tude counts. Oh, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles is out today. Here’s a review style you shouldn’t copy, from Streetfire: “I have to say that from what I’ve seen so far in the last 11 hours it is pretty impressive. It came as no surprise that the party was held in the heart of Hollywood at the Virgin Megastore and featured a performance by the Eagles of Death Metal. I’m personally a big fan of the fact that the game has a 97 song track list with music of all types, and a large number from the SoCal area. Being from Los Angeles, it’s pretty cool to be playing a badass car game that let’s me drive through the streets of Hollywood doing all of the things I WISH I could get away.” With. Although that’s one way to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition…
No major surprises here, as ChryCo’s AWD option box is ticked on fewer than five percent of Caliber purchases and even less often on Avengbrings. “For the Avenger, the take rate was 1.5% for 2008, and for the Sebring it was at 0.7%.” Chrysler spokesman Jiyan Cadiz tells Ward’sAuto. “So obviously the bottom line is people want fuel economy, and the AWD modules are not profitable for us. That’s something we can get rid of as we’re consolidating products and finding what’s profitable.” And while we wish Chrysler the best of luck in their hunt for “what’s profitable,” AWD supplier BorgWarner has a case of sour grapes for Chrysler. “What we’re seeing in terms of market forecasting is that (AWD) in the B-, C- and D-segments is growing globally,” say BorgWarner’s product business director, Chris Cook, who calls Chrysler’s move an “aberration.” And Cook blames Chrysler’s Jim Press, lately of ToMoCo. “Press comes from Toyota (Motor Corp.), where they don’t have AWD on a lot of vehicles (in those segments),” Cook says. “So (the decision) was philosophical.” Or rational. Anyone who wants an AWD Caliber can always spring for a Jeep Compass, and AWD has always been an under-advertised afterthought on the Sebring and Avenger. In fact, Press’s Toyota roots don’t make him “anti-AWD.” Toyota’s partial ownership of Subaru proves that a dedicated AWD-peddling niche brand (hello, Jeep) allows the mainstream brand to focus on efficiency and affordability. And with CAFE bumps looming, offering AWD on every model “because you can” makes less and less sense every day.
Researchers at The Institute of Traffic Engineering and Logistics in Kassel, Germany, don’t like induction loops (those things under the pavement that detect how long a car has been waiting for traffic lights to change). They say the loops are expensive, failure-prone and easily damaged. Simplistic, too: they only say how long a car has been waiting; they don’t tell you how many other cars are in line, how many are approaching and whether the other drivers plan to turn off or go straight ahead. The solution: mobile phones that automatically communicate with traffic lights. AKTIV (Adaptive and Kooperative Technologies for Intelligent Traffic, a project funded with federal millions) envisions mobile phones equipped with WLAN and GPS sensors, installed inside cars that tell nearbye traffic lights where you are heading. As a quid pro quo, the traffic lights tell your mobile how many seconds remain till the light turns green and whether you should turn your engine off. Traffic flows should improve, because AKTIV (pro-actively) times traffic light changes according to the amount of vehicles waiting. It should save fuel too, because stops are shorter and enables engine shut-down combined, with a “wake up call” to let drivers know green is on the way. A pilot project will begin in 2009. I asked AKTIV’s Walter Scholl if people fear Big Brother. “We consider data protection crucial. So all car data will be anonymized, and deleted as soon as you leave a junction.” But isn’t it so that the more gadgets people use, the less attentive they drive? “We have a working unit concentrating on ‘safety and attentiveness,’ and we need to attain empirical evidence that our system doesn’t distract from the task of driving.” Isn’t this technical overkill? Why not just replace traffic lights with traffic circles / roundabouts? “Good question… Roundabouts help, but there will always be many situations where lights are better and safer. In addition, our system will help reduce the amount of street signs as well as other distractions”. I’d like to hope so.
Many of our Best and Brightest questioned Chrysler’s decision to offer Wi-Fi (for passengers) in its vehicles (a.k.a. Autonet). They balked at the stiff cost for same: $499 to install, $29 a month. Tech toy site Gizmodo asked one of its savvy readers to test out ChryCo’s car o’ the future gizmo on their behalf, and the early review is not good. It didn’t work out of the box, it’s slow, there’s a one gig cap and it’s not encrypted. Yup, you heard right: no security. “So average guy never sets up encryption (nothing in the manual telling you need to). He plugs it in and parks in front of his apartment with 200 neighbors. Some kids finds it and downloads the full season of The Office. Customer gets a $800 bill. Nice.” As in not nice at all, on any level. How long before ChryCo “rectifies these issues?” We’re still waiting for that revised Avenger…
The flying car has long been the sci-fi terminus point for automotive technology. Such automotive luminaries as Henry Ford and Glenn Curtiss have been lured into costly, fruitless developments by visions of blasting away from traffic on the wings of flight. But the vision has never translated into production reality. The Moller “Autovolanter” is no closer to production than the flux capacitor, although far more complex. Green Car Congress reports that the sky-whip uses no fewer than eight of Moller’s proprietary Rotapower rotary-hybrid engines to power the Autovolanter. The plug-in hybrid two-seater can drive 150 miles on the road before lifting off vertically and flying a further 75 miles (at up to 150 mph), carrying up to 375 lbs and achieving nearly 15 mpg in the process. Well, in theory. Development of a prototype is estimated at $5m, though Moller claims low-volume production could make the Autovolanter available for $250k. But then there’s the problem of licenses, regulation and in-city use. Says Moller founder Dr Paul Moller “flying it in US cities is not going to be politically acceptable until it has been deployed successfully in other roles and environments. Practical or not, it excites the imagination to think about being able to rise vertically out of a traffic jam and just go!” Of course legal niceties weren’t really considered during development, as the Autovolanter was prototyped at the request of a “wealthy businessman who was unable to commute from the city to his country home due to the overcrowded streets of Moscow.” Dude, just bribe the cops.
Londoners know (because a fleet of almost 100 is already running): the electric Smart fortwo is an big improvement on the original. It’s economical and smooth, without the wheezy engine and the miserable, jerky transmission of the gas-powered (or God forbid, Diesel) version. Greeny Berliners think: electric cars would be the zero-emission way to go, if you could just charge them somewhere (who has a garage in the city?) Bringing both factors together and hoping that they gel, the German government has started a project with the generic-sounding name “e-mobility Berlin”. It will be the world’s biggest e-car pilot project, involving Daimler and RWE, a utility, which will install 500 public charging stations. The charging stations will have token solar cells, but are basically about coal-derived electricity (take that, global-warming activists!) Daimler’s main motivation is to field-test its e-Smarts, scheduled for massive roll-out in the magic year (guess!) On TV, I saw Angela Merkel, Germany’s often dour, physicist-by-training head of government talk about the project with bright eyes: “It only takes two hours to re-charge the batteries? Just the time you need to go shopping!” As they say, some ways of thinking die hard.
The “Solar Taxi” has arrived in Philadelphia a year, two months and 27k miles after it left Switzerland. A substitute high school teacher from Lucerne named Louis Palmer built the contraption, with help from four universities. The three-wheeled cluchtless, gearless gizmo weighs 1,000 lbs, including 500 lbs of sodium-nickel-ceramic Zebra batteries, manufactured by MES DEA in Stabio, Switzerland. The latter give the car and its 500 lb trailer toting 6 square meters of PVs a range of nearly 200 miles at night. Top speed is an electronically limited 55 mph at 1800 rpm. The 20 hp motor pulled the car up the Rockies at 40 mph. Though billed as 100% solar, Palmer tells TTAC the trailer produces half the car’s energy, the “other half” produced by solar cells on a collaborator’s rooftop in Switzerland that feeds the grid with power equivalent to the supplement the car requires from the grid. In any case, the car’s top speed sinks to 10-15 mph when powered by direct sunshine alone. But Palmer’s goal is to show the world that solar-powered automotive transportation is feasible. He says that $5,000 worth of rooftop solar cells in the US Mid-Atlantic could provide enough electricity for 10,000 miles/year.
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