MARCH 16, 2010, 7:11 P.M. ET.
Living With the Electronic Car
Maybe it's time to consider higher standards of driver training and licensing.
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR
'The iPhone is a fantastic device but it's a device perfectly tuned for zero miles per hour."
So explains K. Prasad Venkatesh, chief of infotronics research and advanced engineering for Ford Motor, a company not slowing down its drive into the digital age, even amid current furors about distracted driving or the reliability of competitor Toyota's electronics.
Far from it: Because customers are bringing their digital lives into the car, the choice facing car makers only is how to accommodate them safely. That's some of the thinking behind Ford Sync, advertised on TV in car commercials that barely mention the name of the car. In one, Nascar driver Carl Edwards talks about how he can use Sync to command his phone to call Kanye West—er, if he had Kanye's number.
Sync also lets a driver summon up music or hear his text messages without taking his eyes off the road, with more features (navigation, diagnostics, etc.) being added all the time.
Barbara KelleyYes, all this creates complexity. Says Mr. Prasad: "We've gone from one [computer] module in the car to 30 in a generation." The number of chips grows in linear fashion, he adds, "but the number of potential interactions grows exponentially."
Your phone isn't allowed to touch the engine controls, but it obviously has to interact with the safety module if it's automatically going to call for help when the airbags deploy. A system that parallel parks the car for you has to interact with the drivetrain, brakes, steering, and cameras or other sensors—complexity.
Auto makers, however, are known for being conservative almost to a fault. They don't just stuff new electronics into the car unless certain of their behavior. All the major manufacturers, Mr. Prasad says, keep their "sanctum sanctorum"—the engine software under the hood—under tight control. They're more willing to farm out peripheral software functions. Ford uses technology from Nuance Communications for the voice recognition at the heart of Sync.
Next up is creating means for approved outside "apps" to interact with vehicle systems—the goal of a project with engineering students at the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus to make sure that when such features enter the vehicle, they do so safely.
Mr. Prasad sees a tsunami coming for businesses of every size from what Ford likes to call "the American Journey 2.0."
Right now, suppose your business is based on a roadside sign that proclaims "World's Best Sandwiches." In the "2.0" world, he says, "that sign will be irrelevant." Drivers will get their food recommendations from "the cloud," not from billboards.
Or how about this? "Not all stop signs are created equal," he says. Your local PTA or sheriff's department could have a social media site that, with your permission, lets you know through that car's speakers that the approaching intersection is a dangerous one—perhaps reminding you of an accident involving someone you know.
Ford is positioning itself not just to sell cars to the digitally saturated millennial generation. It hopes to inculcate the young with an idea new to American car buyers—that small is not cheap.
"Small is tech, small is cool," says Mr. Prasad. The teensy Eurocar in your future might not seat five comfortably, but it has all the style, quality and refinement of a larger car, plus better gas mileage and easier parking. And, with social media, you can always fill it up with your "virtual buddies."
Ford employees are under strict orders not to say anything about Toyota's troubles except to issue the standard company-approved regret that Toyota hadn't handled matters better. In what probably would raise a smirk in some quarters, a Toyota executive recently explained to a congressional committee investigating claims of uncontrolled acceleration: "We need to reduce the number of things we ask our customers to do correctly."
In fact, the exec was describing the essence of responsible engineering—though perhaps the balance in auto design has gotten out of whack. Take safety: It's one area where technology might do a lot for customers—if customers would cooperate. Anti-lock brakes, for instance, allow drivers to bring their cars to a halt more quickly and under better control. Have they made us safer drivers—or turned us into careless tailgaters?
Washington's own approach to safety regulation, manifested in its flaying of Toyota over accidents whose likeliest cause is a driver pressing the gas instead of the brake, could also use an upgrade. Loading on car makers more and more responsibility to protect us from ourselves is a solution with diminishing returns. Just maybe it's time to consider higher standards of driver training and licensing.
Naah . . . After all, ambulance chasers need to make a living too.
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