Over the course of the Ars Technica series on the Future of Cars, a clear picture has emerged of where traffic flow is headed in the next few years. If today's traffic is like a bloom of bacteria that responds collectively to changes in the environment, then tomorrow's networked traffic, where all the cars are linked to the road, to the cloud and to one another by a wireless nervous system, will be more like a fully formed, adaptive and evolving organism.
In addition to the existing network of sensors already embedded in roads and highways, the cars themselves will become collections of sensors enmeshed in a peer-to-peer wireless network, with some master nodes on that network connected to the cloud by 4G.
But even as a picture of the evolution of traffic over the next decade comes into focus, what isn't yet clear is the future of the automobiles we'll see in this next-generation traffic flow. Specifically, one question remains unanswered: Will the silicon brain of these vehicles be built in, or will we simply plug in our smartphones and use their processors, wireless signals and displays?
I put this question to the Ars Technica OpenForum participants, and the discussion that ensued was very good. But before I summarize what the OpenForum agreed on as a long-term solution (there was a surprising amount of consensus about how things should go), I'll first present a summary of both sides of the issue.
The Case for Built-In: Safety, Reliability, Regulation
In an interview with Ars Technica, Kavey Hushyar, CEO of aftermarket telematics maker Telemetria, insisted that "built-in" is the future, and the smartphone has a "long way to go" before it can work as a viable in-car computing solution.
Most of Hushyar's case against the smartphone centers on two things: Safety and the built-in computer's secure and reliable integration with an automobile's vast network of sensors and modules. This makes a lot of sense, as anyone who has had to fuss with a finicky, flaky smartphone can tell you.
You definitely would not want an Android phone performing any sort of critical or safety-related computing in your car. Can you imagine having to "force quit" the app that takes in real-time braking data from the cars ahead of you and applies the brake in emergencies to keep you from rear-ending someone?
Then there are the liability and regulatory issues, which means automakers need to maintain control over all of the critical computing functions in a car. As we approach the world of drive-by-wire, the definition of "critical" will expand to fill ever more user-facing roles and functions.
The makers of high-performance computer chips know well that there's a huge, unfilled appetite for compute cycles in the car — especially as drive-by-wire becomes feasible. This is why Intel and Nvidia are aggressively pursuing the automotive sector. Both companies, traditionally associated with the PC, server, and supercomputer markets, are angling to get their CPUs, GPUs and SoCs into cars, and often tout their auto efforts at conferences.
Finally, the automakers themselves are still committed to going the built-in route because it lets them differentiate, although that is changing. OpenForum user emozilla, who claims to be a software engineer at a car company in Detroit, posted the following comment to this effect:
But he went on to suggest car companies are starting to realize that letting consumer electronics makers take on some parts of the in-car experience is the way of the future, and that "when it comes to infotainment, it's best to let the professionals do their job."
The Case for Plug-In: Moore's Law
I personally have been a fan of bringing my own hardware to the car since I started using GPS units when the original Garmin Nuvi appeared. I consistently preferred my Garmin to every automaker solution I ever used. And now that I use Android, I far prefer putting my Nexus S in "Car Mode" to any built-in solution I've seen.
I'm also not alone. All of the posters favored some variant of the BYO option, though most would like better support from the car.
Aside from the obvious issues with expensive DVD updates for in-car systems (this particular gripe will go away, though, when cars come with 4G connections), user stevenkan sums up the fundamental reason that plug-in beats built-in for our audience:
Because we refresh phones more often, they can keep pace with Moore's Law easier than cars can. You might have twice the horsepower in a new car than you do in your new phone, but in two years your phone will be caught up, and in another two it will surpass. And in 10 years, the phone will far and away exceed the car.
And as wireless networks evolve, it's easier to bring your own radio. People refresh their phones much more often than their cars, so why not let users bring the latest radio silicon?
Then there's the flexibility factor, which stevenkan also highlights:
Reader Stainless gives another argument in favor of plug-in, and one that I hadn't thought of:
In all, the discussion participants' preference for plug-in vs. built-in appear to be largely conditioned by dissatisfaction with carmakers' built-in options. Most in-car systems to date are old, slow, user-hostile, inflexible, redundant and massively overpriced.
But given the aforementioned reasons why built-in will continue to be with us, is there any hope that the problems with in-car computing will go away, or that smartphone-based plug-in solutions will have a fighting chance?
It turns out that there is hope, and that our readers largely agree on the way forward.
Let Detroit Do Cars and Silicon Valley Do Everything Else
User GeoSixPack opened up the thread with a great exposition of what the rest of us essentially want in an in-car computing experience. He writes:
User .milfox elaborates on this scenario, and takes it in a direction that I myself have often fantasized about:
In essence, what both of these users are advocating is a hybrid system, where the built-in parts of the car deal with critical driving and safety issues, and the plug-in parts handle everything else. So the car would have two types of electronics systems in it: a built-in system for dealing with the critical car sensors and with the environment -- i.e., the road, the peer-to-peer traffic network, driver and passenger safety, critical broadcast alerts, emergency response, etc. -- and a set of interfaces that let a smartphone handle communication, human-driven navigation and entertainment.
In such a hybrid scenario, carmakers could focus on doing what they do best, and leave the user-experience side of things to consumer-electronics makers.
The main barrier to this kind of development is that the modern automobile is a mess of different (and in many cases, proprietary) buses and protocols. Reader JimZ writes:
The answer, of course, is standardization. We're a long way from that, but reader emozilla offers a ray of hope:
Let's hope that emozilla is right. It would be great to see cars that let the user's smartphone take over all of the user-facing electronics, while the car's built-in hardware handles the core driving duties. By the time that day gets here, smartphones will be as at least as powerful as today's low-end laptops, so they'll have that much more to offer any car that can seamlessly integrate them into its electronics.
This story was written by Jon Stokes and originally published by Ars Technica.
Photo: Aurich Lawson/Ars Technica
See Also:- Cellphone Networks and the Future of Traffic
