The Connected Car Challenge: Part 1

than I am. So I'm wearing my sunglasses to give me this kind of sense of coolness and a loofness. That's where you're in a tight shirt, your chest all put's right. Yeah, I gotta make myself look big. Yeah it's working. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. I'm glad that I can. I can dominate and then therefore maintain my my lead position. But as always when I have a guest on, I like to ask my guest if there are any particular

topics that trist them. And Scott, you picked an article a list really, that appeared in Forbes Online and thought maybe we should talk about and I couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's say it's a topic that I think we're gonna hear a lot more about in the future near future as a matter of fact, um, connected cars. Yeah, and not just connected cars. But this particular article is about ten obstacles for connected cars. Because we've talked about connected cars on car stuff on our show before and in

various ways. I mean kind of the slow progression up to the point where we're actually calling them connected cars now, because that's relatively new, right right, Because when you think connected car, I mean that definition seems a little fuzzy and vague, largely because we're still defining it. So you could, if you wanted to be, you know, kind of technical, you could say, oh, well, I've heard about entertainment systems that you can have in a car that connect to

something like Pandora. Isn't that a connected car? But what we're really talking about here, and it's it's something that's not defined in that Forbes list. The Forbes list is pretty bare bones when you get down to it. But what we're really talking about here are cars that have some sort of persistent Internet connection, and usually they also have some sort of wireless local area network in the

car itself so that your devices can link into that network. Yeah, that's right, and that network provides other benefits to the driver and and right now, I mean you can get vehicles that have elements of this right now. We're talking about future developments that are coming down the line. And you know, we'll get to all this as we go through the top ten list. But um, which, by the way, some of this we agree with and some of this we don't. Yeah, some of these we question how they

could be labeled an obstacle. It makes me think that this list was originally just a list about connected cars, and that when they got to the point of trying to come up with a headline to describe it, this obstacles was the one that seemed like it was the best fit because maybe there's like seven real obstacles and the other three or just we're talking about connected cars. So you know, some of the things that that you

know you may already see in cars. There are things like automatic notification of crashes or um, you know, when you're getting speeding alerts. You know, if you're you're in a rural area and you're going a little too fast, your car can actually tell you if you're going too quickly for that road. Things that you know, navigation systems have done in the past, you know, on their own, but those are add in devices, things that you you

plug in. Now cars are doing that themselves, you know, with the with the built in navigation devices, so um, safety alerts, things like that. All all that stuff is stuff that we can see right now that is part of the connected car. But as you said, the definition is constantly changing every time uh something new comes out or some new advancement in UH in the design of the vehicle or the architecture of the electrical system of

the vehicle. That's that's redefining what we consider a connected car. And this vehicle to vehicle communication that we're talking about, that's that's just now in the in the infancy state. I think we're not really there yet, but we're getting

there quickly. And it's kind of and the way we described it on on car stuff is that, um, it's almost like the phone, the phones, you know, Like I mean, I can think seven eight years ago when I was using a flip phone and that was relatively new technology and we know we're just getting into smartphone area, you know, territory at that point. But um, I think how quickly things have developed past that point or since that point. In just the last five six years. That's the way

cars are advancing. And I've got other stuff that I'm gonna site here as we go along. There was there was a particularly eye opening article in Popular Mechanics that we've covered in detail on our other show, and I will I'll mention elements of that as we go through. But some fascinated stuff that that even for me and Ben, you know, when we were we were going through this, we we talked about this all the time, you know, throughout the week, even not just on the show. Uh,

some of the stuff was really eye opening. How quickly things are happening. Yeah, and it reminds me a lot of the discussion you and I had on the other episode of Tech Stuff you joined me on about self driving cars and how a lot of the elements that are necessary to make a self driving car work are

finding their way into our vehicles today. Even though our vehicles are not themselves autonomous right there, there's some autonomous elements that are being worked in, whether it's something where the car is still under full driver control, or it's something where a computer takes over for like parking assists to that kind of stuff. So it's very similar to that, to that same sort of model, and without getting very

specific about it. Today there's even some some some more news on that front as we go through this list today. So um, I can tell you that, you know, based on the other list, the the Popular Mechanics list, I know we're kind of getting into two different things here, but um, even based on what I read there, they're talking about it's advancing even faster than what we had talked about just a few weeks ago. It is amazing.

How I mean, that's the one drawback about doing any sort of show about technology is that very quickly after you record it, it becomes obsolete and you need to do an update. Let's look into the actual list though, So the Forbes list, it opens up with the statement that cars take longer to design and build than smartphones,

so the development cycle is very different. So you might say that if you look at smartphones in general, the the innovation is is constant, right, You're constantly getting updates. But even if you narrow it down to a specific model of phone, you're still talking about essentially an annual uh development cycle. You get a new iPhone every year. I think we can all appreciate this I mean, how often do you get, you know, the iPhone six and

then the six S comes out a month later. And I'm bad at this naming, you know, devices, but you understand exactly what I mean by when we get home, the next one is on. You know, the television is being the greatest thing, and that's what people are waiting in line for tomorrow. Right in the United States, this is particularly tricky, right because a lot of us get our phones subsidized, and we get a contract that goes along with it. The contract baseline tends to be two years.

So if you have a two year contract but your specific model of phone updates every year, you always feel like you're behind. Now I'm an Android user, and it's even worse for me because there's a new Android phone out multiple times a month, so I can't if I settle with one model, I do that knowing that it's going to be outpaced multiple times before I can upgrade again.

And I suppose it's similar in that, you know, Let's say that you have a particular make of vehicle, you know, so there's a general Motors will make a certain type of vehicle and they will update it every year. Of course, Yeah, still call it the same thing. There's gonna be the two thousand twelve modle year, the two thirteen, and the thirteen is likely going to have more features and functions than the twelve, but they won't do a dramatic redesign, and you know for several years. I mean it maybe

ten years away or whatever. But they're constantly working on new products. Well, this article says that car manufacturers work on five year cycles. Now I'm going to say that it's probably a little bit less than that. Typically, know that they've a while ago, you know, like maybe a couple of decades ago, you know, they were working on cycles that were seven years long. You know, they would start out with the sketches on the drawing board. You know that even the napkin, and you work up from

there with the clay models, etcetera. Well, cad drawings and things like that have advanced to the point where that's shortened that you know, the amount of time, the lead up time I guess we'd be printing really cut it way back, because now if your prototype didn't work, you could just redesign it and print a new one exactly right. So the cycles are getting much much shorter. But I'm gonna say that five year cycles. That's if that's average, I would believe it. I know that some are working

faster than others. So I've got this note here, and this comes from that other popular mechanics article, and there's a couple of these that will drop in here. But I'm I think I'm about to blow your much Jonathan pit Me. Yeah, you alluded to this before we came in here, and you said, you know what, I'm going to save this for the podcast, and I'm going to I'm gonna ask you a question. Now. This is um,

this is McLaren. Alright, we're talking about So McLaren makes supercars, they make Formula one cars, they make you know, million dollar cars, I mean close to it anyways. Al Right, so McLaren has been in this in the supercar world since about nineteen nine two. They made a car called the F one about nine again, it was a million dollar car. They made like, you know, a hundred plus cars, not really that many of low production. These are the ones that are like handmade, that's that's right. And now

it's one of the many that are handmade. Right. But since they've kind of been out of the game, but then they came back again, and I want to say it was around two I'll find the number here, but I think it was around two thousand eleven when they came back. Uh. Yeah, they jumped back in with the model called the twelve seed supercar again, so the car for the streets. But they had been building Formula one technology all along, and they've got something that they call

a skunk work. And the skunk Works are outside of London, and that's kind of their uh experimental area, tough secret research and development. Lucky skunk Works is probably the most famous, but there are several companies that do this still thing. Yeah, exactly right, and this is Formula one for them, right, They're interested in Formula one technology and they build road cars there as well. I'm gonna ask you this question. Okay, so they they develop new technology and test new technology there.

How often do you think that they test and develop new technology out of this skunk works facility? Oh? Okay, Well, all right. If you're talking about a company that is uh largely concerned with designing cars to compete in and win races, I would imagine who have to be Let's say, I'm gonna I'm gonna go super conservative. I'm gonna say eighteen months. Eighteen months, is your guest. Right, here's where

your mind is about to be blong, all right. McLaren, the vaunted maker of supercars and Formula one racers, long been known for nimble development. Right at this skunk works outside of London, developers strive to engineer and test a new piece of technology every twenty minutes. That that's incredibly aggressive twenty minutes. Now. When I read that, I could not believe it. I mean, it's it's predible how quickly they do. They say that a new race car can differ by as much as from the race car they

fielded the previous year. That's how fast, and you only have similarity to the previous model. Is is phenomenal exactly right now. They're also building, you know, these road cars, so I'm sure that a lot of that is the Formula one technology, right However, they've been introducing a new car every year for every model years since two thousand eleven,

so they're quickly building these cars fast like this. And the way they do it is that they have completely stopped starting with the CAD set up and all that. They didn't even start there. They start with a human in a simulator and that's how they begin the whole process and they get feedback from that and it's so fast. I mean, it's just the the most rapid way to do the whole thing, and they make adjustments as they go and that's how they're able to do it so quickly.

And the thing is they say they don't waste millions on prototyping. This guy, Jeff McGrath from from McClaren Applied Technology, sees the vice president there and he says that we can design the car is the future before we even begin machining parts. So they don't even prototype parts. They start with the simulator and a person and that's how

they are able to quickly do this. Now it's not just for these million dollars supercars, which is exciting news for all of us because I'm not in this this arena to buy a car, but it's exciting for you and I because it's not just for these million dollars supercars. It's He says that I hope this time next year will be free to name some of the passenger car companies that are using our technology. So he's saying we're sharing this, we can't really talk about it right now.

So some of these these big manufacturers, like I'm gonna guess, um, you know, the big three here in the United States, maybe, um who knows Pougeot or Mercedes or whoever they're they're probably working with them, and they're developing technology just that quickly. We're gonna see advances and cars way faster than we ever had before, starting right now. So that gap that is listed as an obstacle may not really be an obstacle for well, it might not be an obstacle now,

and it certainly won't be an obstacle perpetually. I think. Also another objection I have to that particular item, not really objection, but maybe maybe a note a criticism perhaps is that it doesn't really take into account the aftermarket either, And the aftermarket could develop much more quickly because you know you've you've got once you know the constraints you have to work in for whatever model of car you're developing your stuff for, Uh, you can really innovate very quickly.

And so some of these connected cars systems may not be fully integrated with the entire vehicle. They could be a kind of like a module, like an entertainment system that you could take out and you would still get a lot of the functionality you would get in a car that was built to be a connected vehicle from

the start. Not everything, obviously, anything that that ties directly into the car systems will probably be a little more problematic, but at least like the entertainment, navigation, uh, WiFi access, that kind of stuff, you could build that in. It reminds me a little bit of open source technology, the

way that that that whole thing works out. I mean, I'm sure you're way better at this than I am, but open source the way I understand it is that you know, you take someone's base idea and you build on that and they allow you to because that's how you get this rapid development of ideas, right, I mean quickly um evolves. Yeah, it's the idea is that by opening it up to the crowd, you allow for much

more rapid innovation. There's there's a guy here and I've got a note, another note, and I promise we won't go as along on the next few as we do with that one, because that one I was excited about. But um, there's a note here that I want I want to talk about Ellen Musk at some point. So when it feels right to talk about open sourcing again, just tell me, and that's when I'll hit you with this other thing from ellenor Ellen Sean, I shouldn't say Ellen.

It's Ellen, Yes, the genius behind Tesla and SpaceX. Uh, someone that we've chatted about several times on this podcast, and I'm sure we'll continue to talk about it. Well, let's talk about the second thing on the list, which was that new safety laws will dictate connectivity. This was one of the items that the way it was worded on the list made me question of whether or not it was an obstacle. I guess it could be, depending

on your point of view. Uh. Specifically, they they elaborated on this point by saying that in two thousand and fifteen, all cars in Europe will have to be equipped with a system that is named E call E C A l L, which alerts emergency vehicles to crashes and location data. So if you're in a really bad crash you're not necessarily responsive, it will automatically send out essentially a kind of a distress call, and so emergency vehicles can respond

to the emergency fantastic. Yeah. Now they say that this will that they consider this an obstacle to the connected car. I think of this as a driver to the connected car, not a driver behind the right the steering wheel, but something that is driving us towards this connected car. Because it's a requirement, it's a mandate. It's something that you know, like GMS on Star will already do. But that's an add on feature. I mean, it's it's built in the cars,

I understand. But it's a subscription service, right, so I understand what you're saying. I think it. I think it is more of a driver than anything else. There's also another thing called B call that is going to be be prevalent in new cars, and that's that's for breakdown. So so E call for emergencies, BE call for breakdowns

makes sense, right. But the cool thing about BE call is that if you do break down, there's an automatic service call that's made with details about where you are and what part of the vehicles having trouble, what exactly is happening, you know, can it be fixed on the side of the road or does it require a tow truck? You know, are interested to call you into town or

or back home or wherever you have to go. So yeah, I think that's um, you know, along the lines of these, you know, the next step after that would be like

a concier concierge service. It's tough for me to say, but you know someone that's at a call center that can actually help you find, um, you know, stuff that's not critical like you know, these emergency call you know, emergencies or breakdowns, but more like if you want a restaurant or a hotel or a pharmacy, and you can call at will and say, you know, I've got a subscription to this for you know, six months or a year or whatever, and I'm looking for a local restaurant

to serves Chinese food. Um, what do you recommend? Yeah, that reminds me of the time with my wife and I took a really long road trip and we didn't have a hotel arranged because we didn't know where we were going to be by the time it was time to turn in. So that would have been a very useful service in that in that case. Yes, you know, at the touch of a button, you can get all of that. I mean, this this E call, the be call, the you know, the the possible concierge service, that type

of thing. I mean, all that I do see as being part of this whole connected car thing because you have to have connections in order to be able to make that work, right, right, That's that's what That's what the the on Star service relies on. Right now, why not build that into other makes and models of vehicles

as well? Yeah, And I think when I think of safety laws being an obstacle to connectivity, I think more on the opposite side of this, not so much something that is required to send out a message, but rather what about the potential for driver distraction? So, in other words,

there might be laws that come out. We we often see this in technology, right, We see where the technology outpaces the law happens all the time, where we developed these really cool tools or toys or whatever that just when when laws were made, it didn't take that into account because it wasn't a thing when the law was formed. And then you suddenly realize, oh wait, this thing is just different enough from everything else that we need to

figure out how the law applies in this case. So if we have connected cars that have potential distractions to drivers, I could see safety laws coming in that would affect whether or not a car could be connected. But that's a that's a different angle than what was in the list, And you're jump ahead on the list because there's there's a bit about distracted drivers later on. I've got a specific question for you as we get to that too. Excellent. Well,

I look forward to being asked that question. I bet you do. The next one, and this one, I think is probably where an open source discussion can probably come in as well. The carmakers need mobile partners, which means that auto manufacturers obviously they're not the same company that provides this connectivity service, right, And yeah, this is gonna be strange, Yeah, because someone's got to be in charge

of delivering the connection to that automobile. If you've got a cell phone receiver essentially built into your car, that

has to be working with some carrier somewhere. Yeah, this is this is really weird to me because we're talking about car subscriptions now at this point, and of course we all know you know that that there's the the satellite radio subscriptions are on Star or something like that, Right, I understand all that, But we're talking about like being able to bundle phone calls, streaming, music, navigation all into one, one service where they'll be able to charge you X

number dollars per month. And let's say that you know you want to add video conferencing, Well that's an additional five dollars a month, but sure we can do that for you as well. I mean, why would you want to a video conference in your car? You may think that's funny, but somebody who who is a salesperson or works out of the car, they would find that invaluable. I mean, it would just be would be fantastic for them to be able to do something like that. It

would be a complete office right there on wheels. And I'm sure that people are gonna be excited about this. Other people are going to say, well, this is this is a bad, bad idea. I mean, I can imagine YouTube series coming up with this sort of thing. If you have a system in your car where you can do essentially a video call, then it's not a huge jump to think of a live YouTube broadcast from behind

the wheel. And you think about all those those car shows where it's someone behind the wheel of the car occasionally looking over and chatting to a camera as they navigate the car, especially once the do car reviews like c NET. It's a great example. Then I could see that becoming a thing where you have video series of people behind the wheel. It doesn't even have to necessarily be a car centric video series. That's just the gimmick that gets people into the show, and it's built in.

The manufacturer will create this for you. It'll it'll have the camera points right at the face of the driver. And to be able to do this, because if they're saying video conferencing, it's not gonna be something you're gonna have to set up like the GoPro camera up in the corner of the car or something. Right, it's going to be there and ready to go. So um yeah, there's gonna be uh, it's gonna be probably some new

laws that go along with this as well. Right, So now you also have some other questions, right like if you have like who do you partner with? What? What manufacture partners with which carrier and and once you make that decision, you're kind of locked in. It's not like you're not going to find a car necessarily where it's going to work on any carrier. I mean, I guess they could technically build in transmitters for all the different

carriers and then you make a choice. But it's far more likely that the cost for this development is going to be spread across multiple UH entities, So you would have uh, you know, a car manufacturer partner specifically with Sprint or a T and T. Now this is interesting because you you just brought up something that I hadn't thought about. But what if you were interested in Volkswagen and they their partnered with Sprint, but you don't like

Sprint service or it's not available in your area. And then you think, well, I really want a Volkswagen, but I also need this service because I rely on this, you know, and I'm in this area that just simply doesn't have good coverage or whatever. I'm gonna have to go with the General Motors product because they've partnered with a T and T and I've got better service there. It does seem pretty weird to think that a person's choice of vehicle could depend upon who there their service

provider is for their smartphone. And I don't know if they would actually change that or not, if it would just kind of sway them one way or the other. Like if I had these two cars in mind, yet this one has this provider and this one has the

other provider. Maybe it might push you in the direction that you weren't leaning before, or maybe you just end up resigning yourself to having a car that has features that you simply can't access, which I know would irritate me, like I to think that I'm essentially paying to have these features that I can't access. And we'll get more into how this could become a complication and a little

bit further down the list. But this is kind of where that open source approach UH kind of fits in because another element of open source is this idea that no one has uh proprietary ownership of the the the base code beyond a certain level, so that one you're able to build upon this depending upon the licensing for the open source material UH and and the benefit of it is that you don't have this lockdown ecosystem, whereas in these other approaches where you have a specific partnership

between a manufacturer and a carrier, it's locked down to a certain experience. If you don't like that service, if you don't if if the things you own are not compatible with it, you're out of luck. Open source is kind of taking the opposite of UH philosophy in some ways, I mean, I'm kind of muddying the waters a little bit. But ideally, with open source, you have an approach where you can arrive to a standard that can apply across multiple UH like the whole spectrum, so that you're not

forcing the consumer to pick one particular approach. They still have ultimate flexibility and choice. See, could buy the vehicle you want, but maybe with limited with limited features. Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, So that's that's one way I would put that. And I think of this also with like

the connected home. So you probably have heard about appliances like you could have your fridge and your stove connected, and that your fridge has all the information about all the foods that you have stored in there, and your stove. You know, you end up sending a message to your fridge saying, based upon the stuff that is inside of you, figure out a recipe for dinner and send a message to the stove to start preheating. But in order to do that, you have to have all of these appliances

from the same provider, the same company. And didn't say bad news, You're gonna have hot dog buns mustard and that's it. Yeah. For me would be like, well, it's a six pack of Jolt Cola and a bottle of catchup. It's said, yeah, Joe Cola. Really well you know, yeah,

you know school. Yeah, alright. So our next one is that, uh, this one I actually really do think of as a true obstacle, which is that car dealers will need to be tech savvy, that sales people will have to add the network capabilities of the car to their knowledge base when they're trying to sell a car to a customer. Yeah, dealers go through a lot of training to sell cars that are out there right now, and they're getting more and more advanced, of course, I mean, uh, cars are

already very complex. I mean when you when you take it a take a look at a new vehicle and the level of complexity it has versus a vehicle that was sold even seven eight years ago. UM. I've got an example that I've mentioned a couple of times on our show on Car Stuff that, Um, I have a two thousand five Honda Civic SI and it's a hatchback and it's the I mean, okay, it's it's the SI model. It was kind of their sporty version. You had a lot of stuff on it. But when I look at that,

it's extremely basic compared to a new vehicle. I've I've said this before when I get I've sat in new vehicles, you know, vehicles on the lot, just kind of poking around, seeing what's out there, and it's as if I'm stepping into a jet fighter. I mean, it looks like the cockpit of a of an airplane. It's incredible the way they've advanced from you know, just two thousand five to now it's ten that's ten years, and I know that's

even been faster than that. But um, they can be really really complex and complicated and and confusing for the customer. And if the dealer doesn't describe that right away, doesn't describe to you how everything works, you're gonna be the one driving around the block with your left hand turn signal on all the time and I know how to turn it off. Or how many times have you seen someone with the you know, the flashers on the hazard lights and they have no idea how to turn them

off or other features. Or you get into a rental car and you spend the first ten minutes wondering how you turn the headlights on. Yes, it happens. I mean, especially if it's a dark lot. I mean you're you're really you've got to really familiarize yourself with the with the controls in order to be able to function in that environment correctly. And that's important. I mean it's a

safety issue. And at nighttime. You know, if you if it becomes nighttime quickly and you haven't switched your lights on and the interior is not illuminated and you have a difficulty finding switches that you need to find, that can be a safety issue. And dealers need to uh definitely need to work on this. I mean I know that they're they're already doing a lot. I mean dealers are well trained, but um, with the way that cars are advancing now, it's almost like they're gonna have to

go to monthly classes to keep up with what's happening. Right, and you never know what the text savvy level of

your customer is going to be. Right, So if you have a customer come in who is like a someone who writes for Wired and they know this inside and now you need to know at least enough to have a decent conversation with this person that they have detailed questions you need to be able to answer, but you also need to be able to help the customer who is like, you know, someone's grandmother who doesn't have any

knowledge of any of this stuff. And how do you how do you make something as complicated as some of these systems makes sense to some boyle, you just touched on my other example because I have elderly grandparents and

they recently get this. Neither one of them drive, but they well one is recently deceased, but um, they purchased a new vehicle when neither one of them could drive, so other people could drive them to places, right, a brand new vehicle, So this is it's a little funny to think of, but it's of course it's a Buick,

and my grandmother love Buick. So um. The thing is, this newer vehicle had so many buttons and and small type on the on the on the buttons themselves that she couldn't really understand what, you know, all that stuff was because she was accustomed driving a car that was maybe five or six years older, and everything was where she knew it was. You know, it wass very um intuitive to her. Now this new one. I mean it's it's like it's again, it's just too complex for them.

And it's not just elderly people, it's it's just anybody that maybe doesn't have the experience with new cars versus you know, driving an older vehicle like what I'm driving. Um, I would have trouble kind of learning my way around a new car. But that's all part of it. You have to you have to learn this new system. And that's exactly why the dealers. The dealer role is so

critical at this point. And with all the electronic features, you're gonna have one area like one let's see one screen area that's a touch screen that's going to be able to do so many different things. It's not like you can just look at it and understand what it can do. You have to be able to dig through that the different levels and realize what it's capable of doing. UM, I don't know if I can. I'm probably overstating this, but they've gone real high tech and we need to

keep up with it. That's yeah. So this this really could be an obstacle. I mean obstacle in just the sense of widespread adoption. If you can't intelligently explain the the usefulness of these systems, then how can you expect them to be adopted? That the transition from old car to new car, old tech to new tech is very difficult for some people, and they've got to really be

up on things to do that. I mean, I cover technology and even I mean I'm reaching that age where there's some new tech that comes out and I'm like, what, Well, Scott, you know, this conversation has gone on really quite a long time. So if you don't mind, Scott, I think we're gonna just uh snip the episode right here, but

we'll rejoin shortly. Sounds like a good plan. Excellent. So, guys, uh, if you want to get hold of Scott, if there's something that you just have to know about cars, Scott, where would they go to learn more about the stuff you do? Any kind of burning question? Maybe you should contact me via email car stuff at how stuff works dot com. But you could also check out the website I guess you know the stuff site that we have that's car Stuff show dot com. It's an excellent site, excellent,

excellent stuff on there. And usually you know Facebook, Twitter, that's car Stuff hs W, so accessible just like you are fantastic and guys, if you want to get in touch with me, that address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler with the handle tech stuff hs W. What's out to again really soon? For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it have stuff works dot com