Stumping Standards

Norman Martin

What's holding up the telematics revolution and its promise of real-time traffic bulletins and blazing Internet connections?

The personal computer industry's wide open standards that allow you to plug-and-play everything from printers to power joy sticks remains a potholed path for automakers. They've made far too few strides in creating similar standards for multimedia electronics. Such new standards are the key to integrating GPS-based navigation systems, DVD players, video screens, satellite radios, cell phones and a huge mix of other electronic devices into new vehicles.

James DeStefano, marketing manager for Sun Microsystems' Java automotive unit in Palo Alto, Calif., is among those driving new options. "The automotive industry is not traditionally primed to move as fast as the electronics industry," he says dryly. Several advisory bodies, including the Open Gateway Standards Initiative-Vehicle Expert Group and Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C), are trying to back a single open automotive standard, but it's been slow going. Lack of unbiased experts, a ponderous consensus process and the sheer scope of in-vehicle technologies continue to block the path.

There's significant reason for concern. "The automakers are telling us they can't wait three years for standards to be approved," DeStefano explains. "They feel by that point in time the mobile device world will have passed by them."

While it's true that multiple telematics solutions written in the Java programming language are available from a number of automotive electronics suppliers today, a closer look shows these packages aren't really interchangeable. To offer the software portability of true open Java, Sun says it needs to be developed by multiple competitors under the company's community process.

In other words, some solutions now being offered are written in Java, but aren't technically Java. The language isn't by definition open, because it was intentionally designed for both open and proprietary uses.

"If you have an application that was rigged for a cell phone, right now we could take those Java applications, put them on any other Java cell phone and they're completely interchangeable," DeStefano says. "That doesn't exist for the products that are produced right now for the automotive industry."

Standardization Critical

In 1974, the total electronic content of a car was about two percent and consisted largely of the radio and a solid-state voltage regulator. Total content today is at 22 percent, according to New York-based Roland Berger & Partners. The consulting firm predicts it will grow to as much as 40 percent by 2010. To keep abreast of such growth, standardization is critical.

"Common, open-standard solutions are key," agrees Robert Schumacher, general director of Mobile MultiMedia at Delphi Automotive Systems in Kokomo, Ind. Standard software and serial communication bus interfaces enable significant reuse of electronic building blocks and reduce product development cost and cycle time, he says.

The debate on auto multimedia standards has been raging for nearly two years (see AI Nov. 1999, pg. 131). If broadly used, standardized vehicle networks could hasten new telematics technology. And rather than designing three years out, automotive engineers could wait deep into the design cycle, using only the coolest techno gear. Standardization could also make Tier 1 suppliers more likely to invest in product development because costs are spread over millions of units a year instead of being splintered among lots of 50,000.

The news isn't all sour. In January AMI-C, a non-profit consortium of several large automakers, including Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, PSA Peugeot-Citroen, Renault and Toyota, selected two high-speed network buses as candidates for endorsement. They are the 25-Mbit/second fiberoptic MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transfer) and the copper-based serial interface IEEE 1394.

IEEE 1394 is already used in more than 10 million camcorders and eight million PCs, as well as millions of printers, scanners, video games and mass-storage devices. "These specifications are a major step forward," says AMI-C's program manager Michael Noblett.

Separately, Sun Microsystems is working with GM's OnStar unit to build a Java specification that OnStar's partners can use. The specification is aimed at ensuring compatibility with other open, standard Java mobile devices. It's anon-exclusive relationship. Long term, the plan is to make the spec available to the standards organizations, because neither Sun nor OnStar claim they have a financial interest in in-vehicle hardware or operating system software.

A Different Space

The auto industry has been roundly criticized for its lumbering move into telematics, its bureaucracy and stunningly long cycle times. Yet, there's still hope, if the industry can finally get into gear and move toward consensus. A vehicle has key advantages, including battery capacity, data-storage capacity and screen-size capability. Other positives are voice recognition, wireless communications options and incorporation of smart-card technology.

Dave Acton, executive director of Global Telematics for GM and president of AMI-C, admits to feeling crestfallen that apparently so few believe they're working fast enough. "A lot of people that say we're moving slow trivialize what it takes to have companies that are steeped in their own requirements give those up for the good of the whole," he says. "The requirements for the vehicle space are considerably different, not because we're arrogant, but there's the safety of the customer to considered," he says. "Software absolutely cannot get locked up."

London-based Strategy Analytics predicts that by 2006 more than 50 percent of the passenger vehicles produced in North America will have built-in telematics-capable terminals, and 85 to 90 percent of new large/luxury cars will be telematic. Meanwhile, UBS Warburg's year 2000 report on telematics estimates that worldwide revenue from telematics will grow to $47.2 billion in 2010. The phenomenal rise of the Internet and the growth in personal use of consumer multimedia products at home and work will only create more of a drumbeat to put these products in vehicles.

Delphi Automotive's Schumacher hastens to add that people expect to receive and send information wherever they are, including the vehicle. At Delphi alone, he says, the mobile multimedia business unit booked $2.9 billion worth of business before it was even 18 months old. And even with today's tech-driven downturn, Delphi expects annual growth in the unit of about 25 to 30 percent.

If that's the benchmark, expect more moves toward standards.

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