Ready for the car 2.0? Nvidia preps UPGRADABLE car system What’s your next car dashboard going to look like? The answer may well be: however you want it to look. If Nvidia has its way, car manufacturers and owners will have a much wider range of choices when it comes to dashboard displays, navigation sophistication, and personalising the car to the owner. The computer hardware …
@Dan Price Re: No @b166er: if occupancy = 0, I'd hope the ignition would be disallowed anyway!
Actually, remote start is available on some care - the VW Passat is a case in point: http://my.vw.com/2012-passat/security/keyless-access
Useful for getting the car warm before venturing into the cold oneself
So you get out for a piss half way up a mountain road with next to no mobile bandwidth, and the car finally lets you restart the ignition four hours later when the update finally downloads and installs.
Only it doesn't, because you've frozen to death.
On the up side, at least you'll be able to play Angry Birds while doing 80mph in the fast lane when someone roots this new toy and removes all the safeties.
So... possibly one or two teething troubles to be concerned about.
While comments regarding updates on the fly are amusing to one degree or other, I am reasonably certain that - at least in the US - this will be a "dealer installable option" only. Just like with "brand specific" versions, dealers will not willingly give up a potentially lucrative revenue stream.
"The WhizBangZoom Motor Company is committed to your safety and security. Therefore, automotive software upgrades for your new SuperRoadmaster 2100 are available ONLY from your authorized WhizBangZoom dealer." For a "nominal fee" of course...
"Exciting"? I suppose it is. I'm so excited I'd like to punch whoever came up with the damned thing.
Touchscreen controls remain the worst idea for driver ergonomics ever, right behind "unified" control systems like BMW's idiotic iDrive. Making it more difficult and attention-intensive to operate secondary functions is precisely the wrong thing to do.
I'm going to have to buy a new car in a year or two, and I am really not looking forward to it. (I wouldn't buy a new car at all, if left to my own devices, but marriage is a series of compromises...) It's going to be difficult to find anything that suits our needs and doesn't have one of these moronic "infotainment" systems.
Information Overload. I can see this becoming app-heavy so it takes all your concentration. Of course, if the app turns your car into an Autonomous Googlemobile, then you can quite happily play the latest incarnation of GTA:Sin City or whatever whilst travelling.
run our insurance app.
(that logs everything) and get 30 % discount. If after an accident we can prove with the data that you were in violation of any rule you are not insured.
alcohol checks that refuse to start your car if you fail the test.
a national database that knows where your car is every second of the day (of course to build better road solutions / send you speeding tickets / fight terrorism)
a rentable car app: you login with your credentials and the database of the lease/rental company knows it is you and will bill you accordingly or install a credit card reader in the car itself.
The possibilities are limitless and scary at the same time. I hope the positive wins out and I really hope that they make it impossible to watch a movie / TV while driving (like they do in Japan)
"I hope the positive wins out"
Either you are too optimistic or I have finally crossed over into "cranky pessimist bastard" land. I agree that the possibilities are scary and am pretty confident that is the path which will be taken.
Furthermore, I can't see rival manufacturers agreeing to a common system without some SERIOUS financial incentives up front. More likely is brand versioning, each with subtle differences in capability similar to hardware/hardwired systems of today. THIS feature is available in my Toyota, but if I want THAT feature, I have to buy a Nissan, etc.
>I hope the positive wins out and I really hope that they make it impossible to watch a movie / TV while driving (like they do in Japan)
I was under the impression that this was the case here in the UK, or maybe manufacturers just implement it that way to avoid lawsuits.
I remember someone turning up at the pub in a brand new 2012 Range Rover with a lenticular display in the middle of the dashboard - it would display GPS to the driver but TV and video to the passenger. (Though the dashboard that almost had me applauding was in one those greenwash Lexus hybrid SUV things- moulded into the dash was not only a DVD/CD player and surround-sound system, but a slot for cassette tapes too. Cassette tapes- wow! - but c'mon, Lexus, you had space to fit an 8-Track, Minidisc, DAT and DCC whilst you were about it! : D)
Realistically, what do they hope to achieve with this?
The current set-up of fixed-place instruments are designed so you only need to glance at them to get the relevant information quickly and can concentrate on the road ahead. Watching a customised speedometer that changes colour the faster you go will only result in fatal deceleration when your car ploughs in to the braking car in front because you were checking out the mods you've just made.
Quick, oh wise sage, you better tell Ferrari, Porsche, Lexus, and no doubt other vehicle manufacturers, that they're doing it wrong by going with interactive, configurable digital displays then! Personally I quite like the idea of being able to customise my cluster and entertainment system but it won't influence my driving in an way. I can't speak for morons behind the wheel but then again there are morons behind the wheel no matter what, always has been, always will be, sticking to boring old clusters isn't going to change that.
"Personally I quite like the idea of being able to customise my cluster"
I've been customizing my cluster since the late 1960s, when I first started racing.
"and entertainment system but it won't influence my driving in an way. I can't speak for morons behind the wheel but then again there are morons behind the wheel no matter what, always has been, always will be, sticking to boring old clusters isn't going to change that."
Morons who need to be "entertained" when behind the wheel are just that. Morons. When you are driving, drive. It's kind of important.
Historically dashboards have proliferated with buttons and dials because each had only one purpose. In reality most of the dials are only required when something goes wrong.
So the only readout that probably needs to be there all the time is speed (which could be placed as HUD on the windscreen instead). Others only give information and warnings when necessary (or on request). I know some people are going to scream "but I need to see my ..." - well you're in the minority. Most drivers wouldn't know what was good or bad until it goes red.
Analogue dials give trend information: is the temperature where it usually is, for example. You're probably correct that many drivers won't know the difference and wouldn't take any notice of it anyway - look how many cars these days have nothing but a speedo and a red light.
But a red light is really saying 'oops, too late'... not for this engineer and car enthusiast, thanks.
While I concur about the trend information, just because it's digital doesn't mean it can't present trend information. You might make it a digital dial on the dash board or display numeric information in a constantly changing stream. You might even graph something like engine temp from the time the car started. To me the major cause of concern would be the complexity of the sensor/relay/presentation interface. But, that horse fled the barn some years (possibly decades) back.
LCDs are perfectly capably of displaying information as an analog display, doesn;t need to be numeric, and most things I would suspect would be displayed that way anyway.
What would be nice would be things like fuel capacity, not just Full, Half, Empty like most cards, but specific amounts of fuel, i.e. 22Ltrs left, and expected milage on the remaining fuel. (i.e will I make it home/to the petrol station etc.).
Also regarding trend info, with a fully digital system like this, you could have information such as expected engine temperature in the current situation, not just the actual temperature (for example taking into account outside temp, driving mode etc.), and so the display could easily show that the car was running hotter or colder than expected, or that it was using fuel faster than it should be, and so help identify issues.
Yes this can be found now, but requires the driver to actually pay attention to what dials are telling them, and notice the difference at other times, which I would suspect for most drivers won't happen. (I'm talking about the sort of people who let their raidiator run dry, or never check things like oil levels or tire pressures).
Also this might help bring to an end the ridiculous prices some companies charge for items like sat nav. i.e. BMW charging £2,500 to add factory fitted sat nav, despite the processing power and screen already existing in the base model cars. So all it needs is the GPS receiver (£10?) and the software installing. Give me Google Navigate anyday.
"Most drivers wouldn't know what was good or bad until it goes red."
What you are talking about in your post is called a "dark cockpit" and was pioneered by Airbus on, IIRC, some iteration of the A320. Basically the thing tells you nothing unless something goes wrong that it can't fix itself.
Nowhere near as macho as "classic" cockpits full of lights, gauges, and switches everywhere. I've always wondered what half of them do... and I used to fly for a living.
1) Car manufacturers aren't interested in allowing users to upgrade their cars, they'd rather we just bought new ones.
2) If some miracle happened and a manufacturer did adopt this system, they'd want exclusivity so they could use it as a unique selling feature, which means that most of us wouldn't get to see it anyway.
3) Being automotive technology, upgrades will be expensive, mainly due to the lock-in - think of the difference in price between going into Halfords and buying a TomTom unit, and approaching your dealer to get an equivalent-spec satnav system installed. Or even just the price for getting the maps updated.
4) Information overload is a concern, and manufacturers will be very cautious of letting drivers have too many bells and whistles on the dash in case they get distracted and crash, and sue them.
I think a more feasible strategy would be a good set of standards to be developed that all the manufacturers would be mandated to implement, which means you can use a variety of smartphone platforms to do that smart stuff. But that probably won't happen.
1. Yup
2. They would ideally.
3. Nope, Automotive Integrated Sat-Nav's are expensive because they are part of the car, which means they have to be certified to the same level as all the other electronics in the vehicle. A Plug in unit doesn't. This is where the majority of the price difference comes from, plus the OEM's and dealer's margin!
4. Yup, but they are not liable for changes to the standard specification.
It is happening, you get car stereo's with Interfaces that can run apps from your Smartphone. IOS and some Android devices are supported.
>3) Being automotive technology, upgrades will be expensive, mainly due to the lock-in - think of the difference in price between going into Halfords and buying a TomTom unit, and approaching your dealer to get an equivalent-spec satnav system installed.
To give another example, the head of Ford UK was on the radio last year, talking about the uptake of DAB digital radio... he said that to factory fit it to a medium-priced car like a Ford Focus would cost around £220. The cost of a consumer buying a pocket DAB receiver, and attaching it to their head unit with an aux cable, plus fag-lighter adaptor and duck tape would be less that £50- I don't think the UI would be ideal, though.
"Thinking about it I think the most basic I have had of any use was pair of clocks, blue light for main beam and orange light for indicator, nothing else."
My Mini-Moke was utilitarian in all respects. The dashboard had a speedometer with red and amber lights for dynamo and oil pressure. It was on sale at the garage with a livery of purple with large flowers - so a respray to white was ordered.
After months of fiddling with warnings of a dynamo "fail" - it was discovered that after the respray the two bulbs had been replaced into their opposite coloured bezels.
Ever jumped off a bike and into a car, put it this way it wasn''t until I drove one with a rev counter I found that I was revving high mileage 1300cc Astras to 8000rpm. It was still accelerating and was not revving too hard - for a biker.
When I got to cars I had an old push rod lumped thing 6000rpm red line, but when fitted with the correct cam and springs safe to about 7000rpm (sports model was known for this red line lower than maximum power). So I would happily take my ancient 1600cc hatch to 6500rpm, jumped into the same size engine Sierra, err why was the red line so low, I would have red lined it so easily?
Rev counters are usefull when driving vehicles with substantially lower rev bands than your own vehicle.
I concur whole heartedly --- as have to say it is far worse when you go from a bike to a big old slow diesel. Although at least the diesel makes enough noise that you concentrate on it. This I suspect is part of the reason almost all diesel vehicles --- at least that I have seen --- have rev counters on them.
I'd go so far as to say that rev counters are useful when driving a car with a different engine speed than your own: I'm forever having to remember that I can have the little petrol engine rev higher than 2000 rpm.
I can't hear or feel the engine in my car for the most part -- stereo is usually too loud and the engine runs smooth.
New car designs should take note of Nissan's ICON system (which my car has) which is basically a bunch of buttons that change function (and have an LCD in the back of them so they show different things when the mode changes), so you can better manage the system w/o having to look at it, since it is physical buttons you are touching. Almost have the best of both worlds - physical buttons that have the ability to be dynamic. One of the knobs is dynamic as well.
video on the function(16 seconds):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0zcK0z6hgY
"Real drivers don't need a rev counter, they can hear/feel the engine." - Exactly the thing that people without a rev counter say.
I'm not going to outright disagree either. With my old car I could accelerate hard from a stand still and instinctively stop bang on 30 mph without looking at the instrument cluster, I just felt and heard the engine note for the gear.
What you're missing is that without a rev counter, you never get to calibrate your ears to a car. You never get to learn what 6500 RPM sounds like for sure, you just take guesses. I don't like taking guesses myself, but horses for courses (especially at Tesco).
Yeah, diesels don't give you the oomph when they get revvy like petrols do, and I would imagine that a lot of people have come to diesels in the last few years and could benefit from that pointer. I've had one for ten years in a Peugeot 306 guise, but now have the same engine model in a Citreon Berlingo that has an ECU modded for economy (wretched thing). Unlike the Pug, the Berlingo has a rev counter which I can only assume is to aid economical driving (though annoyingly, it is situated where the speedo was on the Pug).
A lot of cars don't have a rev counter , oil pressure, temp and fuel guages.
For example, the Mazda 3 I drive only has a rev counter, speedo and fuel guage. I've also driven several vehicles that don't have rev counters, mostly American models that only come in automatic.
I'm fairly certain I could make do with only the speedo and fuel gauge. You can make due with an idiot light for the rest.
Think you'll find that the Grey Squirrel has quite a good memory - remembers where it's buried it's nuts. Perhaps you'd be better off with a "Memory of a Gold Fish" style comparision?
Think this tech is great for the centre console, but for core info (speedo, fuel) I think the old fix'd dials would be better.
I don't know much about squirrels --- don't have many in this part of the world --- but I do remember some statistic that said a positively huge number (hundreds of thousands, I think) of trees were seeded because of squirrels forgetting that the nuts had been buried.
And perhaps he caught a sight of himself in the mirror and thought "grey" was the right term?
(<-- is it still a joke if it isn't funny?)
"Think you'll find that the Grey Squirrel has quite a good memory"
I think my Whippets and Greyhounds will tell you otherwise. The squirrels never seem to understand that they will get bounced in the dog's 5-acre run.
"remembers where it's buried it's nuts."
No, they do not. I have any number of Oak & Walnut "volunteers" every spring that are nowhere near a producing nut tree.
I should also add that goldfish have fairly good memories and the 3 second goldfish memory thing is a myth.
"The Discovery Channel's show Mythbusters tested the contemporary legend that goldfish only had a memory span of 3 seconds and were able to prove that goldfish had a longer memory span than commonly believed. The experiment involved training the fish to navigate a maze. It was evident that they were able to remember the correct path of the maze after more than a month."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish#cite_note-24
You'll notice fish gathering to the front of a tank when a person stands there if they're usually fed by that person.
It's bad enough to have the manufacturers computer controls for powertrain & emissions, let alone another or replacement computer.
I will predict now that the manufacturer T's & C's will allow them to sell so called "anonymized data" to the State, Insurance Companies, Ad Agencies, for position, mileage, speed, acceleration, all of which will be used against you in violation of your 5th Amendment Rights against self incrimination to cost you more for everything automobile related. The car won't run without the computer and you will be prevented from modifying it legally. Don't you know it's a "privilige" to drive?
The alphabet soup agencies will be granted back door rights to enable them to communicate directly with the computer to open up eavesdropping, remote engine enable/disable, control of brakes, gas pedal and transmission, etc, etc, etc.
Soon, we will see the advent of "direct ticketing" like in "5th Element" where Bruce Willis character gets points on his liscense automatically, completely bypassing right to trial by jury or even by judge.
This is all in an effort to remove any remaining reason to have "drivers", including the enjoyment of driving.
I can just imagine the following. You download a free layout for your dashboard and the next time you start your car... Please watch this video from our sponsors... Then later... you have used all of your 5 free right turns. Please purchase more right turns for 69p... NEVER let the makers of Candy Crush near this hardware!
A friend has bought a new Kia car. One of the features is that the built-in media player can transfer MP3 tracks into its memory from iPod, USB device, or data CD.
So her favourite in-car CDs were duly ripped with Windows Media Player to MP3 on a data CD. This produced a hierarchical directory structure by artist. album, and track title - which showed clearly on the house CD player's selection display.
So we sat in the car reading the very thick manual on how to transfer the MP3 tracks to the player memory. After much experimentation - it dawned on us that the arcane sequence of button pushing and knob twiddling would transfer only one selected track at a time. Furthermore the track information was reduced to its filename in a flat structure.
The advertising blurb boasted that the player's memory would hold 6,000 tracks. However you can apparently only play them in loaded sequence - or randomly - but with no artist/album pre-selection.
The manual also warned that any USB connected device could be destroyed if the car was started while it is plugged in.
Goes without saying that my friend is going to use low-tech physical CDs for in-car music.
"So we sat in the car reading the very thick manual on how to transfer the MP3 tracks to the player memory. After much experimentation - it dawned on us that the arcane sequence of button pushing and knob twiddling would transfer only one selected track at a time. Furthermore the track information was reduced to its filename in a flat structure"
This is a good example where a modular, upgradeable car system would help. What you describe is, I presume, typical of lower-range cars, as more expensive ones *do* store your media hierarchically and let you search, play, and classify by a number of criteria. Some of them are pretty well designed, especially when coupled with the joystick/knob centre console control found in most upper-end cars these days.
This module is no different than the other modules that are already on the market and being used; so I have no idea why the interviewer started dreaming about it being "upgradeable"... The interview (of which I only watched the first half) appears to be nothing but the Nvidia marketing guy humoring the wildly speculating interviewer with vague "you could do that"s while showing off eye candy and dispensing buzzwords ("innovating", "unique", ...).
Nvidia has made a SoC module targeted at automotive OEMs, which is (obviously) capable of some pretty graphics and for which Nvidia promises a stable form factor as automotive OEMs tend to be the most conservative bunch you can imagine. That's about all the news value of the article, and it's neither innovating nor unique.
So we might see this module somewhere down the line in a car (probably a low-volume model as a test case for an OEM), and the only upgrade path will be for the OEM, across different models and generations.
THIS : "all with fondle-happy touchscreen navigation"
Violates the Prime Directive of Driving : Eyes On The Road, Hands On The Wheel.
As such, the ONLY control features that are acceptable are ones we don't need to look at to use (i.e. steering wheel buttons).
Anything else, especially touchscreen (which MANDATES that you look at which point of the screen you are touching) is nothing but a danger to safe driving and should be banned outright, or at the very least only allowed when the vehicle is stationary.
"THIS : "all with fondle-happy touchscreen navigation"
Violates the Prime Directive of Driving : Eyes On The Road, Hands On The Wheel."
I agree with you that touchscreen controls are a terrible idea on a moving car (perhaps with the exception of map panning, if well implemented). When the car is stationary, this allows you to have a full-size keyboard to enter directions and data, and do things like panning and dragging, but it does not really work while mobile.
Apart from steering wheel controls, the centre console joystick thingy is quite good too, as you get good somatic feedback so it can be controlled solely by touch, and is static unlike something on the wheel. It's perhaps not as advantageous on a manual car though.
The biggest problem with dynamic displays for a dashboard is that if the gauges aren't in the same place all the time, you waste time locating what is important - you cannot use muscle memory to locate them.
Moreover, you lose the ability to use peripheral vision to read the lesser-importance gauges under normal conditions (looking directly at them only if they are "not where they are supposed to be"). Thus you are spending more time NOT looking out the window.
I can see an electronic dashboard, but I do NOT want any of the main gauges to every change size or location. If you want to have a multifunction display off to the side that changes, great so long as it does NOT present mission-critical data.
And please: if you do this, use a light-generating display (OLED or VFD) rather than a light filtering display (LCD) - when I am out on a country road at night I want the cockpit BLACK - not "light grey" - and I want what is displayed to be just bright enough to see clearly AND NO BRIGHTER. That also means have as little light emitting items on the display as possible - don't have a bunch of useless icons, lines, or gimmicks.
Add a generic £12 Bluetooth OBDII reader from ebay and a cheap tablet and you have a fully customisable instrument instrument cluster and SOOOO much more including all your entertainemnt needs, sat nav, a full log of your journeys uploaded to YOUR own personal server and viewable on Google maps, complete will all engine parameters.
Get Torque - there's even a free version to try before you buy but well worth the money for the paid one
RX8 drivers don't need a rev counter just a beeper - 1st gear, accelerate until beep at 9500rpm, second gear, accelerate to beep - oh, you're at the national speed limit? What are the other 4 gears for then?
I have spoken to sales engineers from the companies that supply the major German car manufacturers (ie the only one's that matter from an engineering viewpoint) about why their displays are so limited.
It turns out that the manufacturers are obliged to specify equipment that has a design life in excess of 15 years, which few displays achieve. In my German car I can cycle through all sorts of information, it just isn't displayed as innovatively as it could be because most display equipment will at least partially fail before 15 years. Higher quality displays will require better quality wiring looms, which are expensive.
When working with real time telemetry, you can do what you want with the display of data and create unusual virtual instruments, as most of us ditch our laptops on an annual basis, display failure is not a problem.
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