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Car Digital Assistant
suman28 writes "The Japanese company Clarion plans to sell a car with built-in PC that runs Windows which car browse the web, play tunes and store an address manager. The stats on the computer are nice - a 166 MHz RISC processor with 64MB RAM and 8MB video. That seems like a lot for a car."
The lexus 430 LS (along with a bunch of other luxury cars these days) sport an in-dash lcd and GPS/travel software that's highly configurable. The thing can dload all sorts of local business and landmark addresses, provide directions to any location, and acts as a navigation/multimedia controller, for the souped up audio system and optional DVD playback (you just tap the map, and it'll tell you how to get there).
Lexus at least seems rather aware of the fact that computing while driving might be severely distracting, and they post a warning saying that you should NOT drive and watch the screen at the same time (You have to click "OK" to get the GPS screen to come up), and they've even laid out most of the map/travel computer controls on the passenger side, so the driver isn't looking for restaurants while speeding through busy intersections.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
...a Beowulf Cluster of these?
Sorry, I had to.
Seriously, what a dumb idea. There are laws against having live video in the view of the driver in all states. I expect that this will be extended to live web browsers just as soon as there are a few messy fatal accidents caused by this "feature". In fact, I intend to write my state legislators and suggest such a law just as soon as I know who wins on Nov. 5th.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I drive a 1989 buick Reatta that has a standard touch screen computer system in the dash. Its momochrome, but still very cool for the age of the vehical. Its also pretty distracting to switch thru screens to change the graphic EQ on the radio while crusin' in traffic. I wonder how badly a computer that browses the web is going to distract people.
adventure-today.com
Those are ridiculous, excessive specs for a consumer device. You can get perfectly good HTML (including images, javascript) browsing on 8Mb RAM devices, and something quite useful for lots of sites on much less. Sure, you can spend more to get more, but what will the customer want, and how much will they pay?
Automotive spec hardware (especially RAM) is at least three times the price of its in-home equivalent - it needs a considerably greater temperature range and better power and MF-tolerance characteristics. As a result, this is a very expensive item.
Worse, it's not really doing all that much. Who needs a calendar/address book tied to their car when a cellphone or PDA can to a fine job much more flexibly? Who needs a webbrowser in their car - and for those few why wouldn't a laptop be a vastly superior solution?
So why are Clarion (who generally aren't stupid) making such a thing? They, like all the automotive electronics companies, are scared sh*tless of the cellphone companies taking away the emerging navigation and mobile entertainment markets. They're right to be scared: they are going to lose that battle. Clarion is releasing this (they'll sell about 10, especially in Japan where cellphones already do amazing things) to keep their investors happy and pretend to the big boss that they've got a high-end future. In the super-price-aware automotive market, a do-little device at >$2K is madness.
The only advantage that automotive-electronics companies have over cellphone companies is they can easily get attached to the vehicles (generally arcane) bus - a problem that could easily be fixed by a standard connector to which one would attach one's cellphone.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
I agree.
...
But you have to wonder about the people try to maket these things for cars. There's pratically little to no R&D that I've seen which accounts for a useable car interface.
Nearly all of these use screens. You look at the screen, you're not looking a the road. All of these use button interfaces, which increases the possiblity of distraction / loss of control. To make a truly useful car computer, you need a fully audio interface.
I know the technical difficulties are not trivial, but my idea of the perfect interface would be something like a car radio (with fewer buttons) that listens and talks.
U:Where am I?
C:You are near the corner of Main and Town Park.
U:How do I get to 8577 Park Avenue?
C:Would you like the instructions while you drive there, or all at once?
U:While I drive there.
C:Move over to the left lane and take a left at the next light.
Now that would be a lot less distracting that trying to drive with a map in hand, constantly referring to some scrawled directions on a pad of paper.