Nissan Exhibits IEEE 1394-Compatible Car

Dirak writes "High-speed IEEE 1394 optical fiber networks have gone off-road with new Nissan's prototype vehicle demonstrated this year's at 11th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems. The prototype is equipped with 7 cameras on the body and a 12-inch LCD monitor in the front and another in the rear seat area. Thanks to the in-vehicle IEEE 1394 LAN, which is capable of high-speed communications at 400Mbps via optical cable, the front and the rear seat monitors can display various information simultaneously, for example. The application of optical fiber also means that the weight of the cables can be reduced to about one-half the weight of a conventional wiring harness."

Comments

$1 says...

[NanoGator]

... somebody will get modded up for making an 'insightful' point about how impractical it is for whatever oversimplified reason.

Re:$1 says...

[ExtremeGoatse!]

Actually, it is a very practical car. The optical fiber used in place of wiring allows the weight of the cables to be reduced to about half of the weight of wires. Think of all the wiring that is in the typical automobile. If we can replace auto wiring with optical fiber, saving over 100 lbs in ecah car, just think of the increased fuel savings! Some of the ideas that start in concept cars end up being very useful in everyday applications.

sweeet

[bLindmOnkey]

I love the idea of multimedia in the car, but just one problem:

"The prototype is equipped with 7 cameras on the body and a 12-inch LCD monitor in the front"

Wouldn't this be more than a little bit distracting for the driver? I mean, what's more interesting, watching the red light change green or watching neo take the red pill?

Re:Cars are dirty and vibrate

[ergo98]

1394... WHY?

Probably because the technology in supporting electronics and chipsets, not to mention programming knowledge, has been massively subsidized by the mainstream computing market. Going off and reinventing the wheel with their own transport system just isn't rational in such a case.

Re:Cable Weight

[BWJones]

The general rule of thumb is 1 MPG for every 100 lbs. This would boost fuel economy by about .5 MPG.

Don't think that's a big deal then eh? OK then. .5 MPG here factored in with 150 thousand miles over the life of a car factored in with gas at $2.00 US per gallon would save you something like 70 thousand dollars over the life of the car.......is that right? Whoa......Actually, I never thought about it in those terms, but even if it saved me $5 thousand dollars, it would be worth it.

Re:Big Wow.

[HonkyLips]

Perhaps it's not that special, but it's interesting. I don't know if you've played around with your car's electrical system, but they can be an absolute nightmare when something goes wrong. I had all sorts of problems with my first (crappy) car, mainly stemming from a ground cable coming loose. Auto electrical systems are not a fun thing to work on. Traditional wiring can rust, connectors can break, faults in other parts of the car (especially grounding problems) can screw up totally unrelated parts of the car... I had my headlights refuse to work when I accidentally connected my car radio incorrectly, even though it worked fine etc etc etc. I've installed a lot of car radios and in older cars there is no uniform system for wire colours or even power colours. It can take longer to figure out which cables connect to which than it does to actually mount the radio and speakers...
By moving from a traditional wire loom to an optical system with a protocol like 1394 not only are you avoiding physical problems like weight and corrosion, you're also making everything much easier to troubleshoot and install.
Personally I think this is great. It's not too dissimilar to the comparison of VoIP to PSTN.

add 802.11 and youv've got something

[multi-flavor-geek]

This could be that lean mean war driving machine that I have been looking for! Not that I can afford a new car, or a slightly used car, or a moderatly beaten car (I am in the market for a severly beaten near the point of death car).

Hell, who am I kidding, most of my vehicles have more electronic stuff in the stereo then they do in teh rest of the car.

Re:Cable Weight

[theonetruekeebler]

The weight savings are significant, as are the savings in cost of assembly and maintenance. Not just the 75 pounds of copper wire you don't have to carry around, but that you don't have to route, don't have to design and build large enough channels to let pass, don't have to pay a troubleshooter $50/hour to sort through looking for the white wire with the blue dotted stripe and for God's sake not the white wire with the blue dashed stripe. Wiring harnesses are a nightmare. The wires are incredibly thin and fragile, and modern car that has been in a serious but non-totalling accident will probably have electrical problems all its life, due to damage to the harness.

Even on a modern motorcycle, it can get ugly. I've had to replace the harness on a 1999 BMW motorcycle, where it weighed almost 25 pounds and required the removal of every single body panel and parts of the rear subframe to get to parts of it. It was rated as a ten hour job for a skilled mechanic.

Compare this to the wiring system on a 2005 BMW K1200S, where the wiring harness is replaced by a four wire cable that run everywhere: two wires for power and two for data. Each section of the bike, like the instrument cluster, has a box in it that reads the signal and routes the power where it needs to be. The whole system weighs 6 pounds, and a 19 pound weight savings on a motorcycle is significant.

An on-vehicle LAN solves a hell of a lot of problems, and IEEE 1394, with its prioritization protocols and huge bandwidth, is a great idea.

Damn, 0wned by a Sentra

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just a reminder, if you depend on physical security and have 1394 ports powered, any 1394 device can read your system's memory through DMA.

Turn them off in the BIOS if this is an issue for you (the linked article suggest globs of epoxy...).

Coming soon to a sensationalist news story near you.

next step: diagnostisis

[Verity_Crux]

All this technology in the car and I still can't plug my laptop in and get the report as to why the check-engine light is on, and I still can't swap general parts with my other car. I assume there are marketing reasons for those issues, but isn't there some standards committee who could oppose the situation? Diagnostics software/hardware and interchangeable parts are some useful and well understood computer features, are they not?

Re:Reality check people...

[F'Nok]

Maybe it's different there...

You'd be hard pressed to see a new car here in Australia that doesn't have air conditioning.

For that matter, ABS is on almost all (if not all) new cars, and I don't think I've see a new car in the last 5 years without power steering as standard.

Either it's different there (and you guys get ripped off) or you're not too in touch. :)

Re:Cable Weight

[YGingras]

the typical weight of an automotive wiring harness is around 50 lbs which absolutely does impact your milage

A typical sedan weight more than 2500 lb, a typical SUV more than 4000. So half of 50 lb is less than one percent improvement. I think there is lot of places where they could trim the weight down more cost effectively.

Re:Big Wow.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Brake lights are moving to LEDs these days, so the power draw will be lower than you'd expect.

Re:Cars are dirty and vibrate

[Kiryat Malachi]

Cars are also filled with all kinds of nasty electromagnetic fields, which copper cabling hates.

Pick your poison.

(also, if you use proper connectors, optical cabling doesn't mind vibration all that much)