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Tesla, Ford, Amazon Hint At Cloudy Future For Cars
Nerval's Lobster writes "The automobile, once the most analog of technologies, is rapidly becoming a smartphone on wheels: Amazon announced Feb. 13 that Ford SYNC Applink-equipped vehicles will include the Amazon Cloud Player, allowing drivers to access their music libraries via voice command or dashboard controls. Ford isn't the only automotive company seeking to integrate cloud computing into the driving experience. Tesla Motors' Model S electric sedan boasts a 17-inch capacitive touch-screen in place of the usual dashboard buttons and dials. And who could forget Google's self-driving car? This isn't a future everybody wants—there are more than a few wannabe Steve McQueens who won't feel complete unless they can stomp on a pedal connected to an internal-combustion engine, flick a physical dashboard knob to the radio station of their choice, and peel out their driveway in a cloud of burning rubber. But as the latest technology migrates into automobiles, it could well be the future we're going to receive."
What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.
Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.
I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.
The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.
I agree. Cell phones and texting and all that jazz is making crashes more common. It's killing people, literally. It's as bad as driving drunk, some people have said. I just bought a '12 Civic Si and I plan on driving it for 10+ years, so I don't have to worry about tech ruining my ride. Stick shift n' clutch all the way, baby. Electronic doodads are just a sideshow anyways. The real advancement in automobile tech will be whatever energy source dethrones these godawful fossil fuels we use to power vehicles.
I have played with several touch screen interfaces on cars. I am most experienced with the one in my 2006 Prius. I have also played with them in the Fisker Karma and the Tesla Model S.
It depends on how the touch screen is implemented. The touch screen in my Prius is actually fairly well designed, with most of the important buttons on the edge of the screen. The distraction caused by it is fairly minimal. When playing with the Tesla model S I noticed that they did something similar. The buttons are also fairly large and generally around the outside edge and many of the controls can easily be assigned to the steering wheel.
I have seen other cars where the touch screen is unusable (i.e. the Fisker Karma). The touch screen on the Fisker Karma is horrible and creates a lot of distraction since the buttons are tiny, inconsistent and the screen is very hard to impossible to see during the day. In order to use it one must spend a lot more time looking at it and the buttons are hard to impossible to hit while driving since they are small and have to be hit exactly. It's an accident waiting to happen.
At least with my Prius and the Tesla there is also voice input as well, though it is somewhat limited in my Prius and Tesla's is still under development from what I understand. My Prius also has good steering wheel support for most common functions so I rarely need to access the touch screen for things like the radio and climate control.
Even the touch interface on the Navigation system on my Prius is generally well thought out. My biggest problem with the touch screen on my Prius is that there is sometimes noticeable lag. When I played with the Tesla there was no lag.
On the Tesla one can easily assign different tasks to the steering wheel with no more distraction than looking at the speedometer since the menus are placed to the sides of it. On the Tesla the navigation map is also displayed just to the left of the speedometer as well so one doesn't have to look at the main display.
As far as cloud support, users have already figured out the interface to use Tesla's cloud services in order to access the car, including downloading real-time data. Users have also started creating web based applications for the Tesla. It also looks like Tesla is using the QT toolkit for their touch screen if the web browser identifier string is any indication.
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That can be done now to actual drivers. Do you know what the driver will do in 9 out 10 instances? Mentally freeze and hit whatever their car was pointed at, at the time it happened. Do you know why? Because statistically no one practices those situations to turn the ideal reaction into a habit. You can never design any system (or prepare any person) to account for every corner condition. You design (or prepare) for as many things as you can so that it's better than it would have been otherwise, then deal with the rest of the consequences as they come. Right now lots of people die in preventable car crashes. Many of these can be avoided with a properly designed and tuned self-driving AI. You shouldn't discard all the benefits because it's possible the AI might make the wrong choice some of the time and ignore the fact that a real person would make the wrong choice most of the time.
I just want a plain AFFORDABLE electric car. 100 miles a day on an over night charge. $20000 or less. What is so hard about that?
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill