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Intel Wants To Computerize Your Car

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-volkswagen-will-be-assimilated dept.

cartechboy writes: 'Google just unveiled its cute self-driving car prototype, and now Intel is the next tech company looking to get in on the rapid digital change coming in cars — a potentially lucrative area for expansion. Intel is releasing what it's calling an "in-vehicle solutions platform" — processors, an operating system and developer kits Intel is hoping automakers and others would use to build in-vehicle infotainment systems. From the developer perspective, there is a chance the Intel release makes building easier and cheaper. But is it good for automakers to be building these systems instead of Google and Apple? So far, no automaker has done so well on software, and some have seriously damaged their reputation (ex: MyFord Touch and Sync, Cadillac CUE).'

11 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. How did you guess? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why yes, actually, it is my job to sell microprocessors, and not to ask whether they are the right tool for the job. Why do you ask?

  2. Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? by timeOday · · Score: 3, Informative
    Let's assume I have bluetooth on my smartphone so I can listen to music and it gets correctly interrupted by incoming calls, and can give me turn-by-turn directions by GPS. I put it into a cradle on the dash so I can also see a moving map and shoot dashcam video if I want.

    As far as I can see, that solves my infotainment "needs." What exactly am I missing out on?

    1. Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Closed systems that go out of date quickly and are incompatible with anything newer.

      Want an Example? BMW 525 Iphone cradle system. doesn't work with the iPhone 5, 5c or 5s.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? by jandersen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed - this is not about what you as a customer want, or what a road user needs, it's only about trying to turn your car into yet another platform for selling crap that is tied to one vendor, like the iPhone.

      If they really wanted to give people what they want and need, then cars would be made from interchangeable, generic and compatible parts, so you could build a car up pretty much like a PC. And the in-car computer systems would be open source. That way, if you are against all things modern and digital, you could have a fully mechanic car, but still choose a modern and efficient engine (it is, in fact possible to make efficient engines with no computer control; just not very easy) - and if you are a bleeding-edge hyper-nerd, you would be able to have something fully computerized. And it would a lot cheaper, because there would be far more competition in the market.

    3. Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If it was all OPEN Protocols and well documented so that anyone can interface to this stuff, I'm all for it. But the automotive world had to be slapped with federal mandate to use ODB-II because the assholes at GM,Ford, and Chrysler were hell bent on their own secret sauce.

      If I as a shade tree mechanic can not diagnose and change settings on a system, then it's a bad design. right now I can on any car with my laptop and interface box. ODB-II forced the hands of car makers to not be dicks. The problem is they started to separate the interfaces so they could be dicks again. BMW for example has two separate systems one requires a special device to talk to the main systems and the ODB-II is only used for engine management.

      Luckily that has been reverse engineered and you can get an interface to their kBus.

      Heavy regulation by HONEST people is needed for the automotive industry. Because you can not trust those scumbags that run those companies to do the right thing.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. I'll vote with my wallet by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I try my best to avoid buying any car that has a computerized display that is a wannabe tablet or phone. Car manufacturers think they're so cute trying to roll their own solutions when in fact all they're making is dead end technology that makes their cars more expensive.

    --
    God spoke to me
  4. Please no by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't want infotainment.. I don't want apps or wifi or cell network connectivity, or ads, or remote government tracking. I don't want large lcd panels or nagging proximity beepers either. Absolutely NO microcontroller driven functionality that might decide spurious negative values mean 'floor it', 'dont turn the radio on until the car is restarted', or 'the alternator needs replacing but really doesn't.' I want simple, tactile buttons and sliders instead of touch panels and tiered menus that require visual inspection. This way I can control the basic functions of the car without taking my eyes off the road. The HVAC controls should only have three knobs for the fan speed, direction, heat level, and AC button. Also, let me open the side vents to let fresh air in even while the AC is on. I am willing to tolerate a certain amount of complexity for the radio/sound system, but that's it. In fact, design the console so I can rip the radio out and put in one of my choice without making a bigger mess out of the offensively curvy and effeminate aesthetics of the interior and dashboard. It's a dashboard, not a catwalk for the sexually ambiguous.

    Speaking of aesthetics, please stop overdoing it with the curves and folds and bubble look. Kia is the worst offender, but some of the other makes are pretty bad now. Just because you can mold that plastic into any shape doesn't mean you should. It's ugly. Stop. Also, I am an average height 5'11" male with medium/largish sized hands. Please stop modeling the ergonomics for a 5'2" soccer mom with tiny hands. I'm tired of bumping the signal/wiper blade controls randomly when I turn the wheel over.

    1. Re:Please no by eWarz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do. I just want a better user experience. I hate having to rely on my cell phone for GPS (due to expensive map updates), music (cause pandora is better than satellite radio), voice control, and more. Car manufacturers are trying too hard to make 'infotainment' into something profitable, instead they should focus on making a fantastic user experience (oh shit, your gas is running low, here is the cheapest, most reliable gas station in your range)

  5. Re:Damaged reputation? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it hard to drive a car without that type of system in it anymore.

    I'd say that qualifies as a problem.

  6. Re:Damaged reputation? by plover · · Score: 4, Informative

    My 2011 Taurus' Sync interface is a Microsoft UI designed in hell. It starts out where the destination selection is as awkward as it gets: instead of entering a nice friendly address like 1234 County O, Wausau, Wisconsin, you have to enter an address according to computer hierarchy rules: "State: Wisconsin. City: Wausau. Street "County O". Number: "1234". The first problem is that the autocomplete kicks in late, but still takes the buffered touch as the next input: W..A..U..S ... up pops the WAU listings of Wauketon, Waunakee, and Wausau, and Wauketon happens to be located where the S was. Guess who has to start over again? The next problem comes if all you have for an address is 1234 County O. The auto complete demands that you specify which County O. Do you mean North (1-4799), North (4800-9999), West, South, or Southwest? Hell if I know, I'm from Minnesota and I was just reading an address off a web site. It turned out that only one of those four choices actually happened to be located in Wausau, but the damn machine felt the need to offer me all four.

    For a machine with 40GB of hard drive, limiting the address book to 100 destinations is simply insulting my intelligence. I can't have a hundred and one places to go?

    There is very poor integration with smart phones. The most it can do with an iPhone is play music, but only after spending minutes downloading the entire catalog of tracks before letting me even play a song. I can't send it a contact's address for navigation, nor can it dial an entry in my contact list.

    The icing on the cake was the first time I really needed to use the voice interface. As a lifelong Minnesotan, I have a flat, boring, monotone Midwestern accent, yet the so-called voice "recognition" couldn't recognize common words like 'courthouse', 'capitol', or 'state capitol'. Instead it offered me really odd choices that were nothing like the words I spoke, such as answering my saying 'capitol building' by asking 'Did you mean pizza?' (yes, that really was its clarification.) Neither my wife nor I ever did get it to take us to the State Capitol building in Madison - (we ended up stumbling upon it because it's located at the center of a pretty small city.) At one point I gave up on the voice interface and said "exit". The machine had the temerity to ask me "Did you really mean to exit, yes or no?" A freakin' pop-up dialog box in a voice interface?!?! At that point we nicknamed it "Useless".

    Thankfully my car is slightly too old to suffer from MyTouch, which was inflicted on the model year 2012 cars, and newer. The problems are as obvious as a cold sore: next to a touch screen interface, capacitive buttons are about the worst possible user interface possible in a car. When driving, you need to access controls by feel, as your eyes need to keep looking out the windows. And tactile feedback is a simple concept that people intuitively understand: when you reach for a knob, you feel if it's the twisty kind or the clicky kind, and you can easily adjust it without looking. But if you reach a touch-button by feel, though, you are by definition touching it - therefore you are also triggering it. If you would normally expect to run your fingers down the dash, feeling for the third button in order to turn on the defroster, you can easily trigger the air conditioner and the fog lamps before reaching the defroster. And it turns out they don't even work at all with gloved fingers (cf. Minnesota and Wisconsin in the winter!) When you hear "touch" and "driver", if they're not talking about the car's handling, you are listening to a very stupid person.

    Consumers who hate Sync and the MyTouch interface are not alone: Consumer Reports consistently reduces the scores of Ford vehicles so equipped by 4-6 points, which typically drops them from a tie for a top-of-the-class rating to a middle-of-the-class rating. They are really, really bad systems.

    --
    John
  7. I don't by FuzzNugget · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just want my car to be a car. Hell, I barely even use the plain old stereo in mine. Anything some bullshit infotainment system can do, a smartphone can do faster and better. And you won't end up with a two-ton, obsolete, glorified tablet on wheels a year later (or less).

    At most, any such systems should be nothing more than a standardized interface for controlling your smartphone. It could even have hardware buttons with standard control mappings, which would be great.

    With the latest witch hunt out there for v"distracted drivers", I'm surprised I've never seen a proposal to ban or limit these things. I'm generally against curtailing technology by force of law, but in case, I would say good riddance.