They don’t build ’em like they used to

Full disclosure: I drive a 2002 Jeep Wrangler with 110,000 miles on it—probably the lowest tech car on the market the year it was built. I’m the only guy I know who rolls his own windows and still has a cassette player* in the dash. So, excuse the naïve wonderment at the new technology and the impact it’s having on the auto industry.

With our involvement in GENIVI and the auto industry in general, I’m familiar with the stats about 100Ms of lines of code in today’s cars (much of which is open source), and how the bulk of the code is in the IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment system). But to the extent I’d thought about what these things do, I would have said, “tunes and GPS.”

My eyes were opened recently when I went on a skiing trip in my buddy’s new Cadillac SRX.  As we were loading the car, he was griping about how he can’t leave it unlocked; whenever walks away, the car always locks itself automatically. “I wonder if you can make it not do that,” I mused.

On the way back from the mountain, I pulled out the owner’s manual. First, I was struck by how different it was from my 10 year old one—beyond the fact that it was in one piece and had not had a cup of coffee dumped on it. There was very little in there about steel, plastic and upholstery.  90%+ was about electronics, and much of that dedicated to the Infotainment system. Section 5, page 40 began the section on “Vehicle Personalization.” You can mess with how anything works, from menus to climate control to mirrors, and yes, the RKE (Remote Keyless Access) system, too. My friend just needed his PDL (Passive Door Lock) settings to be tweaked. (Never fear: the PDU settings were fine.) So, tweak we did; now, if he leaves the car unlocked, it stays unlocked, and he’s happy.

The crappiest car today is 10X better than anything we drove 30 years ago. Now it’s all about the electronics behind the user experience.  It’s not just tunes and GPS; it’s access and safety and personalization and “bluetoothing” and keeping the kids quiet (maybe even productive) in the back seat. Many cars now are “always on,” receiving live driving information and potentially “talking to other cars.” Your car knows who you are and can talk to you. Already, Google’s got a car that drives itself and they have successfully lobbied the State of Nevada to issue licenses to robots (No foolin!). I believe you’ll be hands off in less than 10 years.

Reconfiguring a car feels exactly like tweaking the settings on my Mac or iPhone. Cars are rapidly becoming packages of consumer electronics—no need for a grease rag. Luckily, even once slow-moving Detroit manufactures are now charging ahead. The big problem for the industry has been adjusting to a product rhythm like that of Apple and Google. “Coopetition” and open source software is the answer proposed by the GENIVI Alliance, and judging by the explosion in its membership, that’s probably the answer.

My timing is perfect. I don’t think the ol’ Jeep will go more than another 100K miles, and by that time there should be some really cool stuff on the market.

*This is actually not as stupid as it sounds. I ordered the cassette player special in the days when that was the only medium available for audio books. And, even today, it solves big problem supporting a faux cassette iPod interface to my stereo…if I could only figure out how to get the front left speaker going.