“With a languid stroke, her lascivious fingers caressed the seat. Out of nowhere, Chopin’s Nocturnes engulfed Rudolfo’s vintage Testatrossa in a sea of glissandi. Soon, Rudolfo’s  testosterone was on full volume. He opened the first button of her blouse, there was a pop, then – silence.”

If Maksim Skorobogatiy of the Polytechnic School in Montreal, Canada, gets his way, then this is how future novels will be written. Or car catalogs. Skorobogatiy suggests:

“In essence we are trying to reproduce the smartphone experience in textile form. We are looking for applications where we can weave in sleek, non-invasive control, avoiding blocks of push buttons.”

The Canadian researchers created a soft polymer-based fiber, or make that fibre, which has electrical properties that change depending on where it is touched. The fiber can be woven into any fabric. That way, it can turn a car seat, or the lady’s blouse (“it`s getting hot, mind if I turn this down a bit … there you go”) into a touch screen.  There already may be a customer.

“Touch-sensitive surfaces are a very interesting technology for controlling operations in a car.”

So said BMW spokeswoman Melina Aulinger to the New Scientist, which opines that “it might not be long before something similar is seen in our cars.”

Totally overlooked, a recent BMW concept car that appeared in March at the Geneva Motor Show, was operated via a touch-sensitive surface, heating and music were controlled by the driver’s gestures, Aulinger told the New Scientist.

It’s probably all a conspiracy to wean us away from leather and make us buy chintzy fabric seats that interface with our iPod.

The stuff those crafty engineers in Stuttgart come up with to keep our eyes off the road.

And just in case you are stuck in traffic in [geolocate your position] …

Why don’ t you tell the world on Facebook and Twitter that you are stuck in traffic in [geolocate your position]?

(It is not true that mbrace 5.0 will automatically Twitter back: “Me too!  Stuck in  [geolocate your position]!!!” This one will require no driver interaction, absolutely hands-free.)

The quote is courtesy of John Sedat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco, quoted in a CNET article. Let’s get another quote, this one from Dr. Peter Rez at Arizona State:

To call anything based on high energy X-rays ‘low energy’ is worse than 1984 doublespeak

What’s this all about?

It’s called “Z Portal”. Sounds like the title of a second-tier 8-bit Nintendo game, right? Actually, it’s a machine to capture photos like this:

Clearly, the government wants to see your genitalia so badly they are willing to kill you to do it. It’s like having the Son of Sam running the Postal Service.

Quoth CNET:

The origin of the scanners can be traced back to a not-so-obvious source: President Obama’s signature American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus bill. That awarded a $27.3 million contract to American Science and Engineering, or AS&E, to build 35 scanners, according to a description at Recovery.gov. Soon afterward, X-ray scanners appeared at the San Ysidro, Calif., checkpoint, sometimes called the world’s busiest land crossing; other locations listed in the specification include El Paso, Texas, Columbus, N.M., and Nogales, Ariz.

Now Homeland Security wants more. The U.S. government convened a “pre-solicitation conference” in Washington, D.C., on November 29, 2011, according to a public procurement document. Another document says “Customs and Border Protection is very appreciative of all the responses received” and plans to publish a formal request for proposals for the next purchase on February 1.

Once the Z Portal is in place at all border crossings, the government will have achieved the dubious goal of succesfully violating everyone who wants to travel to another country. The rationale behind the airport scanners has always been that air travel is a privilege, not a right — but if every method of travel involves a cancer scan, where’s the freedom to travel?

Long-time TTAC readers know that one way to potentially frustrate the scanners would be to travel in a Seventies Chrysler Imperial. But what if the scanner is cranked up high enough to punch through the famous Imperial doors? What will that radiation do to you?

What about pink tires under your pink Ferrari California? In China, this is made possible by Double Star Tires from the great city of Qingdao in Shandong province. Double Star developed a patented process to make tires in any color. Fittingly, this new product is called ‘Rainbow.’ The bonbon-colored tires will hit the market soon and likely with great success. At least in China.

Here, the colored tires come down the production line. Double Star sees many possibilities. Apart from adding some color to the otherwise average automobile, there could be green tires for the military, red for the fire department, yellow for school buses. You get the idea. It is not yet clear how much a set of pinkies will cost. Double Star only said the colored tires will be ‘slightly more expensive’ than standard black.

This should be a very popular color in China.

Bright yellow, green and pink at a trade show. Quite a contrast to the uniform color of the uniforms.

I think this is a great idea. Next step is to make tires with more than one color, or fluorescent colors, or some truly rainbow-tires, or pink with white dots, or tires with cartoons on it. Hello Kittie tires? Rainbow tires for, you know?

China, the land of opportunity.

Dutchman Tycho de Feyter runs Carnewschina, a blog about cars in China, from Beijing, China. He also collects die-cast models of Chinese cars.

A while ago, we showed you a system that helps military vehicles blend into the background.  Back then I thought wouldn’t that be nice to have for a car? I bet there are occasions where you would prefer that you could simply look like you weren’t there. Tonight, I saw something that looks like the civilian version. It comes from Toyota.

To invited guests only, Toyota showed the Toyota Fun-Vii. Toyota says it is a “concept vehicle that heralds a not-too-distant future” where people, cars and society are linked.

“For instance, the whole vehicle body can be used as a display space, with the body color and display content changeable at will.  This allows the entire vehicle to function as a terminal for displaying messages or other information.”

I’d say, put a camera on the other side, and that car will become invisible.

On intense questioning, spokesfolk at Toyota rendered the opinion that the body as display space probably won’t make it into production anytime soon, and that it is being used to dramatize the connective nature of future cars.

Really?

Ok, we won’t get flying cars. But can’t we have invisible ones? Please?

MyFordTouch was supposed to build on the SYNC system’s momentum, extending Ford’s edge in mass-market infotainment gizmology. Instead, MyFord nearly killed the golden egg-laying goose, by earning Ford a sharp downgrade from Consumer Reports and widespread criticism. Ford has decided that 40-minute training sessions weren’t going to cut it as a response to the complaints that the system was balky and confusing, and The Blue Oval is now trumpeting the all-new for 2013 version of MyFordTouch. Because, in the words of Ford’s spokes-interior-designer-person

As you can see, with a software platform like SYNC, it’s easy to continuously improve and upgrade your system.

You know, in comparison to the all-new Ford Escape she’s sitting in. It’s still not quite as easy as a computer software update: instead of downloading the reflash, you have to go into a dealer to get the upgrade. Meanwhile, this is just the latest hurdle in the hot-hot in-car gizmo side of the business. The big one comes in 2014, when the government issue rules on distraction-mitigation in voice-activated in-car systems. That could make this minor public beta testing fiasco look like nothing…

Motorists searched during a traffic stop may find their iPhone data electronically grabbed by police in ways that would not be possible or acceptable with written material. Some police departments, including the Michigan State Police, are equipped with a mobile forensics device able to extract images, videos, text messages and emails from smartphones. In some cases, the device is able to bypass password protection. Several states have been reluctant to curtail law enforcement access to this information.

In January the California Supreme Court ruled in California v. Diaz that a police officer did not need a warrant to read the text messages on a cell phone grabbed during a search incident to arrest. A Court of Appeal ruling in September (view opinion) found a Blackberry in an automobile was nothing more than a “container” subject to warrantless examination. Golden State lawmakers recoiled at the precedent being set and moved quickly to introduce legislation requiring police to obtain judicial approval before searching a phone. The state Senate approved the measure in June by a vote of 28-9 and the state Assembly unanimously passed it in August. Governor Jerry Brown (D), however, used his veto power last month to prevent the measure from becoming law.

“I am returning Senate Bill 914 without my signature,” Brown wrote in his message to the Senate. “The courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections.”

Nationwide, the courts do not agree on how such cases should be handled. On Tuesday, New York’s Supreme Court, Appellate Division ruled that police had no right to read a driver’s paper notebook during a search. The case began when a Suffolk County Police officer pulled over Cristobal Perez for driving while talking on his cell phone and weaving in his lane. Perez had been operating on a suspended license, so his car was impounded. Police did not wait to ask a judge for a warrant before reading the papers found in the vehicle. The state’s second-highest court saw no reason why law enforcement could not wait for a judge.

“Here, the police officer’s initial entry of the defendant’s impounded car to leaf through notebooks located in the back seat was an unjustified unconstitutional search, and the notebooks and any information gleaned therein by the officer must be suppressed,” the unanimous court ruled. “Further, the plain view doctrine does not apply, because the incriminating character of the notebooks was not immediately apparent.”

Lawmakers in the Empire State have not addressed the issue of electronic searches. A copy of the New York decision is available in an 85k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  New York v. Perez (New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, 10/25/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Having been on the road with Steve Lang who conducts his buy here, pay here business (“500 down and 50 a week!”) from a cell phone that appears to be  surgically attached to his ear, I was longing for a heads up display fighter pilots have: Eyes on what’s ahead, and still masses of targeting information. We should have driven a BMW: A “full-color head-up display is optionally available for almost all series,” BMW tells me in an email.

LaHood take note: “A normal driver takes a whole second to read the speed indicator in the instrument panel or to glance at the navigation device,” BMW says. “Whilst the driver is distracted, that is without his or her eyes on the road, the vehicle covers a distance of around 14 metres when travelling in urban areas at a speed of 50 km/h – virtually a “blind flight.”

How about this: “Sorry, officer, as my contribution to the war on distracted driving, I just cannot look at the speedometer.” In an optionally equipped BMW, you won’t have that excuse.

The information is right in your field of vision, in living colors, courtesy of a translucent TFT (Thin Film Transistor) display, the image being transferred to the windscreen via specially shaped mirrors, and adjusted to look straight in the convex window screen.

Though the idea that there is a “war on cars” appeals to certain segments of society, there’s little evidence for any such effort. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that there’s a “war on drivers” on, and it’s being led by the automotive industry. On the one hand, cars are being ever-more laden with distracting gizmos and toys, while simultaneously, companies are testing systems that minimize the need for drivers at all. Though Google’s autonomous cars get a lot of media play in this country, another system is moving Europe towards a similar endgame. Known as “Car-To-X,” the system allows cars to swap information like speed and direction, not just with each other but with traffic lights and traffic data collectors. The idea is to avoid traffic and crashes, by warning drivers of oncoming traffic in a left-hand turn scenario, for example. Because who wants to use their eyes to make sure they’re safe when technology can do it for you?

According to Autobild, the first public German test of the system will begin next spring, with 120 vehicles taking part. GM is currently testing a similar system. If all goes according to plan, systems like this and Google’s autonomous technology will fulfill GM’s prediction that autonomous vehicles will be a reality by 2020, and the war on driving will be won. Or lost, depending on your perspective.

More and more drivers are ratted out to police and insurance adjusters – by their own cars. “Event data recorders that function much like the “black boxes” on airplanes, and which are now installed on virtually all new vehicles, can give investigators incriminating details about your driving behavior in the final seconds before a crash,” writes The Tennessean.  The paper quotes Gary Biller, executive director of the National Motorists Association:

“It’s in the cars, it can’t be turned off, and the information is available to anyone with a court order. Our members ask whether these devices can be disabled, but they can’t, because they are integral to the computer systems that control modern cars.”

A Nashville company, VCE Inc., is in the business of making the boxes talk. Says VCE Vice President Todd Hutchison:

“We have been involved from the start and were among the first ones to begin downloading the data from these recorders for the accident reconstructions we do for attorneys and insurance companies. We typically get permission from the owner of the vehicle, but that’s not necessarily who owned it at the time of the accident. If the insurance company has bought the salvaged vehicle, they can give us permission.”

On some cars, connecting a cable is no longer necessary. Beginning with the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, GM will be able to access the information from the recorders wirelessly through the OnStar system included on most of the automaker’s vehicles, The Tennessean writes.

Biller has heard of remote readers that could access the data just by coming close to a vehicle.

It doesn’t need an accident to make the data change your life. Buddy Oakes, a Columbia-based insurance claims adjuster says that some insurance companies are using the data to help rate customers’ driving habits to determine how much their premiums should be.

General Motors safety spokeswoman Sharon Basel says:

“We have them in all of our vehicles, and have had since the mid-’90s. It’s not a continuous recording; it’s only during an event. And we can’t access the data without the consent of the vehicle owner or lessee.”

Help is near – from the government: Beginning with the 2011 model year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires that automakers tell in the vehicle owner’s manual whether a recorder is installed and where it is located.

Though we haven’t even seen a production version yet, Cadillac’s forthcoming XTS has already lived a full, controversy-laden life. Initially suggested as a replacement for the DTS/STS, the Cadillac faithful quickly recoiled at the idea of a luxury “flagship” based on a stretched version of the Epsilon II midsized platform that underpins the Buick LaCrosse and Chevrolet Malibu. But with the Cadillac Ciel Concept showing the way forward for a “true” Caddy flagship which will eventually become the brand’s standard-bearer, the XTS’s role has been somewhat redefined. Expectations for the XTS were walked back by GM CEO Dan Akerson, who famously said that it was

not going to blow the doors off, but will be very competitive

And this week the enigma that is the XTS only deepened, as Cadillac announced two bits of seemingly contradictory information about it: first, that it would spearhead a new high-tech interface (see video above) and second, that it would mark GM’s return to the livery car business.

Cadillac’s CUE system will debut on both the XTS, ATS and 2013 SRX, all of which debut next year. You can find out more about it by watching the video above, but according to a GM presser, the system will offer several industry “firsts” including

Proximity Sensing: As the user’s hand approaches the LCD screen, command icons appear. Icons can be customized and arranged by consumers to improve ease of use.

Haptic Feedback: Buttons on the fully capacitive faceplate pulse when pressed to acknowledge the driver’s commands and helps keep the driver’s eyes on the road.

Multi-Touch Hand Gestures: interactive motions (tap, flick, swipe and spread) popularized by smartphones and tablets allow tasks on the LCD screen, such as scrolling lists, zooming maps and searching favorites to be easily accomplished.

12.3 in. LCD reconfigurable gauge cluster (on select models) offers four selectable displays – Simple, Enhanced, Balanced and Performance – that can mix traditional vehicle data such as a speedometer and fuel gauge with navigation, entertainment and 3D vehicle image.

Natural Speech Recognition lets consumers speak logically with fewer specific commands to recall stored media or input navigation destinations. CUE’s text-to-speech feature will also allow consumers to receive text messages by system voice and to send recorded text messages in return.

Linux operating system, “open” software platform and ARM 11 3-core processor, each operating at 400 million of instructions (mips) per second. This hardware setup offers 3.5 times more processing power than current infotainment systems, and allow developers to write applications to CUE that be downloaded by consumers.

Though not unique to the XTS, GM is using the forthcoming model to highlight the system, and has released pictures of the production interior. Which makes a certain amount of sense, considering that Cadillac has long considered the XTS an “inside-out” design, focusing on luxurious appointments rather than dynamic performance or bold exterior looks. And that emphasis continues, as XTS marketing manager Patrick Nally tells Automotive News [sub]

A lot of people will not consider Cadillac that buy Mercedes or BMW… We will really impress people vis-a-vis the back seats of those cars.

Now, you might think that quote, with its import-conquering swagger, might be emphasizing how well Nally expects the XTS to do on the retail market… but it’s not. Quite the contrary, as it turns out. Here’s the full passage:

Speaking of the XTS, Nally said “the black car business is important to us.”

“A lot of people will not consider Cadillac that buy Mercedes or BMW,” he said. “They do not put us on their shopping list. There is an opportunity to get the right people in the vehicle who would not otherwise” be sitting in a Cadillac.

Nally said the appointments in the livery model will be nearly identical to the high-quality appointments in the retail version of the XT

In other words, the XTS is going to conquer the consumer market, by replacing the now-extinct Town Car as the livery car of choice… and given that its main competition will be a version of the Lincoln MKT, it might just have an opportunity on its hands. Assuming, of course, that private consumers are going to want to buy a vehicle that they mainly know from livery fleets. Fleet-sales-as-marketing is a ploy we hear fairly regularly, but thus far there’s not a lot of evidence that it works especially well. Particularly in the luxury space, where exclusivity is an important factor. But I suppose that this is what Cadillac meant when it said the XTS would replace the DTS and STS… it’s not a true exclusive flagship, but an everyday luxury car with a cosseting interior.

Automotive News [sub] says that “the chopping and stretching” of the ATS will “be handled by approved coachbuilders,” and it’s likely already underway. In fact, earlier this week when I was at Milford Proving Grounds, I not only saw several camo’d XTS prototypes testing, but also what appeared to be a long-wheelbase mule with a stretched Buick LaCrosse body. Whether it was a stretched XTS mule or a China-bound LaCrosse long-wheelbase model wasn’t clear, but it seems safe to say that the Epsilon II platform is going to spawn some form of LWB sedan. And, with expectations for the XTS already blunted by its humble underpinnings and Akerson’s seeming diss, a stolid, interior-centric, fleet-oriented model seems to be a logical approach for the XTS. Too bad that orientation is a bit at odds with Cadillac’s dynamically-driven “Red Blooded Luxury” branding approach.

Federal Mogul's new Advanced Corona Ignition System

Last May, at the international Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, a joint Japanese/Bulgarian team of researchers introduced ceramic based lasers that are compact, durable and powerful enough to be used to ignite a fuel/air mixture in a combustion engine. At the time, the researchers announced that they were working with spark plug maker Denso on commercializing the idea. That announcement was followed up by word that Mazda’s next generation “16X” rotary engine will exploit the compact size of those laser igniters. Now Michigan auto supplier Federal Mogul has released news about a US patent on their Advanced Corona Ignition System, or ACIS. Instead of a spark (or laser) the ACIS uses a high-intensity burst of plasma to ignite the fuel.

The corona can be controlled more than an electrical spark, allowing it to spread across the combustion chamber, resulting in a more complete burn. Federal Mogul says that using ACIS will improve fuel mileage by as much as 10% over conventional spark plug ignition, in part due to greater timing precision. That precision is said to be synergistic with direct injection. ACIS will also, F-M claims, allow leaner fuel/air mixtures, and cooler running engines. Because they don’t erode with use as conventional spark plugs do, the corona igniters will supposedly have longer service lives. No time frame for commercialization of the ACIS system was announced.

Soon, Volvos could sport yet another decal: “No animals will be harmed by this vehicle.” Volvo is working on a system that avoids roadkill. According to Bloomberg, the system

“uses a radar sensor and an infra-red camera to alert the driver to nearby critters and brake if a collision is unavoidable. That technology is due to be rolled out in a few years in cars like the XC90 sport-utility vehicle, priced at $38,400, after employees studied the movement of moose and deer in southern Sweden.”

Even David Cain, who runs the annual Roadkill Cook-off in Marlinton, West Virginia, does not see a conflict of interest:

“It’d be good because it’d allow the driver to avoid a lot of unnecessary animal killings. He could still choose to run over something that’s good for eating.”

According to Bloomberg, Volvo is not alone in its concern for our four-legged friends:

“BMW, the luxury-car leader, is also setting its sights on preventing roadkill. It showcased a system this year that shines a spot light on pedestrians or animals near the roadway at night by locating them with a heat-sensitive camera.”

Without the a propos sensitivity to this important issue, Bloomberg ends its report on the snide side:

“The winning dish at the 2011 event on Sept. 24 was Smeared Hog with Ground Hog Gravy a la Truck.”

Quick, what’s the point of having a navigation system in your car? To get where you want to be going, right? Well, IBM has another idea: maybe instead of taking you where you want to go, navigation systems should be offering to take you where a paying advertiser wants you to go. Say, right past their shop, for example. Popular Science quotes from one of IBM’s patent applications

Conventional route planning systems determine optimal routes based on different preferred conditions, including minimizing travel time or minimizing the distance traveled. By focusing on optimal route determination, the known route planning systems fail to consider non-optimal routes whose presentation to travelers may have value to other parties.

So, it’s not quite to the point of your nav system saying “I can’t let you not pass a Starbucks, Dave,” but in the future your navigation could strongly suggest that, rather than going to the farmer’s market, you stop by the supermarket that happens to pay IBM the most.

PopSci explains

The system would work by collecting fees from retailers, which would then be used to assign a preferential weight for certain way points along a given route. IBM software would figure out a new route that incorporates that way point, and present it to the driver as the “recommended route.” This sub-optimal route couldn’t be too inconvenient — the patent application discusses limiting how far out of the way a recommended route could go — but it might not be the most direct route, nor the fastest. If the driver does actually take the fee-inspired route, then IBM could levy an additional fee for this successful misdirection.

Because sometimes it’s not best to focus on solely serving the end-user. Especially when “third party” firms will pay big money to redirect the hapless end-user to their products. It’s almost as if IBM has learned a thing or two from Automobile magazine…

Under attack from privacy advocates and US Senators, Onstar will be dropping plans to automatically track vehicles that are not subscribed to its service, and will make post-cancellation tracking an opt-in option, rather than opt-out. A GM statement reads:

DETROIT – OnStar announced today it is reversing its proposed Terms and Conditions policy changes and will not keep a data connection to customers’ vehicles after the OnStar service is canceled.

OnStar recently sent e-mails to customers telling them that effective Dec. 1, their service would change so that data from a customer vehicle would continue to be transmitted to OnStar after service was canceled – unless the customer asked for it to be shut off.

“We realize that our proposed amendments did not satisfy our subscribers,” OnStar President Linda Marshall said. “This is why we are leaving the decision in our customers’ hands. We listened, we responded and we hope to maintain the trust of our more than 6 million customers.”

If OnStar ever offers the option of a data connection after cancellation, it would only be when a customer opted-in, Marshall said. And then OnStar would honor customers’ preferences about how data from that connection is treated.

Maintaining the data connection would have allowed OnStar to provide former customers with urgent information about natural disasters and recalls affecting their vehicles even after canceling their service. It also would have helped in planning future services, Marshall said.

“We regret any confusion or concern we may have caused,” Marshall said.

Concerns over privacy have haunted GM’s OnStar business for as long as it’s been around, and responses like this video have become something of an annual routine for OnStar’s executives. The latest round of furor involves changes to OnStar’s policies, which the New York Times describes thusly

The first regards what happens when a customer cancels the service. Until now, when OnStar service stopped, so did the vehicle’s two-way communications system. As of Dec. 1, however, that will not necessarily be the case. Vehicles of owners who no longer subscribe could still be monitored via the system’s still-active two-way cellular link.

The second policy change concerns the potential use of the data collected by OnStar, which includes information like the vehicle’s speed and location, current odometer reading, driver seat-belt use and air-bag deployment. Under the new terms, OnStar reserves the right to share that information with other companies and organizations, even data culled from motorists who no longer subscribe to the service but who have left the two-way communications connection open.

Of course, OnStar says GM customers can opt out of the service, but it’s making the case that by only sharing anonymous data, it can limit meaningful privacy concerns. But OnStar doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and as it continues to sell Americans on the notion that security is worth sacrificing some sense of privacy for, it will find itself increasingly pulled into a national debate.

OnStar’s execs are clearly walking a line here, as there’s no doubt OnStar-provided data is used in a number of ways that they argue is intended to benefit the customer. Monitoring usage patterns in the Chevy Volt is one example. Allowing vehicle owners to spy on their kids and spouses is another. But by pushing these services, OnStar finds itself at the cutting edge of a profound national debate on the balance between privacy and security that has been simmering just below the national consciousness in the decade since 9/11.

OnStar is clearly aligning itself with the side of security, not only offering nanny services to its users, but now giving them nanny powers over people who use their cars as well. In the short term, this has been a strong play: history shows that OnStar has picked the winning side in the debate, as most security/privacy tradefoffs since 9/11 have been decided in favor of security. But as measures like pay-per-mile vehicle tracking gain political momentum (the talk in DC is that government tracking of every vehicle is “unavoidable” in the middle-to-long-term), a backlash may well be brewing.

The problem with picking any one side of a fundamental political tradeoff is that eventually your side overreaches, sparking a backlash. When pay-per-mile taxation becomes a serious policy proposal, a political near-inevitability in the next ten years, all of the slippery concessions to security-over-privacy that led up to government tracking of every vehicle in America will be seen in a very different light. OnStar (and its analogues, which are spreading throughout the industry) will clearly be identified as a poster boy for the tradeoff between privacy and security, and faced with mandatory government tracking, it’s hard to see Americans remaining in love with the idea of voluntary tracking. Already the backlash is brewing, and public responses to privacy concerns will be a fact of life for firms like OnStar. But then, that’s just a part of the cost of doing business when you’re selling services that prey on paranoia, and asks customers to trust your benevolent gaze more than the often-terrifying randomness of the universe.

Cars have lost a lot since the 1990’s. How many of you remember ashtrays, crank windows, base AM/FM radios and motorized seatbelts? It used to be that little headlight wipers were a sure sign of an upscale ride along with glossy wood trim and a CD changer in the trunk. It was a Yuppie heaven back then.

You wanted good music? Gotta get at least a cassette player and why not throw in some flimsy cupholders that are just big enough for a twelve ounce Coke?

A lot has gone away since the days of Cadillac Allantes and Chrysler Imperials. But much more remains with us. Today’s cars have a ton of 1990’s luxuries as standard equipment: Cruise, ABS, Traction Control, CD Players, Keyless Entry and Anti-theft Alarm Systems. Even the once lauded ‘Power Package’ of power windows, door locks, and mirrors is now standard in all but the cheapest of models (and the Lotus Elise).

So today’s questions for the TTAC faithful are, “What Should Stay?” and “What Should Go?” in these next ten years. Should nav systems be integrated into our cell phones? Will CD’s offer as poor of a return for the audiophile as they already do at the bank? That one’s an easy answer. But what about CVT’s vs. conventional automatics? Eight cylinders vs. sixes? Push buttons vs. key fobs vs.???

The future isn’t now. So give your best guess.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Ed: The above video is not intended as a specific example of the problems we faced, but a general illustration of the wider issue]

While on a junket for the Hyundai Veloster I was treated to yet another instance of The Most Infuriating Thing About New Cars – the lack of any decent way to connect your iPod to the in-car entertainment system.

As TTAC Editor-In-Chief Ed Niedermeyer and I toured Oregon’s various scenic byways in the newest Hyundai, our musical selections were repeatedly interrupted due various errors, whereby Ed’s iPhone was unable to sync, refused to completely sync, or randomly re-synced. Our attempts at listening to the new Bon Iver album, or Burn After Rolling (the listenable mixtape made by limp-dick rapper Wiz Khalifa) were interrupted by a blast from XM’s pop station, as the iPod integration took a giant shit on us. Nothing spoils the conversation like having your ambient rock or gangsta rap interrupted by Katy Perry or Lady Gaga.

In the pre-USB port days, there were two options – you could use an “iTrip”, a crude device that plugged into a cigarette lighter and used a small radio transmitter to broadcast your music over a dormant frequency. Tuning your radio to said frequency allowed you to have your own private radio station, although it was frequently interrupted by transmissions from competing commercial stations, especially on road trips where frequencies changed every so often.

The other option was the auxiliary port – a 3.5 mm audio jack that plugged into the car stereo and allowed you to control your iPod without any aural interruptions like an iTrip. The only problem is that these were extremely rare in the pre-USB era, and have failed to become ubiquitous.

My guess is that the USB/touch-screen integration is a response to fears of possible litigation via crashes caused by distracted drivers, who could ostensibly fiddle with their iPods while it’s plugged in to the auxiliary port. BMW once offered an iPod integration system that forced you to create pre-made playlists and didn’t allow for any browsing of the music library, which I suspect was done for this reason.

The big problem is that most iPod integration systems are varying degrees of garbage. Currently, Ford’s SYNC system is the worst, despite its ubiquity, and every Ford product I review, I try and bash it. I would stop, but I’ve yet to have a SYNC system that works properly, without being a massive distraction and malfunctioning on multiple occasions. None of my passengers, from my technologically savvy 18-year-old brother, to my own friends (who are supposed to be “connected”, “plugged-in” Gen-Y types) can figure it out, and if they do, they inevitably get frustrated with the confusing menus, lack of a “back” button (a crucial feature when your iPod has 10,000 songs and you don’t want to scroll through endless menus to find one damn song) and the occasional disconnection because “SYNC failed to connect to your portable audio device”.

For all the marketing pap about reaching out to a generation of buyers who care less and less about cars, the one thing the OEMs need to do is the one thing they are constantly fucking up. For Gen-Y, the most important part of the driving experience has nothing to do with dynamic. They just want to listen to music painlessly. And not get violated at the gas pump . Being able to drive something with a bit of panache isn’t a bad thing either.

Hyundai managed a gentleman’s C on those criteria. Let’s see who gets an A+.

So let’s say you drive occasionally a bit over the legal limit, wouldn’t you like something like this?

“Unlike traditional camouflage systems which rely on paint or nets to hide vehicles, ADAPTIV can instantly blend a vehicle into its background.

With the ADAPTIV system installed, a unit has: The ability to blend into natural surroundings. The ability to mimic natural objects and other vehicles. A significantly reduced detection range.”

The system has been developed by Britain’s BAE. It’s target market is military vehicles. But if you drive a tank of a car, or own a car with the price tag of an F16, a little ADAPTIV should fit your budget. Remember:

“Whether it is day or night, whether they are on the move or stationary, ADAPTIV gives your vehicles increased stealth – and greater survivability.”

If your budget is a little tighter, try this. But only “at shows and events.”

The Crusade against distracted driving is taking its toll – on the telcos: “State laws that mandate use of hands-free devices when talking on a mobile phone behind the wheel may have cut handheld device usage in half over the past year,” reports Edmunds.

A report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) talks about a bloodbath caused by cell phones: As much as 30 percent of recent car crashes involved someone who was distracted by using a cell phone, texting “or some other activity that pulled the driver’s attention away from the road.”  Allegedly, “distracted-driving accidents killed almost 5,500 people and injured another half-million people in the U.S. in 2009. About one in six fatal accidents that year was caused by a distracted driver,” reports Edmunds.

Expect draconian measures against free speech (handheld, behind the wheel): NHTSA says that Connecticut and New York State crackdowns on handheld mobile-phone use and texting behind the wheel cut distracted driving by at least a third, “indicating that increased law enforcement and public-service announcements likely decrease traffic fatalities stemming from distracted driving.” Not to mention the revenue from the tickets written.

Soon, there will be a paradigm-shift for “cell phones.” As in behind – well – bars.

• Vehicle Locate: The subscriber can log on to the Family Link website to view a map with the vehicle’s exact location at any time.
• Vehicle Location Alert: Subscribers can set up email or text message notifications to let them know the location of their loved one’s vehicle. They can choose the day, time and frequency of the alerts.

But that’s not all: if the pilot proves that consumers are willing to pay for the right to surveil their loved ones,

Future considerations for the pilot include Speed Alert, Boundary Alert and Arrival/Departure Alert.

Forget Big Brother… with this system, you can be Big Daddy, in the center of your own little family-sized panopticon. From making sure the kids stay out of trouble (“Say, son, what were you doing in downtown Detroit last night?”) to checking up on your loving spouse (“Honey, why did you say you were going to the gym, when you just parked for an hour at the Slee-Zee Snooze Motel?”), it’s how today’s on-the-go families foster an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. Because why let the government have all the voyeuristic fun?

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. —O’Brien, in “1984″.

O’Brien was wrong. The picture of the future is a picture of you: completely naked, with your privacy invaded, taken as you walk along the street, sit in your own vehicle, or pursue your own private business. You will be recorded forever, your movements will be marked, your possessions will be noted, you will become completely subservient to a government you may not even remember electing. Eventually, you may die of cancer, moaning out a final cry of drug-addled defiance as you are culled — in a quite humane fashion, of course — to prevent excessive healthcare costs.

The company helping to bring you the above future is called, without irony, “American Science and Engineering, Inc.”

What you see above is supposedly one of the photographs returned by the “Z Backscatter Van”. The “ZBV” can be driven anywhere a regular light-duty truck can be driven. It creates backscatter X-Ray images similar to those employed by the TSA in its “nudie booth” airport scanners. It’s the only image of human beings released by AS&E, Inc, which assured Forbes magazine that the images collected by the ZBV were of “lower resolution” than those collected by the airport scanners, which are already infamous for delivering precise pictures of your naked body to a $12-an-hour drone in an office somewhere.

As far as photos go, one couldn’t ask for one more deliberately deceptive. The humans in the photo are seated, facing away from the camera. It’s a low-res JPG. Given the almost pornographic delight with which AS&E displays photos of the Z Backscatter Van’s imaging capabilities in other areas — it’s detailed enough that one can easily distinguish the type of vehicle in the no-person-shown photos — it’s a virtual certainty that it can, in fact, record with more detail than the company lets on. Check this photo out:

Now comes the best part. The public has, by and large, accepted backscatter machines in airports because “it would take 50 backscatter images to deliver the radiation of a single chest X-ray” and “if you choose not to fly, you have nothing to worry about.” Don’t forget the old chestnut “the images are not stored, nor are they related to specific individuals.” All of that goes out the window with the ZBV. If you work a hotdog stand and the ZBV circles your block ten times a day, congratulations! You just got an extra 60 full-strength X-rays a year. Hope that hotdog stand has health insurance. And, of course, the ZBV isn’t bound by any silly rules about storing or correlating images. It can record as long as you have hard drives to hold the images, and you’re free to take visual-spectrum photos at the same time and correlate them.

My friend Miss Melisa Mae wouldn’t have to reach out at dinner and check her dates’ equipment anymore; oh no. It will be possible for her to purchase a short list of men who meet her lengthy qualifications. (For the record, Melisa, I just wasn’t out walking the day the vans went by.) You’d better hope that your hobbies are acceptable, now and in the future. Don’t take your shotgun to the trap shoot the day some minor Congressman is in town! You’ve just become a terrorist. Don’t buy too much fertilizer for your McMansion! Do you carry two laptops in your car, one for work and one for home? Maybe you’re a “hacker”. Don’t leave a glucose checker in the car as you interview for a new job; your potential employer may have no interest in diabetics.

No doubt many TTACers won’t have a problem with this. They may point out that most of us have already been forced to show our genitalia to strangers by agencies as diverse as one’s public school and/or the Nolet Distillery. This isn’t about sexuality, however. It’s about privacy, the Fourth Amendment, and the right to be secure against unwarranted, health-endangering search. Speaking personally, after being “randomly selected” seven times in a row for the airport scanner at CMH, I’ve started opting out. I tell the TSA people that if they want to see me naked, they have to do it like everybody else and listen to me play John Mayer’s “Wheel” on the acoustic guitar first.

The vans cost $850,000 or thereabouts. Hundreds have been sold, to customers as diverse as the Department of Defense and small-town law enforcement agencies. The NYPD is one of AS&E’s thrilled customers. Next time you’re in Manhattan, don’t forget to smile — and, er, stand up — for the camera.

Former TVR owner Peter Wheeler used to explain the lack of airbags in his firm’s high-powered sportscars by arguing drivers would be safer if he installed a metal spike in the middle of each steering wheel. That was back in the late 1990s and early 2000s… since then, the rise of adaptive cruise control, “attention assist” systems, collision-sensing brake pre-loading and more have only made his critique all the more provocative. And, according to research cited in a Wired Magazine report, Wheeler’s philosophy seems to have a strong basis in science.

“The point the automakers are making, which is true, is that they go to extreme lengths to make these systems work and extremely reliable,” [Stanford University's Clifford] Nass said. “The reliability on these systems is very high. If you have automatic cruise control, it’s not extremely often you have to jump into the fray.”

Therein lies the problem. We come to count on our cars to keep us out of trouble, even in situations where the technology isn’t designed to.

“Road hazards other than the car in front of you are so rare, especially on the highway where these adaptive cruise control systems would be in play, that they would, over time, encourage a complacency that undermines safety,” said Erik Blaser, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who studies vision and perception. “You stop paying attention to the driving.”

Though these “semiautonomous” systems are sold as safety equipment, researchers argue that they create a sense of reliance that actually makes drivers less safe (unlike “secret” safety systems like stability control and ABS, which operate consistently without the driver’s knowledge). And, somewhat counterintuitively, these researchers argue that the rise of semiautonomous driver aids actually increases the need for life-long driver eduation.

The report notes:

“The functionality of the technology is very good at this point, but how do you teach people how to use it appropriately?” MIT AgeLab and New England University Transportation Center researcher Bryan]Reimer said. “Reading the owner’s manual is not going to provide the information that you need.”

Instead, he suggests ongoing, lifetime driver training and an end to the American tradition of driver’s education only for new drivers. Auto dealerships should spend more time working with customers to fully explain the limits of automotive safety technology before letting them drive home. Looking further ahead of the curve, cars could one day actively detect drivers’ states — whether they’re tired or distracted, for instance — and allow the use of semiautonomous safety technologies when appropriate.

The limitations of active safety systems must be second nature to drivers, said Nass. Drivers must know what the technology can and can’t do so they don’t rely upon it in situations where it won’t work.

“It’s always a problem with partially autonomous systems,” he said. “You’ll always have the issue of remembering what it does and what it doesn’t do, and in real time we don’t want people pondering that.”

 

In addition to the recent tales (and sitcom gags) of GPS units leading hapless drivers into bodies of water, we have a new twist on the theme: GPS units leading hapless drivers astray in Death Valley. NPR reports

After a long day, [Donna] Cooper and her family asked “Nell,” the GPS, for the shortest route back to their home.

“Please proceed to the highlighted route,” Nell said.

But what came next did not compute. The GPS told them to go 550 feet, then turn right, Cooper says.

“Well, at 550 feet it was like a little path, and then it was like, go a quarter of a mile and turn left. There was nothing there. She had me running in circles for hours and hours and hours,” she says.

A park ranger explains that this happens “a couple times a year now,” including one incident two years ago in which a mother and her son were lost on an abandoned mining road for five days and the boy died. Rangers are now working with GPS firms to update their data on small and closed-down roads, but say no amount of work will ever replace common sense when it comes to navigating desert roads. Speaking of which, what happened to Cooper’s family?

According to NPR:

A search and rescue helicopter found Cooper’s family after three days of being lost. Everyone survived, except Nell, the GPS. But that’s not what Cooper was calling her by then.

“Called her a few names,” she says. “A couple four-letter words.”

And yet, Cooper has not lost faith. She has a new GPS now, named Rosie.

Despite identifying a lack of common sense as the basic problem, NPR never asks Ms. Cooper to reflect on her experience, and how it has made her relationship with “Rosie” different than her relationship with “Nell.” Could she imagine this happening to her again, or does she take a more personal interest in navigating (and possibly, by extension, driving) now? After all, dependence on electronic gizmos is becoming an increasingly common cause of inattentive driving, which can kill you in a crash as well as strand you in the desert. And as this Mercedes commercial points out, automakers have every interest in cultivating your dependence on all kinds of systems that ultimately encourage inattentive driving.

Perhaps I’m just fascinated by anyone who can have that much trust in a computer copilot while piloting several tons of high-powered steel around. I regularly drive vehicles with and without GPS, and I admit that navigation can be addictive. But I generally prefer to use it as a map rather than a having it read directions to me, because I don’t feel comfortable blindly accepting that “the machine knows,” as Michael Scott puts it. The downside is that visually navigating a GPS screen can be a huge distraction… which is why I try to go over my route before I go somewhere new, and only use the screen to quickly orient myself. In other words, I can’t imagine getting lost in the desert by blindly following my GPS in circles… but I can imagine getting honked at because I’m looking at my screen and not at the light that just turned green. And you know what? I feel fairly comfortable with the tradeoff.

Ford’s Sync doesn’t get a break. It attracted undue attention from LaHood’s distracted driving crusade. Consumer Reports had issues with the system. Sync sank Ford in the 2011 J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey. Can it get any worse?

Yes, it can. Ford is being sued for patent infringement.

Bainbridge Island-based Eagle Harbor Holdings  has filed a lawsuit against Ford, alleging infringement of seven patents.  The company says that Ford infringed on seven of its patents for the technology behind Sync and some other safety technologies such as Active Park Assist, Blind-Spot Identification System with Cross Traffic Alert, Integrated Control System for Stability Control, and MyKey.

According to the Seattle Times, Eagle Harbor began developing the technologies more than 10 years ago. Talks between Eagle Harbor and Ford began in 2002, says the lawsuit. According to the filing, Ford stopped communication with Eagle Harbor in 2008 and began incorporating the technology into its products over the next year.

Does that mean Ford will be out of Sync? Not really. Should Ford lose, it will be out of a little money.

“We’d much rather do business with Ford as customers than have to file this lawsuit against them. Their business could mean millions,” said Jeffrey Harmes, general counsel for Eagle Harbor.

Eagle Harbor founders Dan and Joe Preston also founded Airbiquity, a Seattle vehicle-services technology company, in 1997. The Seattle Times says that “Airbiquity’s technology is in General Motors’ OnStar wireless platform, which connects motorists to information services.”