Untangling the Challenges of the Connected Car

Take, for example, connectivity to personal electronics. Consumers today want to use their MP3 players and smartphones even when driving. They also expect to be constantly connected, using their portable devices to "Tweet," "Facebook," or geotag throughout the day. It is only a matter of time before consumers demand that the car becomes an extension of this plugged-in lifestyle. For automakers, the opportunity is clear: If they can help the consumer stay connected in a safe, reliable, and legal fashion, they can differentiate their brand and build customer loyalty.

The problem is, the automobile must always play catch-up. In the personal electronics industry, it takes from 6 to 18 months to bring a product to market. But in the auto industry, where a new product must be planned into the vehicle's manufacturing process and undergo far greater testing and validation, the process often takes 3 or more years. As a further complication, an in-vehicle system that connects to personal electronics must stay relevant for at least 10 years. But how can it do that if the MP3 players of today become the 8-tracks of tomorrow?

To address some of these problems, automotive engineers can implement systems with modular, upgradeable software architectures. In other cases, they can keep content and applications up to date by moving functionality from embedded modules to the Internet. For example, navigation databases, music metadata sources, and speech recognition back-ends can all run on a perpetually refreshed server, rather than be distributed through costly DVD updates or bay module reprogramming. A remote server provides a host of capabilities — such as streaming media, application downloading, and realtime traffic reports integrated into navigation services — that are difficult or impossible to implement using only on-board resources.

The economy is also driving the car towards greater connectivity. Pressure to reduce engineering costs and time to market has grown more intense than ever. Meanwhile, burgeoning complexity is driving up the cost of software development as a percentage of the car's total cost. As a result, automakers must create new ways to reduce bill of materials costs and streamline the software development process. Increased connectivity can reduce time to market and the embedded engineer's burden, by shifting some of the complexity back into the cloud. In fact, by leveraging Internet services, an automotive OEM can even create new revenue streams.