SEMA Show: Aftermarket technology support for connected cars

    The era of connected cars has arrived, but as OEMs fill cars with more advanced technologies, they also need the participation and support of the aftermarket. For example, technologies such as V2V/V2I cannot really play their role without sufficient technical support from the aftermarket.

    The current limitation of vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology is that not every car is equipped with the relevant system. If only a small number of cars in the entire traffic system are equipped with V2V systems, the benefits of this technology will be very low, manifested in inaccurate traffic information assessment, etc.

    The annual car sales in the United States are less than 15 million, and the average life cycle of each car is 11 years. In the entire United States, there are more than 250 million registered vehicles. Therefore, without the technical support of the aftermarket, the advantages of car connectivity cannot be realized except in some specific areas, unless the road-sharing technology is certified by the relevant regulatory authorities.

    Millions of cars in the U.S. actually have entry-level information processing modules, either built-in or externally. For example, transponders that transmit information to toll booth computers, smartphones carried by users, modems in car communication systems, etc. However, these systems alone cannot meet the requirements required for car connectivity, and when combined with sophisticated roadside camera systems, they can identify other vehicles that are not equipped with such systems.

    John Waraniak, vice president of vehicle technology for the SEMA Auto Parts Association, addressed this topic during a forum at the 2013 SEMA Show.

    Currently, many electronic technology/equipment companies have participated in the aftermarket, but on the other hand, those powertrain component companies seem to be too cautious. An attendee at the forum pointed out that although the technology and OE standards are mature, there is still no aftermarket engine system supplier using electronic throttle products.

Aftermarket support for connected cars

    Among the forum participants were many aftermarket supplier representatives, who described their company’s vision for the connected car era.

    Ted Cardenas, vice president of automotive electronics at Pioneer Radio, mentioned that a large number of smartphone applications have been customized for its latest AppRadio3, from Internet radio to Google Maps and navigation. This includes the BestParking application, which is an application that includes parking spaces in more than 100 cities and 115 airports in the United States. AppRadio3 uses a 7-inch touch screen and can only be enabled when the vehicle is stopped for driving safety reasons. AppRadio is one of the company's 29 audio and video system products designed specifically for connected cars.

    David Anderson, design manager at Nvidia, explained its Tegra3 product, a low-power system-level chip designed for mobile devices. The new Audi MMI entertainment information system uses this chip to integrate Google Maps. In addition, it also has a touch screen function that can change the map viewing angle. Tesla Model S uses two Tegra modules, one for its 17-inch ultra-large touch screen and the other for its 12.3-inch instrument panel display. The Tergra system chip includes a quad-core ARM CPU, a dual-channel graphics processor, and a memory controller.

    Greg Krueger, project manager of Leidos, an electronic communication integration service company, is working on the development of short-range communication technology based on the 5.9GHz frequency band. This frequency band is the same as the frequency band used by the transponder system of toll booths, and will also become the dedicated frequency band for information communication of connected cars in the United States in the future. He said that the US Department of Transportation is expected to formulate relevant technical regulations before the end of this year, and five years later, in 2018, the first regulations on car interconnection technology will be issued. He also believes that the current challenges facing car interconnection are information security and ensuring that each signal transmitted to the vehicle terminal is valid.

Federal safety standards missing

    The United States currently does not have a technical regulation for suppliers (vehicle connectivity, collision prevention, lane departure), and Paul Laurenza, managing member of Dykema National Law Firm in the United States, provided an overview of the current regulations.

    He said that the process of automobile automation has been going on for many years, and different levels of driver assistance systems, different drivers and other factors will reduce the reliability of automobile automation. At present, the reliability of automobile products is regulated by state and local laws, so the standards are not uniform in different places.

    Parts suppliers are responsible for reporting safety issues related to auto parts to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and eliminating parts that do not meet the standards in advance. However, it is impossible to screen advanced automotive safety technologies in advance. Laurenza said: "This technology will continue to improve, but problems will inevitably arise after installation. With the increase in insurance claims experience and court cases, the regulations on safety technology will become more mature." He also pointed out that no matter aviation, navigation or rail transportation, any industry or field does not have sound regulatory provisions at the beginning, and experience is learned from problems.

    The driver assistance system has raised the issue to the level of "information failure", such as information transmission errors or even wrong navigation during the V2V process. Laurenza asked such a question, "Can information itself be considered a product? Once the information is wrong, how is it different from the failure of electronic mechanical products?" Other questions about aftermarket suppliers include "only safety warnings, but no specific methods to prevent drivers from being distracted." A single network broadcast failure may only be a decline in equipment reliability, but in the future, after V2V and V2I technologies are widely popularized, even a small information error may lead to serious consequences, such as traffic accidents, or the garage door at home opening automatically for no reason...

Connected Car Product Showcase

    Using the SEMA show as a platform, American aftermarket suppliers hope to catch up with the era of explosive development of connected cars. This year's SEMA show exhibited a large number of modification kits for various anti-collision system cameras, blind spot detection, and lane departure warning cameras. There are even interactive devices that can be directly plugged into the car bus, including parking sensors, driving computers, etc.

    Access2 Communications Inc. exhibited a product called TextBuster, which transmits a lock signal via Bluetooth to prevent users from sending text messages and surfing the Internet while driving. It is similar to the system recently launched by Sprint. Other smart systems include Gentex HomeLink, which can control the home lighting system and garage door from the car through the wireless network. This system can be optional on 35% of new cars in the United States.

    Another system worth mentioning is the MSD Performance Brain Wave, which is a vehicle management network that uses a dedicated connector to plug into the data bus of the car's powertrain, body, and chassis. It can obtain data from all the car's sensor modules and control the car's suspension height, door locks, and air conditioning system on a smartphone through a Bluetooth module. As long as other functional hardware or convenience accessories are added to the car, it can also control them, provided that the accessories must be electronic devices.