At the same time that I finished a book on my Amazon Kindle, which cost $400 and has a high speed Internet connection via the Sprint network (about 50 times faster data than an Apple iPhone), my Infiniti M35 had an all-systems meltdown. What happened? The AWD warning light comes on; car begins to apply brakes randomly, BRAKE warning light comes on; SLIP warning light comes on; “Service Engine Soon” light comes on; gauges go up and down crazily; managed to limp back to driveway. I called the Herb Chambers Infiniti service department and got voicemail (it was 10:15 am on a Friday). Eventually I got hold of Infiniti road service and they towed the car away. On Saturday, Herb Chambers called to say that they had no idea what the problem was and would be keeping the car indefinitely.
It had been one year and 8,000 miles since I purchased the car and it got me thinking about the ownership experience. Nearly everything that I don’t like about the car would be fixed if it had an Internet connection and a little bit of software intelligence (oxymoron?). The car doesn’t close its sunroof automatically, unlike my old Toyota minivan. The remote control has an unfortunate feature where it asks you to press and hold a button to release the trunk. Pressing and holding an adjacent button, however, will roll the windows down. If you lend the keys to someone else and ask them to fetch something from the trunk, you will invariably walk up to the car a day or two later and find the windows rolled partway down. Naturally this only happens when rain and snow storms are rolling through New England. If the car had Internet and a clock, it could email you to say “Do you really want to leave your windows and sunroof open?” If the car had a little more brains, it could check the weather itself and send you some more urgent messages.
With Internet, the car could get updates on traffic and road construction. The car could also update its navigation and points of interest database, especially if the Infiniti guys had been thoughtful enough to use a tiny flash card ($50 retail) instead of a huge DVD player and disk to store the database. The DVD player hogs most of the space in what would have been a nice glove box. A lot of the time the navigation system can’t boot up because of “disk read error”. So… with Amazon having shown that they can negotiate a deal with Sprint and get high-speed wireless to a cheap device, how come no car company has been able to do the same?
On the other hand, imagine that a car manufacturer really _did_ add Internet smarts to a car. It’d likely be so insanely buggy and complex that only a moron would buy it.
My friend’s 7-series BMW called the dealership and asked for an oil change. I consider this only a partial solution because the dealership then had to call my friend and ask him when his schedule would allow for the car to be picked up. If it were REALLY smart it would KNOW his schedule, schedule the pickup while he is out of town and be all changed and clean when he returned.
The BMW has i-Drive, one of the worst user interface devices I have ever seen. And I wandered the Media Lab in the early 90s.
It is funny how you complained about technology going bad and expressed the desire to have even more technology in the same article — you must be a true geek! 🙂 But I agree, of course, Internet connection won’t hurt (except for rare occasions).
This stuff is coming. Cars wall talk to each other to negotiate speed and lane changes, to alert to traffic conditions and so on. We already have assisted cruise control, automatic braking, lane departure warning and correction and other exciting features. In the next five years cars will start driving themselves even more. And in the next ten to twenty years expect to start hearing about cars driving themselves entirely (platooning and such).
Designing all this stuff is not an easy task. The hardest part is designing for unexpected failures. As you know, unexpected failures always happen unexpectedly.
Nissan changed their name from Datsun in the hopes that people would forget about their quality and design issues. Those of use who were around Datsuns in the ’70s haven’t forgotten though…
My favorite Datsun story: The radiator hose on my car started leaking. I took it into to an auto parts store. As soon as I set the greasy piece of black hose on the counter, the clerk said “That came out of a Datsun, didn’t it?” How did he know? He pointed out how one end of the hose was nearly twice as large as the other.
Apparently the engineering team responsible for the engine block didn’t bother talking to the team designing the radiator. The solution (probably arrived at on the factory floor) was a screwy piece of custom hose.
George: excellent point! touche.
Herb Chambers called today to say that they still had no idea what was wrong with the car. They thought it was “some sort of communications problem among the little computers”. No promises were made as to a return date.
Phil, you may want to look into software that can communicate with and in some cases, change the behavior of, your car. For the M35, these guys seem to have it: http://www.alteredatmosphere.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AAM&Product_Code=cip-dds&Category_Code=FX
I am aware of Audi enthusiasts who through careful examination of settings, have for instance, been able to program all windows going up on locking the car, one-touch windows down, “sport mode” on the transmission (hidden from the driver in that model year), and the ability to customize the digital part of the dash to display different values.
You may find an enthusiast forum that can help you change the behavior you don’t like.
There does seem to be a huge time lag in automotive technology, doesn’t there? I got my first Pioneer in-dash GPS display in, oh, 1996. Twelve years later, my state-of-the-art Alpine now uses a DVD instead of a CD, and has a touch screen that can vibrate at two frequencies; other than that, not much has improved.
And the factory-installed systems are even farther behind. As far as I can tell, Navteq is the source of most of the geographical data for these systems. Navteq compiles it and issues it quarterly or annually to the manufacturers. They take another year or two to process it, and then they issue a new DVD set. If you have a factory-installed system, it then takes another year or two to brand and customize it.
So your 2008 Toyota navigation system probably has a 2004 map and software on it – which means it’s probably an 2002 hardware design. We didn’t have 4GB flash then.
Thumbs up for Patrick’s suggestion, too. I’ve had Audis since 1996, and my VAG-COM interface and software has saved me more times that I can count. (Plus, I can reconfigure the electronic locks!) No more “check engine” light; I’m getting a temperature range error from brake sensor #27 now. No more $150 to pair my keyless entry keys, either. And – best of all – no more intermittent failures. Thing’s got a memory.