Taking the Connected Home on the Road

Aug 18, 2008 10:31 AM, By Jeff James

There weren't tremendous technical challenges in doing what we were doing. The challenge was really trying to get these various technologies integrated into one platform and working reliably. We talked about the challenges with devices—that is an extraordinary and ongoing challenge—as we wanted customers to be able to go out and buy absolutely anything they want from a phone or media player perspective and have a good experience with it in the car. If you do any research at all, our competitors who have launched similar products—especially in the Bluetooth area—have really struggled in that regard. [It's] very difficult to create an automotive Bluetooth product that has broad enough compatibility to satisfy a majority of customers.

JJ: What sort of hardware and software does Sync run on?

GJ: The [Microsoft Auto] software platform is derived from Windows CE. The Microsoft auto group created a reference design that supports the Sync product. Microsoft had two motivations here: They obviously wanted to make money helping Ford sell Sync, but they also wanted to sell this product to other auto companies and other automotives supplies. [Microsoft's agreement with Ford allows the company to market the Microsoft Auto platform to other automakers in 2009.]

Sync runs on a 400Mhz processor that comes from Freescale. The Reference design shares a substantial number of critical components with the Microsoft Zune media player, perhaps not coincidentally. There's substantially more RAM and flash memory in every Sync module than we required originally, because we have a vision of continuing to develop new [Sync] applications and let customers add them. Processing power, memory, and even some hardware elements in Sync aren’t being used at launch and are [reserved] for future applications and to [retain the ability] for cars to be upgradable.

JJ: You mentioned that Ford Sync will be upgradable with new software applications. What are some of the applications that are currently available?

GJ: We've announced the two that will be available by end of 2008: remote diagnostics and a 911 Assist application [which uses a smart phone attached to a Ford Sync system to call 911 after an accident], but you can expect Ford to announce new applications for Sync every six to 12 months. My engineering team has a list of more than 400 ideas for software applications that could be built on the Sync platform. Within reason, almost anything that a smart phone does is within the reach of Sync, including connectivity. If a phone has access to information [over the] Internet, it's within the realm of possibility for Sync to reach out to the Internet as well. We don't have any real Internet-enabled applications for Sync now, although with the right kind of phone you can stream Internet radio from a phone into your car with the current implementation of Sync. [Let's take] Internet radio as an example: In the current Sync system, to listen to Internet radio in your car, you have to use your Internet-enabled smart phone to browse to the webpage where the Internet radio station is located, start it playing on your phone, then it will stream to the car. It would be possible for us to create a set of radio presets in the car, so you could have your favorite Internet radio presets on your radio (just like you have traditional AM/FM radio presets), so you could easily listen to Internet radio in your car. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of ideas.

Our special vehicles team (SVT) has approached us, and they would like an application on Sync that could download performance data from the car, so when these guys go down the drag strip it would download performance data from their engine computer, load it onto a USB thumb drive, and let them analyze the data after they've gone down the track. In interviews like this, more ideas will come up and we'll add them to our list.

JJ: General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner recently spoke about future vehicle designs that could incorporate vehicle-to-vehicle communications, GPS, sensors, and other technologies to increase vehicle safety. Ford Sync is obviously just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vehicle technology. Do you expect other types of technologies to show up in vehicles over the next five to ten years?

GJ: I would. I really see two different branches in the near term. Ford is engaged in some government-sponsored projects for car-to-car communication and car-to-infrastructure communication that are partly designed around safety technology. [These technologies would facilitate] coming up to an intersection and knowing whether someone is going to blow through a red light, and getting a warning that your car should stop, or that the car would actually stop itself. That kind of wireless technology requires a level of reliability that's probably above what's required for something like Sync. We have discussions within Ford between our car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications research group and the Sync group, but at the moment they're being managed separately because the government project is still an advanced project and Sync is in production.

Our motivation with Sync is to be nimble and fast, and to allow rapid change, and ultimately to allow a lot of different people access to the Sync platform to write software applications. That's probably not the model you would want to follow if you’re developing a critical safety application where you need more reliable, instantaneous communications.