The connected vehicle - driving in the cloud

Cars are already more silicon than steel. As makers add LTE high speed broadband, they are destined to become more app than automobile. The possibilities that come with connecting your car to the cloud are scintillating. No wonder Gil Golan, director at General Motors' Advanced Technical Center in Israel, says the automotive industry is at an 'inflection point'.

"If you put LTE to the vehicle ... you are going to open a very wide pipe and you can send to the cloud and get results with almost no latency"

Gil Golan, General Motors

After a century continually improving the engine, suspension and transmission, car makers are now busy embracing technologies outside their traditional skill sets. The result is a period of unprecedented change and innovation.

Gil Golan, director at General Motors' Advanced Technical Center in Israel, cites the use of in-camera car systems to aid driving and parking as an example. "Five years ago almost no vehicle used a camera whereas now increasing numbers have at least one, a fish eye-camera facing backwards."  Vehicles offering 360-degree views using five cameras are taking to the road and such numbers will become the norm in the next five years. 

The result is that the automotive industry is hiring people with optics and lens expertise, as well as image processing skills to analyse the images and video the cameras produce. "This is just the camera; the vehicle is going to be loaded with electronics," says Golan.

In 2004 the [automotive] industry crossed the point where, on average, we spend more on silicon than on steel

Moore's Law

Semiconductor advances driven by Moore's Law have already changed the automotive industry. "In 2004 the [automotive] industry crossed the point where, on average, we spend more on silicon than on steel," says Golan.

Moore's Law continues to improve processor and memory performance while driving down cost. "Every small system can now be managed or controlled in a better way," says Golan. "With a processor and memory, everything can be more accurate, more functionality can be built in, and it doesn't matter if it is a windscreen wiper or a sophisticated suspension system."

Current high-end vehicles have over 100 microprocessors. In turn, chip makers are developing 100 Megabit and 1 Gigabit Ethernet physical devices, media access controllers and switching silicon for in-vehicle networking to link the car's various electronic control units (ECUs).

The growing number of on-board microprocessors is also reflected in the software within vehicles. According to Golan, the Chevrolet Volt has over 10 million lines of code while the latest Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter has 8.7 million. "These are software vehicles on four wheels," says Golan. Moreover, the design of the Chevy Volt started nearly a decade ago.

Car makers must keep vehicles, crammed with electronics and software, updated despite their far longer life cycles compared to consumer devices such as smartphones.

According to General Motors, each car model has its content sealed every four or five years. A car design sealed today may only come on sale in 2016 after which it will be manufactured for five years and remain on the road for a further decade. "A vehicle sealed today is supposed to be updated and relevant through to 2030," says Golan. "This, in an era where things are changing at an unprecedented pace."

As a result car makers work on ways to keep vehicles updated after the design is complete, during its manufacturing phase, and then when the vehicle is on the road, says Golan.

Industry trends

Two key trends are driving the automotive industry:

• The development of autonomous vehicles
• The connected vehicle 

Leading car makers are all working towards the self-driving car. Such cars promise far greater safety and more efficient and economical driving. Such a vehicle will also turn the driver into a passenger, free to do other things. Automated vehicles will need multiple sensors coupled to on-board algorithms and systems that can guide the vehicle in real-time.

Golan says camera sensors are now available that see at night, yet some sensors can perform poorly in certain weather conditions and can be confused by electromagnetic fields - the car is a 'noisy' environment. As a result, multiple sensor types will be needed and their outputs fused to ensure key information is not missed.

"Remember, we are talking about life; this is not computers or mobile handsets," says Golan. "If you put more active safety systems on-board, it means you have to have a very solid read on what is going on around you."

The Chevrolet Volt has over 10 million lines of code while the latest Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter has 8.7 million

Wireless

Wireless communications will play a key role in vehicles. The most significant development is the advent of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular standard that will bring broadband to the vehicle.

Golan says there are different perimeters within and around the car where wireless will play a role. The first is within the vehicle for wireless communication between devices such as a user's smart phone or tablet and the vehicle's main infotainment unit.

Wireless will also enable ECUs to talk, eliminating wiring inside the vehicle. "Wires are expensive, are heavy and impact the fuel economy, and can be a source for different problems: in the connectors and the wires themselves," says Golan.

A second, wider sphere of communication involves linking the vehicle with the immediate surroundings. This could be other vehicles or the infrastructure such as traffic lights, signs, and buildings. The communication could even be with cyclists and pedestrians carrying cellphones. Such immediate environment communication would use short-range communications, not the cellular network.

Wide-area communication will be performed using LTE. Such communication could also be performed over wireline. "If it is an electric vehicle, you can exchange data while you charge the vehicle," says Golan.

This ability to communicate across the network and connect to the cloud is what excites the car makers.

You can talk to the vehicle and the processing can be performed in the cloud

Cloud and Big Data

"If you put LTE to the vehicle, you are showing your customers that you are committed to bringing the best technology to the vehicle, you are going to open a very wide pipe and you can send to the cloud and get results with almost no latency," says Golan.

LTE also raises the interesting prospect of enabling some of the current processing embedded in the vehicle to be offloaded onto servers. "I can control the vehicle from the cloud," says Golan. "You can talk to the vehicle and the processing can be performed in the cloud."

The processing and capabilities offered in the cloud are orders of magnitude greater than what can be done on the vehicle, says Golan: "The results are going to be by far better than what we are familiar with today."

Clearly pooling and processing information centrally will offer a broader view than any one vehicle can provide but just what car processing functions can be offloaded are less clear, especially when a broadband link will always be dependent on the quality of the cellular coverage.

Safety critical systems will remain onboard, stresses Golan, but some of the infotainment and some of the extra value creation will come wirelessly.

Choosing the LTE operator to use is a key decision for an automotive company. "We have to make sure you [the driver] are on a very good network," says Golan. "The service provider has to show us, prove to us [their network], and in some cases we run basic and sporadic tests with our operator to make sure that we do have the network in place."

Automotive companies see opportunity here.

"When you get into a vehicle, there is a new type of behaviour that we know," says Golan. "We know a lot about your vehicle, we know your behaviour while you are driving: your driving style, what coffee you like to drink and your favourite coffee store, and that you typically fill up when you have a half tank and you go to a certain station."

This knowledge - about the car and the driver's preferences when driving - when combined with the cloud, is a powerful tool, says Golan. Car companies can offer an ecosystem that supports the driver. "We can have everything that you need while in the vehicle, served by General Motors," says Golan. "Let your imagination think about the services because I'm not going to tell you; we have a long list of stuff that we work on."

If we don't see that what we work on creates tremendous value, we drop it

General Motors already owns a 'huge' data centre and being a global company with a local footprint, will use cloud service providers as required.

So automotive is part of the Big Data story? "Oh, big time," says Golan. "Business analytics is critical for any industry including the automotive industry."

Innovation

Given the opportunities new technologies such as sensors, computing, communication and cloud enable, how do automotive companies remain focussed? 

"If we don't see that what we work on creates tremendous value, we drop it," says Golan. "We have no time or resources to spend on spinning wheels."

General Motors has its own venture capital arm to invest in promising companies and spends a lot of time talking to start-ups. "We talk to every possible start-up; if you see them for the first time you would say: 'where is the connection to the automotive industry?'," says Golan. "We talk to everybody on everything." 

The company says it will always back ideas. "If some team member comes up with a great idea, it does not matter how thin the company is spread, we will find the resources to support that," says Golan.

General Motors set up its research centre in Israel a decade ago and is the only automotive company to have an advanced development centre there, says Golan."The management had the foresight to understand that the industry is undergoing mega trends and an entrepreneurial culture - an innovation culture - is critically important for the future of the auto industry."

The company also has development sites in Silicon Valley and several other locations. "This is the pipe that is going to feed you innovation, and to do the critical steps needed towards securing the future of the company," says Golan. "You have to go after the technology."

Further reading:

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