Bubble cars are on the way back

At the recent Frankfurt motor show, Peugeot showed off Moovie, a near-spherical plexiglass-bodied car with giant hoops for rear wheels, with passengers entering and exiting via sliding doors that double as giant hubcaps. Not a proposal for a real car, sadly, but some admirable out-of-the-box thinking about packaging.
At the upcoming Tokyo show, Nissan will show of Pivo, a car in two parts – a spherical passenger compartment mounted on a trolley-like wheeled base, with the passenger pod able to swivel about a vertical pivot (hence the Pivo name, presumably). The idea is that instead of craning your neck and glancing at mirrors while reversing, you instead spin the pod around 180 degrees so that the car is suddenly facing in the opposite direction – without moving a tyre.
The lithium-ion-battery powered Pivo also incorporates a variety of other interesting technologies:

The three-seater car comes with a number of user-friendly technologies, including Nissan's Around View Monitor which reduces blind spots by displaying the outside surroundings on screens mounted on the inside of the car's A-pillars located on either side of the windshield. A dash-mounted infrared (IR) commander allows the driver to operate the navigation and stereo systems with simple finger movements without letting go of the steering wheel.

Neat PC has va-va-Voom

Taiwanese components maker VIA Technologies has teamed up with California-based in-car specialist Mini-box to come up with a $300 automotive PC.
Called the VoomPC, the unit fits in a variety of vehicles – not just Va-Va-Voom-equipped Renault hatchbacks.
Despite the terrible name, the VoomPC looks like a nice piece of kit.
It is based on VIA’s C3 processor and uses a Mini-box 12-volt power supply unit that is able to protect the PC from power surges and also monitors power usage to prevent flat batteries when the car is parked. Apparently the PC draws only 30 watts while running –not including the necessary monitor.
The Voom also helpfully switches off the car’s audio amplifier while it boots up, preventing deafening bass thumps as the two systems interconnect.
The x86-compatible C3 means the Voom can run Windows or Linux, while connectivity options include USB 2.0, FireWire, Ethernet, S-Video, VGA and six-channel audio. CardBus slots provide for expansion and the addition of wireless LAN or GPRS telephony adapters.
Sadly the $300 (£170) price tag will be history by the time you’ve imported one into the country. Mini-box will ask UK buyers to pay for UPS Worlwide Express shipping and of course HM Customs & Excise will also want a word.

VW foresees smart body panels

VW yesterday hosted a conference at its Phaeton factory in Dresden to discuss the potential of MFC. Never heard of MFC? Well, it’s not KFC knock-off Mississippi Fried Chicken, but Macro Fibre Composites. Obviously.

According to Volkswagen, MFCs promise a revolution in industrial design. By embedding piezo-electric fibres in other materials, the firm hopes to make “adaptronic” components – or large-scale pieces of car that change their physical properties in response to electrical signals. As VW says:

Using adaptive systems it is possible to convert passive systems, such as structural body or running gear components, into active systems. This leads to structural components that can actively reduce vibration as required, thus enhancing comfort and safety. Examples of this are the active car roof, active cabriolet reinforcements and the active propshaft. Vibration-reduced windscreens are also conceivable.

Because piezo-electric materials create electricity when they are stressed, adaptronic components can also participate in two-way conversations, informing a central control unit about their physical state. For example, instead of placing numerous sensors around a vehicle to detect collisions, adaptronic panels could send their own signals at the instant of impact.

Off-road robots to battle it out

Tomorrow, 43 of the finest robot vehicles will duke it out in a contest that will leave only one winner. Well, actually, it's not Robot Wars, and in fact tomorrow will see the start of the elimination round not the final bout of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the second off-road racing challenge for vehicles that don't have drivers. And there will be 20 winners going through to the race proper. But it should be good anyway.

The IT Sneak blog sums up last year's race nicely:

In 2004 the hot favourite was a modified military Humvee called Sandstorm, built by Red Team Racing. This seven-feet-wide, two-tonne behemoth was sponsored by Intel among others and boasted four Itanium and eight Xeon processors. It got the furthest of all the entrants last year, covering a somewhat embarrassing 7.4 miles before getting itself wedged.
With lessons learned, this year promises a better race.

The race itself will be held on 8 October over a course that remains a closely guarded secret. A few facts are known: it will be in the Nevada desert, it will be between 140 and 175 miles long, and robots will have to complete the course in less than 10 hours to pick up the $2 million prize.

SiliconValley.com has a great article tracking the fortunes of one of the last three teams to qualify for the knock-out round – out of an initial 195 entries. The prospects for this particular team are summed up by the name: Team Underdawg.

These aren't remote-control cars, which many people assume when they hear about the Darpa Grand Challenge. [The vehicles] must operate with no human involvement.

“It's really an amazing challenge and I think most people don't realise how difficult it is because everyone takes driving for granted,” said Jonathan Stark, the leader of Team Underdawg. “But trying to teach a computer to do it is very difficult.”

That's the least of the Blue Team's worries. While Underdawg only has to teach its Jeep Cherokee how to driver, Blue Team also has to teach its vehicle to balance. For reasons of masochism, it seems, the team has based its Ghostrider robot on a 125cc off-road motorcycle...

If Porsche were Apple, VW would be HP

Analyst firm Ovum has given its assessment of the news that Porsche is to take a 20 percent stake in Volkswagen.

The eggheads at Ovum don’t normally pronounce on happenings in the car industry, but have made an exception in this instance, with an interesting assessment penned by Richard Holway:

VW is the fourth largest car manufacturer in the world - with brands from Skoda and Audi to Bentley. It has revenues of €89bn, but makes just €700m profits. It has a market value of €16.6bn. Porsche makes the same profits on revenues of just €6.4bn and is valued at €6bn. Porsche makes just 80,000 cars a year compared to Volkswagen's five million!

We all know that these same problems exist in the volume IT hardware production and distribution sectors. So much so that IBM has sold its PC division to the Chinese. We also know that, just like in the automobile sector, it's the niche IT players that are both the most profitable and the most highly valued. Apple taking a stake in HP, or Research in Motion taking a stake in Ericsson, would be no more strange or out of proportion than Porsche taking a 20 percent stake in Volkswagen.

Mind you, the real reason for the Porsche stake is to protect Volkswagen from a non-German takeover bid. The current ‘Volkswagen law’, which gives them protection, is likely to be overruled by the European Court of Justice in 2007.

The VW law that Holway refers to states that no single shareholder can cast more than 20 percent of the votes at a shareholders’ meeting, regardless of the number of shares owned. This rule makes a hostile takeover virtually impossible, particularly as the state of Lower Saxony currently owns close to 20 percent of VW.

Fuel-cell vehicles to land in Trafalgar Square

Londoners who fancy getting up close and personal with fuel-cell technology will be able to do so next month: a selection of fuel-cell projects will be on public display in Trafalgar Square on Monday 3 October 2005, from 1pm until 5.30pm. The exhibits form part of the Grove Fuel Cell Symposium, a major international conference that is running from 4 – 6 October.
Among the delights waiting to be prodded by small children and crapped on by pigeons will be the Mercedes-Benz F-Cell; a weird-looking wheeled pod called the Microcab; and the equally outlandish ENV fuel-cell motorcycle from Intelligent Energy.
As well as the public display there will also be a formal exhibition that is free to attend providing you register, plus a paid-for conference track. Auto IT will beam back pics from the display and exhibition in due course, and will also attempt to sneak into the conference.

Pay-per-mile insurance

UK insurer Norwich Union is currently trialling what it calls “Pay As You Drive” insurance – drivers aged 18 to 23 can sign up for the pilot programme if they feel so inclined.
The company fits a GPS-based tracking device in the car and instead of paying a flat yearly premium for their insurance cover, customers are charged by the mile – with costs varying according to speed, location and time of day.
It all sounds very Big Brother, but then millions of consumers happily let supermarkets monitor what they eat through loyalty card schemes, so who knows? Maybe it will catch on. Unlike traditional insurance policies, Pay As You Drive lets customers cut their costs if they are having a bad month with their credit card or, alternatively, thrash through the town centre at 11.30pm if they’re feeling flush.
At present the project is in the research and development phase, according to company spokesman Doug Vallgren. He expects to be ready for a UK roll-out in about 12 months’ time.
Norwich Union's parent company, Aviva, also owns Lex, the UK's biggest fleet leasing firm, so could presumably extend the same approach to that business - assessing the remaining worth, or lack of it, of a car under lease terms. Again, thrash the car, drive on rough roads, park near the coast and its salty breezes, and you may feel a pain directly in the wallet.

Boffin aims to boostrap web for cars

Cambridge academic Jon Crowcroft doesn’t want to wait for a government-imposed network to wirelessly link up cars into co-operating convoys, of the sort envisaged in Japan. Instead he plans to kick-start a mobile revolution from the ground up, mostly by waving his arms enthusiastically while spilling out sentences that begin, “Imagine if...”

Crowcroft argues that all the tools necessary to extend the internet to cars are already available. “The Mac Mini fits right in the radio slot,” he enthuses, speaking at the Connected Car conference in Cambridge, UK, before pointing out that the recently-launched Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) is smaller still and wireless-ready.

Not that Crowcroft envisages drivers playing networked shoot-em-ups while barrelling along in the fast lane. Instead he foresees co-operative networks of cars pooling information about road conditions, exchanging data on an opportunistic basis.

If every car carried a wireless transceiver and a forward-looking webcam, he suggests, and relayed real-time images via a hop-by-hop network to a fixed web server, people would be able to preview the very recent state of almost any road prior to embarking on a journey. Crowcroft suggests drivers might want to “fly” through a preview stitched together from recent snapshots before choosing a route.

For those already on the road, a few short wireless hops ahead may be car that can see a hazard you will shortly encounter. Another might warn of a motorway tailback. Those stuck in such jams might access views ahead to find out the cause of the delay, helping them to decide whether to leave at the next opportunity or to stick it out. Or emergency services might access recent images while en route to a pile-up.

At its simplest, such a system would allow drivers to see around upcoming corners.

Beyond Apple or Sony hardware, building blocks are already in place, Crowcroft states. Intel research has demonstrated that ordinary 802.11 wireless LAN technology can work between moving vehicles, despite not being designed for the purpose. And because metal cars block radio signals, interference between wireless units sitting in traffic jams falls off rapidly, Crowcoft says. That means 802.11’s relatively few communication slots can be reused along a line of traffic, making it reasonably well-suited to the task.

Besides, Crowcroft doesn’t believe in waiting for some standards body somewhere to come up with the perfect enabling technology. “Most standards bodies are dead in the water, as far as innovation is concerned,” he asserts. “The IETF has been dead for 10 years – if you go there, you can smell it.”

Can snooping cars preserve privacy?

At today’s Connected Car conference, Dr Robert Harle of the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory outlined some interesting insights into the car of tomorrow.
The lab has outfitted a Renault Kangoo van as a mobile testbed for what the researchers call a “sentient vehicle”. It now boasts a desktop computer complete with mouse, monitor and keyboard (and in fact a desk) in the rear load area, plus a high-spec GPS system, GPRS mobile telephony and Wi-Fi links, forward-looking camera, plus an LCD touch screen and USB connectors up in front by the driver. The PC provides the brains for a variety of projects encompassing car-to-car and car-to-fixed communications; wide-area data collection such as pollution monitoring; vehicle tracking; location-aware computing; and studying driving habits.
One of the most promising innovations is a proposal for road usage charging that promises to detect non-payment without invading people’s privacy by tracking their every move - and thus violating the Human Rights Act.
All road charging systems require a location-aware black box of some sort. Harle proposes that it should be capable of examining not the car it’s installed in, but the car in front. In operation, it would work as follows.

1. The car uses GPS to determine which charging zone it is in.
2. A camera that is part of the black box detects when there is another vehicle ahead.
3. The black box wirelessly connects to its counterpart in the car in front, demanding an encrypted token that will prove that the car in front has paid the charge.
4. If a valid token is received, the first black box does nothing more, simply waiting until a different vehicle is ahead before repeating the procedure.
5. If no valid token is received, licence plate data and an image of the vehicle ahead is stored automatically and then uploaded to the charging authority when the car next passes a roadside wireless access point.

It’s a clever system. Rather than each box reporting the movements of its legitimate, fee-paying car owner, all the boxes instead act as vigilantes challenging other road users to prove that they too are legitimate. No data about the movements of fee payers is ever recorded.
Despite its elegance, it seems unlikely to be adopted by governments intent on the spin-off benefits that would come through using black boxes to detect speed violations and to track those who are under surveillance.
Update: The Times has now published a piece based on Dr Harle’s talk.

Mercedes’ open and shut case

The Risks digest has an entertaining little story about the hidden dangers of remote central locking, as inadvertently discovered by the female driver of one Mercedes-Benz, parking next to another Mercedes-Benz. It seems there aren't quite as many electronic key-code-combinations as there are cars:

The doors of her Mercedes closed. The already parked Mercedes responded with a happy 'click' and opened it's doors ... She tried several times. When her car opened the other one closed. And vice versa.

Seeing better in the dark

The impressive infrared night-vision system fitted to the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, on show in Frankfurt this week, was developed and supplied by Bosch, suggesting that it will appear on the options lists of cars from other manufacturers in the not-too-distant future. The system allows drivers to see a well-lit view of the road ahead without dazzling oncoming motorists.
Arch rival BMW is offering a similar system in its 7-Series, developed by Swedish parts maker Autoliv.
The two systems differ slightly in the kind of image they present to the driver. The Engineer has a great write-up of the pair, here.

Clever steering for Toyota and Lexus

Can’t remember whether to steer into or away from a skid? Just generally panicking when travelling sideways? Upcoming new cars from Toyota and Lexus aim to help.
The third-generation Toyota Rav4 softroader, currently being poked and prodded at the Frankfurt motor show, will join the posh BMWs blogged about two weeks ago in helping drivers steer out of trouble.
Emergency driver aids, including braking and stability systems, are linked with the power steering unit to bring a greater degree of automated control over the Rav4’s behaviour. The system is called VSC+ (vehicle stability control plus):

VSC+ works with the electric power steering to add steering torque assistance to the conventional stability control system. It anticipates the occurrence of understeer or oversteer and assists the driver by making the correct steering action easier and an incorrect action more difficult.

As with the BMW system, controlling the steering also helps to correct the sideways pull felt when braking or accelerating on surfaces with patchy grip, when the left and right wheels have different amounts of purchase.
Unlike most BMWs, the 4x4 Rav4 is able to bring in different levels of torque split front and rear to help keep everything in a straight line.
Lexus GS 430 and RX 400h models, as well as the forthcoming IS 220d and GS 450h, get a plusher variant of VSC+ labouring under the name VDIM. Not actually very dim, this adds the possibility of tweaking the steering rack ratio to assist the driver.

VW to offer USB ports for music players

Hot on the heels of Mazda’s talk of USB-friendly cars comes news from VW that its upcoming Golf R32 and Eos folding tin-top will gain the option of a USB socket or Apple iPod connector.
Following the R32 and Eos debuts at Frankfurt, the sockets will appear on the options lists of the Golf, Golf Plus and Touran, plus other models next year.
It sounds like a suitably clever system, that treats the iPod or USB stick (or other player attached by cable) as if it were a CD autochanger:

You can simply plug USB sticks into the built-in console in the centre armrest ... Up to six music folders can be displayed as CDs one to six on the radio or navigation system screen. Any information that has been stored for the music files - for example, the number of the song and the timer - will be displayed. The scan, search and shuffle functions can be selected using the radio buttons as you would for CDs. When you switch the radio off, the track being played will be stopped and will then continue when you turn it back on. The supported formats include MP3, of course.

Honda hybrid looks unhappy

Auto Express has had a quick drive around the block in Honda’s upcoming hybrid, the four-door Civic IMA. It came away reasonably impressed with the driving experience.
Fans of the pointy new Civic hatch will be disappointed to note that the saloon body looks about as purposeful as a pudding. Its grille might be modelled on a Samurai sword, but the overall effect is distinctly blunt-edged.
Will the sharper 5-door shape see a hybrid option? The message is far from clear. Honda UK has previously said it would offer the combination, but its web site currently pigeonholes the IMA motor as a four-door-only option. But, as Top Gear notes, the conventionally powered hatch comes with a capacious cubby under the boot floor where the hybrid batteries are clearly destined to sit.
Given that Toyota is currently making the switch from hybrids perceived as dull-but-worthy to hybrids offering extra oomph without extra thirst, as in the RX400h, one has to wonder why Honda is persisting in putting its leading edge technology into a pipe-and-slippers package.
The company must have got very badly burned with its oddball Insight coupé to have come over so cautious.

Toyota to keep an eye on drivers

Unsurprisingly, you are more likely to crash if an emergency unfolds ahead while you’re not looking at the road – hence Auto IT’s obsession with head-up displays and general disapproval of supplementary screens mounted low in centre consoles. If you’re going to have a built-in screen showing navigation information, it’s safer to put it right at the top of the dashboard.
As long as there are children, spouses and other distractions inside cars, however, drivers will still find the need to look away from the road from time to time.
As a result, Toyota has developed a new safety system that provides early warning of an imminent collision, taking into account whether the driver is looking straight ahead.
Using a camera mounted on the steering column, coupled with an image-processing computer, the system detects the orientation of the driver’s face.
This information is fed into Toyota’s Pre-crash Safety System, which uses radar and a camera to detect obstacles on the road ahead so that the driver can be prompted to stand on the brakes when a collision seems very likely. Then, if the driver fails to react to the alarm and a collision still appears imminent, Toyota’s system will throw out the anchors and perform an emergency stop all by itself, regardless of how the driver’s right foot reacts.
According to Toyota, if the camera reveals that the driver is not facing forwards then the warnings will be delivered sooner - or in other words when the probability of a crash is somewhat lower – to give a moment longer for the driver to assess the emergency.
The new safety feature will be offered initially on a Japanese-market Lexus, starting next spring. Toyota hasn’t yet said which Lexus will get the honour.
Incidentally, Toyota's Pre-crash Safety System (at least partially developed by parts supplier Denso) works a lot like the Bosch Predictive Safety System seen in VW and Audi vehicles. But it has to be said that the German package has a much more reassuring name, particularly for those who want to avoid actually crashing...

Have USB key, will travel

At the Frankfurt show later this month, Mazda will exhibit its Sassou concept, which will showcase some clever ideas calculated to appeal to the iPod generation. The car includes a USB-based ignition key, for example, as interior designer Mickael Loyer explained to WorldCarFans.com: "We conceived the Sassou as having its own hard disk drive, security code recognition and Mazda software for owners, including a navigation program that could be downloaded onto the vehicle’s USB stick key. The owner could download the music he wants to listen to that day, directions to [a new] pub or beach hang-out, using the USB stick key on his computer at home. When he inserts it into the Mazda Sassou interface slot, it would then automatically download onto the concept’s hard drive."
A nice innovation and - the potential for viruses aside - one that sounds like the kind of idea destined to catch on.
More unlikely but in many ways more interesting is an attempt at helping the driver with the increasingly complex job of controlling in-car systems, beyond plonking a touch-screen in the middle of the centre console. The Sassou offers subtle visual feedback throughout the vehicle, to supplement on-screen graphics:

The interface with the driver is intuitive, with [a] joystick used to navigate into the menus and to select main functions. When a function is selected, fluid light circuits illuminate a path to the selected feature; say the air vents, in either the instrument panel or the door trim."

Honda plans web for cars

Some fascinating food for thought over at Honda. Its ASV-3 project (Advanced Safety Vehicles, version 3) aims to do for cars what the internet did for computers.
Although ASV-3 is a wide-ranging safety project, tackling problems such as how to improve the visibility of motorcycles, its most far-reaching avenue of investigation centres on giving vehicles the ability to communicate with each other.
Imagine, for example, that a rock-fall has partially blocked a tight corner, and the next car to approach the spot has to take evasive action. The ASV-3 system in that car could note the emergency manoeuvre and, using conventional satellite navigation, attach a warning to that part of the map. Other cars networked into the same system would then be forewarned if their own navigation systems predict that they might encounter the newly-identified danger zone.
Clearly this kind of data could be centrally pooled and then broadcast, using an efficient publish-and-subscribe architecture.
Equally, Honda suggests that there is merit in allowing cars to communicate wirelessly with each other directly, on a peer-to-peer or mesh network basis, as the cars most likely to be affected are of course already in the immediate vicinity of the trouble spot.
Another scenario aims to alert drivers if two vehicles appear to have convergent intentions. In the example pictured, a motorcycle is heading straight through an intersection, while a car is travelling in the opposite direction towards the junction but has activated its indicators, suggesting it plans to cross the carriageway in front of the bike. Using the Honda system, the two vehicles would communicate and the system might give warnings to both rider and driver of the impending danger.
Clearly Honda’s vision works only if all communicating vehicles have satellite navigation systems and up-to-date maps. And of course it suffers or benefits from the network effect – the value of the system greatly depends on how many others also participate, making it hard to get off the ground.
Government legislation would probably be required, but the potential benefits look very great indeed.

Game on for Saab fanciers

Saab is currently promoting its new 9-3 SportWagon in the UK with an entertaining little online game, with the added bonus that the player who completes the game in the shortest possible time gets to drive away in a lovely new Saab.
Auto IT’s best time so far is a pitiful 4hrs, 3mins, 27secs.
Don’t worry, it doesn’t take four hours to play: the game zips along at a greatly accelerated pace and takes only about ten minutes from start to finish. Contestants can keep exploring the game to find a faster route - with the best effort automatically put forward for the competition.

BMWs steer straight out of trouble

Most modern cars boast stability systems that can selectively brake road wheels and throttle back engine output if it seems that the car is out of control. Many can be partially or completely switched off by drivers who feel particularly skilled, particularly brave, or who have access to a race track and the cash for a new set of tyres, bumpers, bodywork, car, etc.
In most cars the steering is not a part of this electronic bag of safety tricks, but in the latest top-spec BMWs, that’s not the case.
Parts maker Continental is currently supplying BMW with a system that can alter the angle of the steered wheels to complement the efforts of the conventional stability components. It's available when buyers choose BMW's optional Active Steering.
To illustrate the difference, Continental uses the example of a car with its right-hand wheels on tarmac, and its left-hand wheels on ice - a situation that sounds a little contrived, but a great worst-case-scenario. Braking will tend to pull the vehicle around toward the side with the most grip, while accelerating will tend to push the car in the opposite direction. Normally, a driver will feel this and correct by steering against the pull.
However, during emergency braking, the different levels of grip will tend to cause problems for a conventional stability system. As ABS and ESP units step in, they will act to keep the car in a straight line by effectively steering the back wheels, by braking differently left and right. The result is that in an emergency, the car will tend to brake as if three out of four wheels are on ice, rather than just two. Obviously not a great leap forward in safety.
By adding electric motors to bring in a steering angle as required, even if the driver does nothing at the helm, Continental says it can get maximum braking effort out of all four wheels.