q&a Connected Evolution
John Ellis, global technologist and head of the Ford developer program, discusses the evolution of the connected car, Ford’s role, and how the aftermarket will be affected.
Considering the impact that the connected car will soon have on the automotive market, under- standing its origins is something people will likely want to know. Could you provide some background on the technology and how it will be used with Ford? Ellis: “On the head unit, there are buttons, knobs, dials, wrapped with APPlink software. Ford’s APIs (Application Programming Inter- faces) are available to apps and developers. It allows developers to use a platform consumers know and love. The phone is paired with a head unit over Bluetooth, and the developer is able to communicate with the head unit. We don’t want to give rogue software access to USA Today, Amazon, Rhapsody, Khaliki, and other app developers, using their APIs. Ford is working to enable app developers.”
What is Ford’s history with the connected car and its vision for the future of the medium? Ellis: “We’ve had the connected car since it was first created
and I’ve had the pleasure of working with the first company to do that, Motorola. Today, we have connectivity, but in the industry we’re going through this period where we’ve been connected. We’ve experienced an evolution of what it means to be connected. We’ve had cell phones and OnStar since the 90s. We introduced SYNC in 2000 with a foray into connectivity. We recognized that mobile devices were becoming popular and engaging more of a person’s time. SYNC was originally created with safety in mind and quickly blossomed into something far greater than that.
When we talk about the connected car, how do we handle additional points of connectivity, such as the embedded modem? What’s going to happen in the future when we have a phone that’s four or five generations different than the phone we had in 2007 when we introduced SYNC? These are questions we have to answer. Our challenge is to educate people on what we mean by connectivity, educate Ford and find the best way to mediate between all the different expectations in terms of where the technology goes for the embedded connections in the car, and for the grounded connection, and what kind of software helps with session management in the vehicle to provide the best outward connection. At the end of the day, customers want
14 Mobile Electronics August 2014
to go from point A to B, so it works. It all comes down to the broad, ‘it just works’ mindset.”
Will there be standardization between automakers, either in screen size, network tech- nology, programming language, or connectivity? Ellis: “Using the word standard really implies SAE
JOHN ELLIS
GLOBAL TECHNOLGIST & HEAD OF THE FORD DEVELOPER PROGRAM
(Society of Automotive Engineers) or some other governing body. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a standard on the screen size. We might. I don’t see homogeny in screen sizes. Certainly Apple is the only one. I think the physical constraints of the car will provide some limits but I don’t know if we’ll ever see an actual formal standard that’s con-
formed to by SAE or others. It’s all dependent on the physical level of the car; there is no standardized size. What we might see is a standard that’s imposed, if you will, by Google or Apple as they become more involved in the car. If you look at Google in the OHA (Open Handset Alliance), they dictate some capabilities in the hardware space. They dictate screen size if you want to use their name. If you don’t care about their name, there are many sizes out there that don’t involve the Google brand name.”
In today’s rapidly expanding age of tech innovations with
OEMs, how do you see product development evolving? “There’s an old adage that hardware is soft and easy, and
software is hard and expensive. I’ve learned over time that really good software companies learn quickly to start dictat- ing hardware platforms. And they do because it’s expensive to manage software on a multitude of hardware platforms. In my previous answer I implied I don’t see it happening, but that was just with the industry at large. As more and more companies become software-minded, I think the natural evolution is to get to get a point where we choose less and less hardware platforms and instead focus all our differentiation on the software. As we begin to do that, we’ll find out that in the grand cost of owner- ship, it’s far cheaper to have one or two hardware platforms that support three, four, or five different software variants, depend- ing on what you want to do. In this new world, you realize you’ll take the hits on the smaller things because the overarching picture is that there is a far greater cost with the hardware than with the software.”
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