Car manufacturers starting to compete

**Penzance** · 07-06-2010, 11:15 PM

Here's where the CarPC arena is going... manufacturers are coming out with competition to what the folks here have been doing for a long time, in response to market pressure:

Edmunds: Automakers Grapple with New-Age Dilemma: Software or Hardware?

The article is a few months old but is a good overview.

Honestly, I don't see how they can be as quick at innovation as either this community can, or the Smartphone market - the pace of development there borders on the insane. Unfortunately for the OEMs, the life of a car is a lot longer than a PC or a smart phone. Most purchasers (ordinary consumers, not enthusiasts) of a device have a tendency to keep it unchanged once they buy it.

There is also the safety factor. I've got another few links to be posted on the coming struggle between what we think we should be allowed to do and what the authorities consider safe.

**OldSpark** · 07-07-2010, 12:26 AM

What? You saying open community and amateurs (non-paid) are quicker than commercial interests? NEVER!

And only qualifies manufacturers can be trusted to deliver systems that are safe - we wouldn't want a car to be unstoppable because of some amateur fault would we?!

[For the naive, please do NOT underestimate my sarcasm in the above. Next they'll have you believe that freebie Apache was once the most popular hatemail server!]

**justchat_1** · 07-07-2010, 02:10 AM

Other then the fact that the author has no idea what the word embed means...its a decent article. I'm surprised there was no mention of the Chevy volts iphone remote control.

**Heather** · 07-07-2010, 09:36 AM

Good article...not 100% accurate. Ford is really clear that their approach is 3 pronged - embedded, brought in, and beamed in. The idea being that they provide a few key apps, allow you to integrate smart phone apps and then eventually, let the cloud works its magic to stream apps.

I would not say that there are 2 clear camps. From Detroit telematics, its sounds like there is just a whole bunch of people going....we know people want access to apps, but we don't want to be held liable if something happens to the driver while using the app in our car.

For this reason, I have been advocating that we all start using the auto app mart. If we put our apps in one place, then at the very least we can show what innovative potential a community like ours has.