Education, education, education. This was the underlying message in the presentations and debates during the passenger car day at Automotive World’s recent Megatrends Europe ’13 event in Brussels.
Education is needed for smart technology to reach meaningful levels of penetration in the automotive industry. It is an issue which affects suppliers and OEMs in the fields of powertrain, safety and connectivity, and all parties need educating on what is best for them to make, sell, buy and use.
Development in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) has been rapid, and was the subject of much of the debate in the safety stream. Interestingly, there is increasing potential for confusion over ADAS technology. Drivers need to understand the benefits of it, but ADAS is a catch-all term used to describe a multitude of driver assistance technologies, each developed for different real-world situations, said Euro NCAP’s Secretary General, Michiel van Ratingen. You cannot buy an ‘ADAS’, but you can buy things like ESP and ESC, or LDW and LKA – a real spaghetti soup of acronyms, some of which sound alike but do different things, others which sound different but do the same thing.
This was echoed by BMW’s Klaus Kompass, who underlined the difficulty of “selling” optional safety technology like ADAS to the public. Consumers need to understand exactly what ADAS technology they may be about to buy, or indeed already have in their cars.
Whilst safety technology has advanced, the industry needs to move on from analysing crash data to analysing data on avoided collisions said Kompass and Casto Lopez Benitez, Policy Officer, Road Safety Unit, DG MOVE at the European Commission. A successfully avoided collision currently does not show up in any data, making it difficult to correctly assess the performance of collision avoidance technology.
Vehicle connectivity and driver distraction go hand in hand. Some say drivers have always been distracted; others say it is becoming worse with the advent of brought-in devices. Discussion in the connectivity stream focused on the topic of distraction and the built-in/brought-in/beamed-in debate. A clear majority of cars on the world’s roads are not connected, and that is likely to remain so for some considerable time. Of those with connected vehicle technology, many users still need educating on how to pair their brought-in devices; they also need to be taught the benefits of not only the entertainment aspects of infotainment, but also the genuine information: communication, traffic, smart route planning and navigation, or vehicle status.
It is down to the relevant players to guide owners on how to use their systems. Humans are the best adaptive system, far better than any electronics. But let us not forget how clever cars can be, said one of the panels in a stream that included Clint Steiner of Garmin, Emil Dautovic of QNX and Nuance’s Luc van Tichelen: cars already come equipped with a high number of sensors, and we should make more use of them. Why not design in the ability to decide what information to present to the driver and when? Approaching a complex junction is hardly the time for the car to be informing you that you have a new message.
This led on to a discussion about the possibility of age-related HMIs, the idea being that displays and features are designed to be appropriate to the user: remove the more youthful apps and services from displays used by older drivers, and add in – or perhaps even disable – those same apps for younger drivers.
Enforcement is an issue. But how smart should a car be? If it is smart enough to detect that a driver is fatigued, should that car even “let” the driver drive?
Discussion about infotainment was not exclusive to the connectivity stream, however: infotainment technology should also be developed such that it provides drivers with safety information as well as “comfort and communication” said BMW’s Kompass. The idea of designing into the car the concept of not distracting drivers, and delivering only what is needed, was supported by the EC’s Benitez.
But, on the other hand, the need for education is not limited to infotainment and ADAS. Drivers unused to vehicles equipped with “interventionist” technology, ranging from AEB to LKA, may panic when their vehicle responds in an unexpected way. The potential risk of leaving a driver to figure out how, when and why such technology works could be just as high as not having it in the vehicle at all.
Much of the debate about how to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions naturally centres on engine downsizing – a matter restated by Ford’s Carsten Weber in his presentation about Ford’s EcoBoost engine. Nonetheless, delegates attending the powertrain stream also heard about improvements that can be made through lubricants and transmissions. Indeed, at a time when suppliers and OEMs are considering upwards of 8-speed gearboxes for the mainstream cars of the future, AVL’s Stephen Jones threw down the concept that four gears might just be sufficient.
The convergence of topics across the event’s three streams was clear, with Castrol illustrating just how diverse the automotive industry has become, by appearing in the connectivity stream. Tasked with defining the Castrol of the future, its Innoventures division is looking at all aspects of the industry, from fuels and lubricants to the connected car.
There may be a lesson in there for all automotive industry stakeholders. Indeed, Megatrends Europe ’13 proved to issue something of a call to arms for the industry: it’s time to educate.
