The autonomous vehicle faces many challenges on the road to full autonomy. While semiautonomous features are beginning to appear, fully driverless cars will take time due to the difficulty of teaching vehicles to safely handle complex traffic situations. Updating vehicles continuously via over-the-air software will also be critical. Startups are helping to advance connectivity and mobility solutions in new ways, with 10 highlighted for their innovative potential to transform the industry.
Connected Car Expo Highlights Opportunities of Auto/Tech Convergence
1.
2. www.AutoAlliance.org
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Powering Our Economy
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3. connected car
he automobile is being reimagined as the center of
an intermodal transportation solution as well as the cen-
ter of our connected lives. The car has become depend-
ent on connectivity and literally driven by electronics.
The software-based car is the future and will transform
how cars are built, sold, serviced and used.
Corporate roles are fuzzier than ever. Consumer electronic
giants are targeting the road while automakers target the living
room. And the great equalizing power of the Internet and the
new sharing economy is affecting the car like never before
through innovative startups. From ride/car sharing and cyber
security to electric vehicles and automated driving, the transfor-
mation resulting from the auto/tech convergence is creating
opportunities never before imagined.
This continually escalating conflu-
ence of technology, business models,
innovation and big thinkers is precise-
ly why the organizers of the Los
Angeles Auto Show created the
Connected Car Expo (CCE). CCE, now
in its third year, brings together the
entire new auto industry ecosystem.
Its goal is to provide a platform for the
companies, industries and leaders in
this evolving marketplace to showcase
their new developments, collaborate
and spotlight the major trends that are shaping tomorrow’s
transportation.
The thought leaders gathering at CCE were curated by our
powerhouse advisory board, who are also some of the top
thinkers in the space. The CCE Advisory Board comprises execu-
tives from Aeris, AT&T, CX3 Marketing, Elektrobit, Ellis and
Associates, Google, MERA , Microsoft, Nvidia, Pandora, Strategy
Analytics and the city of Los Angeles.
This special Automotive News supplement on the connected
car touches upon some of the most disruptive issues as well as
tremendous opportunities facing our future. Navigating this
transformative time for the benefit of all involved will take true
collaboration and careful thought. The Connected Car Expo has
become a crucible where tomorrow’s travel is being forged.
Whichever way the road leads, it will be a history-making journey.
Sincerely, Lisa Kaz
By Lisa Kaz: President, ANSA Productions
Los Angeles Auto Show, Connected Car Expo
T
PAGE 3
Auto/tech convergence
is creating opportunities
never before imaginedcontents4 Miles to go
The challenges of achieving self-driving
vehicles; semiautonomous cars to lead the way.
8 Fast start
Connected Car Expo recognizes potential;
innovation of startups to move the industry.
11 Going mobile?
Major automakers are
experimenting to see if mobility
services can complement their
existing businesses.
13 Cybersecurity
After the Jeep
Cherokee hacking
debacle, automakers
are taking on a dual
role as software
companies, as the
industry scrambles to
change its approach
and practices.
14 Over-the-air care
Once used for crash response and security,
high-tech connections will offer relevant
services on a daily basis.
Produced by
STORIES WRITTEN BY
JULIE LIESSE
4. connected car
PAGE 4
n the connected-car landscape,
nothing is more intriguing — or
challenging — than the idea of the
autonomous vehicle.
“We are on the beginning of a
long path,” said Thomas Form, head
of electronics and vehicle research
for Volkswagen Group. “The idea of
the autonomous car driving you from
point A to point B, in normal traffic, will
take some time. We have a lot to learn.
We know now what we do not know.”
Although automakers, Tier 1 suppliers
and technology companies are working
hard on self-driving
systems, and automak-
ers are adding semiau-
tonomous features to
new models — to help
drivers park, stay in
their lanes and drive in
traffic jams — the fully
autonomous or self-
driving car remains a
long-term target.
“The big challenge is that the car has
to judge situations while driving,” Form
said. “That is what the human driver is
doing every second of driving. There are
situations you can easily handle, when
it’s quite clear what to do. But when you
add in pedestrians and bicycles and
intersections, judgments become more
complicated.”
Handling this challenge is what
Danny Shapiro, senior director of auto-
motive for Nvidia Corp., calls “building
the brain of the autonomous car.” That
is, teaching it to distinguish between the
flashing light of an ambulance and that
of a delivery truck, for instance, or to
recognize that if the door of a parked car
begins to open, the occupant is likely to
push that door wide open and get out of
the car.
“The systems we are building now
are not fixed, but a brain — something
that will learn and can be taught,”
Shapiro said.
Form said one of the top challenges
for that brain will be learning to adjust to
unexpected conditions such as changes
in the weather — when ice develops on
the road or when the car is driving
downhill and suddenly fog appears.
“That’s a small example,” he said.
“There are a lot of situations we cannot
yet handle today.”
Brian Droessler, vice president of soft-
ware and connected solutions in
Continental’s Infotainment and Connect-
ivity business unit, said:“The
really difficult part is as
you move off the high-
ways onto city streets
because those conditions
are much more complex
An illustration of how the new platform for autonomous driving that EB developed with Infineon Technologies and NVIDIA. The
platform will enable vehicles to not just sense, but interpret what’s happening around them. Below, the brain of the Nvidia system.
The challenges of achieving self-driving
vehicles; semiautonomous cars to lead the way
MILES TO GO
I
MILES CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
AUTONOMOUS PARK ASSIST
40%
30%
FULLY AUTONOMOUS DRIVING
37%
27%
AUTONOMOUS DRIVING HDT*
33%
26%
AUTONOMOUS HIGHWAY DRIVING
34%
25%
SOURCE: STRATEGY ANALYTICS
*HDT: High-Density Traffic
NOTE: The other two options not shown in the
chart were “nice-to-have” and “not interested.”
Percentage of U.S. consumers who con-
sider autonomous or semi-autonomous
features either as something they would
pay more for when purchasing a vehicle
or as something that would be a tie-
breaker during vehicle consideration.
2014 2015
> Driving decisions
SHAPIRO
Hoffmeister: Integrating driver
assistance with the human-
machine interface is a
key concern.
5. Detroit | Frankfurt | London | San Francisco | Shanghai | 800.229.4125 | covisint.com
• Securely connecting
vehicles in the cloud.
• Enhancing the connected
driving experience.
• Supporting usage-based
insurance connectivity.
• Leveraging dealer
networks to create loyalty.
Creating a unique and secure
connected vehicle experience
6. connected car
PAGE 6
—more pedestrians, more infrastructure
to interact with.”
Early autonomous cars also will have
to deal with the older vehicles on the
road, those lacking high-tech features
and still being driven by humans.
A key concern is integrating driver
assistance and the human-machine
interface, so that the autonomous driv-
ing system knows when to give control
back to the human occupant of the car
and how to “announce it” so the person
jumps back to attention, said Karsten
Hoffmeister, senior manager of the auto-
motive software consulting business of
Elektrobit.
Droessler agrees: “One of the big
issues and roadblocks is how we engage
and disengage using the human-
machine interface.
From my perspective,
it really is a long and
winding road.”
Part of Continen-
tal’s work, for in-
stance, is developing
a driver analyzer cam-
era that monitors
what the human driv-
er is doing in the car, by analyzing where
the driver’s eyes are, how open they are
and where the gaze is fixed.
If things go wrong
And the final, big task is figuring out
what the car should do if something
goes wrong.
“It’s our biggest challenge at the
moment,” Hoffmeister said. “In many
control units, if something goes wrong,
you simply switch off functionality, but a
car in traffic can’t make a full stop as a
fail-safe solution.”
It’s also clear that autonomous driv-
ing systems will depend on the founda-
tion laid by several related technologies.
Human-machine communication
using voice recognition is the way the
industry is heading.
Voice command is generally per-
ceived as the safest option because it
doesn’t require a driver looking at or
swiping on a screen, but the technology
still needs work because its spotty per-
formance has been a sore point with
consumers.
In addition, said Hoffmeister,“securi-
ty is one of the biggest issues in building
trust in these vehicles.”
Automakers and Tier 1 suppliers need
to secure the engineering and manufac-
turing process from end to end so that
consumers feel confident turning the
wheel over to an autonomous system.
Continuous updates needed
Also critical is the ability to update
the vehicles and their information con-
tinuously, through over-the-air connec-
tions between the automaker and the
vehicle. An autonomous system’s ability
to navigate will rely on up-to-the-
moment mapping information, for
instance.
“Like Tesla, we all need to think of
the car as a device that needs to be
updatable,” said Manuela Papado-
pol, director of global marketing
for Elektrobit.
But only a small percentage of
today’s cars are equipped for over-
the-air updates.
Beyond all that, Droessler said,
“the bigger roadblock is putting all
this together in a cost-
effective way that does-
n’t scare consumers.”
In addition to the
daunting technical
challenges, autono-
mous driving will
trigger changes in
the auto industry
ecosystem and the transportation infra-
structure. Local and national govern-
ments can do much to support the
expansion of semiautonomous and
autonomous driving, but also can
potentially slow things down.
Governments can prioritize their
investment in certain road construction
and lane-marking techniques, as well as
standardized signage for the best recog-
nition by autonomous systems — espe-
cially in the U.S., Droessler said.
Governments could potentially offer
autonomous driving lanes simi-
lar to high-occupancy vehicle
lanes to create a feeling of
safety for the driver in the
early stages of autonomous
driving.
But not wanting to depend
on governments moving for-
MILES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
DROESSLER
Continental expects
partially autonomous
technology in cars next year.
Elektrobit’s
Papadopol:
Cars should
be thought of
as a device
that needs
to be
updatable.
MILES CONTINUED
ON PAGE 10
8. connected car
PAGE 8
HopSkipDrive offers an
alternative view of mobility.
or the first time, the Connect-
ed Car Expo has named its Top
10 Automotive Startups -
companies being recognized for their
innovation and potential to move the
industry forward. Hand-picked and
closely vetted by the Connected Car
Expo’s advisory board, the 10 companies
will offer a glimpse of their businesses at
the expo.
“Automotive is complex: It is not a
phone; it is 4,000 pounds of complex
engineering. Advances in connectivity
and autonomous driving will be difficult
and different in many regards,” said
Michelle Avary, vice president of auto-
motive product and strategy at Aeris and
a member of the advisory board.
“But many of these startups have
really, really great ideas. They can help
the industry get to the place where the
ownership experience is better, driving
is safer and we can offer customers dif-
ferent forms of mobility.”
The startups fall into a set of vertical
categories: alternative components,
autonomous technology, connected
vehicles, mobility and safety. Some are
closely coupled with the existing auto
infrastructure, some completely sepa-
rate from it.
Two of the startups, Getaround and
HopSkipDrive, offer an alternative view
of mobility. Two others, Quanergy and
TriLumina, are working on LiDAR, laser
technology that promises break-
throughs for the mapping and sensing
applications that are so critical for
autonomous driving.
Sober Steering will exhibit technolo-
gy designed to detect drunken drivers.
Driversiti is offering software that can
replace a car’s safety systems and moni-
tor a driver’s performance on the road.
Capio is working to improve voice-
recognition systems, and Nebula
Systems provides a cloud-based way to
aggregate a vehicle’s data and to diag-
nose and fix faults in the electronic con-
trol unit remotely.
“We hope this will help people look at
startups in a different light,” Avary said.
“There is a lot of depth and breadth to
startups affecting our industry. It’s not
just Uber.”
Innovation for the whole car
One of the Top 10 Automotive
Startups will showcase an all-new vehi-
cle: Elio Motors will give attendees a
look at its three-wheeled, 84-mpg $6,800
two-seat car.
Automotive engineer and company
founder Paul Elio said he dreamed
F
Connected Car Expo recognizes potential
and innovation of startups to move the industry
FAST START
STARTUPS CONTINUED ON PAGE 9
Top 10 automotive startups
■ Capio: Next-generation voice-recognition technology
■ Driversiti: Cloud-based situational awareness technology for
driver assistance systems
■ Elio Motors: U.S.-based startup automaker building affordable cars
■ Getaround: Car-sharing technology
■ High Mobility: Beacon technology connecting cars and users
■ HopSkipDrive: Ride-sharing service for kids
■ Nebula Systems: Cloud-based vehicle data analytics
■ Quanergy: LiDAR sensors for autonomous driving and 3-D mapping
■ Sober Steering: Sensors that detect drunken drivers
■ TriLumina: LiDAR technology for autonomous driving and gesture
recognition
SOURCE: CONNECTED CAR EXPO
9. connected car
PAGE 9
about a company called Elio Motors
when he was 8 years old. Now he’s work-
ing on finalizing the $200 million in
financing he needs to go into produc-
tion, targeting first deliveries at the end
of 2016.
“The new automotive landscape in
America makes a project like Elio possi-
ble,” Paul Elio said. “Fifteen years ago,
Americans knew what transportation
looked like — and it was called an SUV.”
Several societal trends, including
cost-consciousness, environmental
awareness and urban congestion, are
boosting interest in Elio’s car, which
already has more than 45,000 reserva-
tions from prospective buyers.
“We can be disruptive without hurting
the big guys,” said Elio, who added that
many of his cars will be bought as “and”
vehicles, providing buyers with personal
transportation as an alternative to the
necessary larger cars they own.
“In America at least, as a society we
either have to urbanize more broadly or
we have to find effective ways for people
to have personal transportation,” Elio
said. He points to research that indicates
people’s ability to rise out of poverty, for
example, depends in part on access to
transportation. “There are parts of the
answer we haven’t seen yet.”
From the startups’ perspective, they
bring not just new ideas but a new
approach to the industry’s work on con-
nected and autonomous cars.
Risto Vahra, CEO of High Mobility,
said: “Carmakers have been trying to do
it by themselves but often apply old
methodologies to a complex new para-
digm. That is where startups like ours
have a chance to make a differ-
ence.We have been working to
understand the culture of the
auto industry.”
Vahra’s background is in
design at Volvo. His goal, he
said, is to bring a Silicon
Valley-style attitude to “make
the technology friendly for
people and to enable natural
interactions with the car.”
His six-person company, based in
Germany, is working on “beacons” that
would be installed in cars. These trans-
mitters would allow the car to
STARTUPS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8
Paul Elio: “We can be
disruptive without hurting
the big
guys.”
STARTUPS CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
10. connected car
PAGE 10
ward on infrastructure improvements,
Form said VW’s commitment is for the
autonomous car to drive safely “without
any additional infrastructure.”
“In the last few years, autonomous
driving is looking more at how we can
embed the technology in the vehicle
rather than relying on the external net-
work,” he said.
Freed up for other tasks
Despite the work that remains,
industry insiders are confident there’s
no turning back. “Nothing happens as
quickly as we think it will,” Droessler
said, “but it looks like this will become a
differentiator for the manufacturers —
they want to compete on this.”
He said Continental expects:
■ Partially autonomous technology in
cars next year.
■ Highly autonomous cars starting to
roll out in 2020.
■ Fully autonomous cars available by
2025, though he cautions that fully
autonomous technology might not
reach even 30 percent market penetra-
tion until 2050.
With such a timetable, he said, “I
don’t think we’ll see as much change in
the short term. In this time period, we’ll
still need standard gauges, steering
wheels, pedals and forward-facing seats.
But down the road, that time when you
are not engaged in the driving task
becomes the time when a lot of other
things can happen in the car.”
Shapiro sees the addition of autono-
mous and even semiautonomous fea-
tures changing the relationship between
the human occupants and the car, and
how the ride looks and feels.
“What we’ll see are more and more
screens, touch interfaces, dashboards in
the windows with information,” he said.
“More autonomous driving means that
you can be working or doing things like
watching movies while you’re riding.
Commerce will take place in the car,
whether that’s making reservations at
restaurants or booking hotels — and
that commercial opportunity makes
many businesses interested in being
part of the connected car.”
Down the road, as autonomous sys-
tems gain traction and increased num-
bers reduce costs — and lead to still
more cars purchased with autonomous
features — the industry will be able to
broadly reimagine how cars are built.
“Once you employ autonomous driv-
ing and start eliminating accidents, you
can start eliminating things like
airbags,” Shapiro said.
“The car can start to look and feel
more like a train car, with no steering
wheel. And then our whole notion of
transportation will change.”
MILES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6
communicate directly with nearby elec-
tronic devices such as smartphones.
“As a person approaches the car, the
car is already doing background checks
to decide if it should open the doors, for
instance, or blink the lights,” Vahra said.
High Mobility’s platform would allow
automakers to decide what specific fea-
tures or apps to offer through the bea-
cons — possibly including, down the
road, vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-
infrastructure communication options
as well.
“The whole auto industry is funda-
mentally changing,” Avary said. “Millen-
nials who have less disposable income are
less inclined to spend that income to pur-
chase a vehicle until they have a family.
That extreme delay in purchasing speaks
to a fundamental shift in our view of
mobility. If you look at the way society is
moving, away from the suburbs and back
into the city, a future based on pulling
your electric vehicle into your Wi-Fi-
equipped garage — it’s silly to limit your-
self to that vision.
“We are at a huge intersection of big
demographic, psychographic, environ-
mental and economic changes hitting
the auto industry at a time of great tech-
nological changes in things like core
connectivity and electrical systems.
These startup companies are coming at
the industry from such unique perspec-
tives — they have rejuvenated us, and
filled us with excitement and hope.”
STARTUPS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9
Germany-based High Mobility is working on
“beacons” that would be installed in vehicles
and would allow the car to communicate
directly with nearby electronic devices such as
smartphones.
““
“As a person
approaches the
car, the car is
already doing
background
checks to decide
if it should open
the doors, for
instance, or blink
the lights.”
Risto Vahra,
CEO of High Mobility
11. connected car
ueled by new technology and
motivated by demographic and
economic trends, transporta-
tion experts are taking a fresh look at
how to help people get where they
want to go.
In the wake of services such as Lyft and
Uber, startups are employing connected-
car technologies to ease car and ride shar-
ing.
Municipalities are looking at new tran-
sit, parking and mobility technologies.
And automakers including Ford Motor
Co., Daimler AG, Honda Motor Co. and
General Motors are experimenting to see
if mobility services can complement their
existing businesses.
To some degree, the automakers may
have little choice.
Ford’s GoDrive experiment
“Times are changing,” said Alicia
Agius, project lead for GoDrive, Ford’s
car-sharing experiment in London.
“Urbanization affects mobility. People
are settling down later, moving to the sub-
urbs later. The younger generations are
much more used to a sharing economy in
general. Services like Airbnb have made
them comfortable with the concept of not
owning, but using products. And with on-
demand, app-based services, anything is
available with the push of a button.”
In addition, she said, in the world’s
densely populated
cities such as Lon-
don, environmental
concerns and con-
strained parking situ-
ations make it more
difficult to own a car.
“On the surface, it
seems there is a con-
flict for an [automak-
er] to talk about car sharing, but really it
makes absolute sense,” Agius said.
“When you look at the world’s highly
urbanized areas that are going to contin-
ue growing in the decades to come, it is
not going to be practical for everyone to
Major automakers are experimenting to see if mobility
services can complement their existing businesses
AGIUS
F
GOING MOBILE?
MOBILE CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
PAGE 11
12. connected car
PAGE 12
own their own cars, let alone two or
three per household. We need other
solutions in place that allow people
access to a vehicle if they can’t own one.
It’s a way of keeping vehicles relevant in
those areas.”
GoDrive is one of two dozen mobility
experiments Ford is conducting within
its Smart Mobility initiative. It offers
Londoners the opportunity to rent a car
by the minute, on demand, with no
membership and no reservation
required for pickup or drop-off. Users
can pick up a Focus EV or a Fiesta with a
1.0-liter EcoBoost engine from one loca-
tion and drop it off at another, in a Ford-
guaranteed parking spot.
“Car sharing has been around for a
long time. It’s just that in the old days, we
used a clipboard and handed you the
keys,” Agius said. “These technology
enablers — the app-based system to
find and reserve the car, to unlock it with
the smartphone, to find the parking
space — make sharing more main-
stream.”
She said Ford is using experiments
such as GoDrive to gather as much infor-
mation as possible about people’s atti-
tudes toward cars, driving and sharing. So
far, she said, “People say what they like is
the flexibility of cars. Cars allow them to
have adventures and discover new things
in the city; they associate cars with inde-
pendence. But there are stresses to car
ownership in cities like ours, and tradi-
tional car-sharing models don’t support
that flexibility and freedom.”
Startup standouts
While automakers consider alterna-
tives to the traditional ownership model,
startup companies are offering cus-
tomers new transportation options.
San Francisco-based Getaround
offers peer-to-peer car sharing: Car
owners can sign up to share their cars
(and make money) with others who
need a ride for an hour, a day or a week-
end. Getaround’s connected-car tech-
nology allows renters to use a smart-
phone to browse available cars, make
reservations and access the car.
Getaround’s mission, said Meg
Murray, the company’s head of communi-
ty, is to reduce the number of cars on the
road by getting more use out of vehicles
that sit unused for large chunks of time.
“We think that globally, the current
transportation model is unsustainable
because of factors like traffic problems
and air pollution,” she said. “We hope to
help solve the problem of car overpopu-
lation.”
The service is available in six cities —
the latest being Chicago, where
Getaround is partnering with the city in
a federally funded study to explore car
sharing. In one of Ford’s mobility exper-
iments, Ford Motor Credit Co. has
encouraged 14,000 Ford owners to share
their leased cars on Getaround.
HopSkipDrive is another California-
based transportation option created to
address a specific need: parents who
have to get their kids from one place to
another.
“Solutions like Uber and Lyft aren’t
for kids,” said Joanna McFarland, one of
three Los Angeles-area moms who cre-
ated HopSkipDrive.
The company hires caregivers who
have available time and wheels to drive
children from school to soccer practice,
for instance. Drivers are screened and
the service uses a series of security
checks — including orange T-shirts for
the drivers, orange flags on the cars and
constant wireless communication with
the parents — to ensure a safe ride.
“It’s a service for all kinds of families
— when both parents work, for single-
parent families, for those who don’t own
a car or for divorced parents who may
not want to see each other when they
drop off their kids,” McFarland said.
Families pay by the ride, pay a premi-
um for rush-hour service and can save
by buying multiple-ride packages. She
said a surprising number of HopSkip-
Drive rides are provided to children ages
14-17.
“There’s been a clear shift in terms of
kids not getting their driver’s licenses
right away, for many reasons,”
McFarland said.
“For me and my generation, the
license was freedom, a connection to the
outside world. Now, kids are connected
to the outside world in their bedroom,
with a computer or phone. And they
have grown up with carpools and are
used to being driven around by some-
one else.”
McFarland said HopSkipDrive can
provide a model for transporting not just
children, but perhaps older people or
those with special
needs — anyone who
needs a little more
than just a ride.
“The attitudes
around car sharing
and ride sharing are
changing,” she said.
“But people also are
more interested and
will demand better
public transportation options, too.”
Getaround’s Murray said: “Uber and
Lyft are becoming household names,
with those ‘last-mile’ solutions they
offer. Getaround is a longer version of
that, for weekend trips or that longer
road trip to Ikea. All of these options are
pretty amazing, and then you throw in
autonomous and connected cars — a
future when you can summon a car to
you to drive you wherever you want to
go.
“Cars will become moving pieces that
are shared resources to take you any-
where you need to go in the city.”
MOBILE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
McFARLAND
GoDrive is one of two dozen mobility experiments Ford is conducting.
13. connected car
hen hackers Chris
Valasek and Charlie
Miller proved this year
that they could wireless-
ly take control of a Jeep
Cherokee, it set off alarms throughout
the auto industry.
Hackers already had shown they
could tinker with vehicle operating and
communication systems. But when
Valasek and Miller used a vulnerability
in the Internet-connected infotainment
system to shut off the Jeep’s transmis-
sion in St. Louis traffic — prompting a
recall of 1.4 million vehicles by Fiat
Chrysler Automobiles — it very publicly
raised the stakes for the auto industry. It
also kicked off another round of discus-
sions and debate about the security of
the connected car.
Valasek, hired with Miller in August
to work on security at ride-hailing serv-
ice Uber, said his goal was to raise
awareness and push the auto industry
to change its approach and practices.
“Security can’t be an afterthought to
this process, and trying to make some-
thing secure after you make it is harder
than trying to secure it during manufac-
ture,” he said. “The auto companies
need to acknowledge that whether they
like it or not, they are software compa-
nies now. They are going to have to
learn about software security.”
He said the auto companies are in
the same sort of position that Microsoft
found itself in back in 2002. Faced with
Microsoft’s reputation as a “leaky” com-
pany attacked by viruses, worms and
other security breaches, then-Chairman
Bill Gates wrote his famous “trustwor-
thy computing” memo that promised to
change the company’s culture and to
choose security first in product devel-
opment.
Said David Strickland, former
administrator of the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration: “We knew
we would come to a point where the
connected vehicle and the importance
of cybersecurity were going to intersect.
No one thought we’d be seeing a need
for enforcement actions so soon.”
Strickland and Valasek are headlin-
ers in the discussion about cybersecuri-
ty at the 2015 Connected Car Expo this
month in Los Angeles.
They’ll discuss the newsmaking safe-
ty issues and security of the car’s oper-
ating and infotainment systems. But
also on the radar are privacy and data
security, as connected cars develop
increased ability — and valid reasons —
to collect information from and about
their owners.
The industry’s Information Sharing
Advisory Center initiative already is
looking at security issues. And immedi-
ately after the FCA hack, U.S. Sens.
Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard
Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced legis-
lation, the Security and Privacy in Your
Car Act of 2015 (SPY Car Act), that
would direct NHSTA and the Federal
Trade Commission to develop stan-
dards for securing the operating sys-
tems and the privacy of connected cars.
Experts stress that, practically speak-
ing, no connected car will be 100 percent
safe from attack, whether the hacker is
seeking to take control of the vehicle or
to steal personal or financial information.
“Today’s car is a network on wheels-
and some of the network components
are small and not very bright,” said
Connected Car Expo panelist Karl
Heimer, special adviser for cybersecuri-
ty to the state of Michigan.
With its hundreds of millions of lines
of code, the connected car is statistical-
ly unlikely to be perfectly secure, he
said.
And then there’s the cost.
“You can partition, encrypt — you
can do things to make a vehicle more
and more safe,” said Strickland, now a
partner at Venable law firm in
Washington, “but there is a tipping point
where the cost will make the vehicle
beyond the reach of regular buyers.”
Another cybersecurity panelist, Andre
Weimerskirch, associate research scien-
tist at the University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute, said:
“You can break into any house you want
to; the question is, how much effort does
it take to do it? The task of everyone who
is working on this is to understand the
potential profit a
hacker can get out of
a car, and then make
it unattractive to
them.”
Meanwhile, there
already are concerns
about who owns or
should have access to
the car’s information.
Strickland said car buyers also likely will
need to provide “affirmative consent” to
automakers about what information is
collected and how it is going to be
shared and used.
It’s a tough proposition, Weimer-
skirch said, pointing out that once pri-
vacy and security technology are put in
place, some features and popular apps
that consumers want might not work
anymore. Having watched the security
discussion for years, Valasek said he has
been frustrated by the automakers’ per-
ceived unwillingness to share what they
are doing in connected car security.
Strickland said he understands the
need for the automakers and Tier 1 sup-
pliers to protect their production
processes. He also said: “The answer to
questions of security can’t just be, ‘Trust
us.’ For the success of connected and
autonomous vehicles, the industry is
going to have to have a more thoughtful
and transparent answer to this.”
Heimer said with the fast-moving
developments on so many fronts, he
favors a broad-based national discus-
sion about connectivity, safety and data
privacy in the auto industry.
PAGE 13
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After Cherokee hacking debacle, automakers
are taking on dual role as software companies
CYBERSECURITY
STRICKLAND
14. connected car
PAGE 14
hether it’s providing
security patches or
downloading the key to a
shared vehicle, over-the-
air technology increas-
ingly is the foundation of the new world
of connected cars and mobility.
“It used to be that, in a car, over-the-
air connections were used for things like
crash response and stolen car security
systems,” said Brian Greaves, director of
product development for AT&T’s
Internet of Things Solutions and a for-
mer OnStar executive. “But now we’re
entering an era where these connections
will provide services that are relevant on
a daily basis.”
Right now there is a huge focus on
infotainment and being able to update
apps over the air, Greaves said. But the
real value will come when automakers
have two-way communication with
each vehicle, remotely updating soft-
ware and firmware (the built-in software
that runs a hardware device) throughout
the vehicle — and gathering data.
“As an [automaker], if I can pull data
from the vehicle constantly — calibrate
the performance, fuel economy, han-
dling — I can continue to adjust and
improve the driving experience
throughout that vehicle’s life cycle,”
Greaves said.
He compares it to smartphone tech-
nology.
“That phone is great when you first
open it up, but that does not mean it is
exactly what you will have for the rest of
its life,” he said. “And there’s no reason
your connected car shouldn’t continue
to improve through its life cycle, too.”
Perfect storm of interest
Yoram Berholtz, director of market
adoption for Redbend by Harman, said
the interest in over-the-air updating is
being fueled by a perfect storm:
■ Consumer interest in infotainment in
the car and the need to keep that soft-
ware updated and problem-free.
■ Automakers’ interest in being directly
connected with their vehicles.
■ Everyone’s interest in security, espe-
cially the ability to immediately provide
software patches and updates that pro-
tect drivers.
Mahbubul Alam, chief technology
officer for Movimento Group, said over-
the-air updates will help deliver what
consumers want in vehicles today.
“We are not necessarily changing
cars for the horsepower anymore, but
changing to keep up with the technolo-
gy,” Alam said.
He said he believes that is a factor in
the 60 to 70 percent lease rates for high-
end vehicles. Those drivers don’t want
troubles after the warranty ends. They
want access to the newest technology,
which they can get only by moving to a
new model.
“We want the latest, greatest technol-
ogy, but there’s no way to easily update
it,” Alam said. “By the time you drive off
the lot, the software in your car is already
two or three years old. But in the app
and software world, we are now dou-
bling features and functionality in less
than a year. Unless the car becomes a
platform for delivering those new soft-
ware and features, the industry will be
left behind.”
From an automaker’s perspective,
over-the-air updates will enable them to
keep vehicles current. For owners,
updates not only will keep the vehicles
current, but help keep resale values
higher.
Dealers could keep it going
Where do dealers fit in all this?
Alam said after a manufacturer’s
commitment to service and update a
vehicle expires, perhaps the dealership
can pick up that contract to provide
over-the-air updates. Or perhaps dealers
can help owners customize their vehi-
cles’ software to local needs.
“It allows dealers to bring new servic-
es to the community of car owners,”
Alam said. “The business is moving.
Dealers need to start moving also and
change from only servicing mechanicals
to becoming mechanical and software
experts.”
Some of the impetus for over-the-air
updating will come from the growth of
car sharing, which Alam believes will
become a more dominant and main-
stream transportation choice by 2020-
22. Ride-sharing services such as Uber
and Lyft rely on over-the-air communi-
cations for an easy and seamless con-
sumer experience, and car-sharing com-
panies such as Getaround are introduc-
ing customers to the idea of smartphone
“keys” and personal driving preferences
that can be downloaded from the cloud.
Limitless possibilities
“We are at the infancy stage with all
this,” Alam said.
He and Berholtz estimate that only a
small number of vehicles in the U.S.,
perhaps 2 to 7 percent, have some
capacity for over-the-air updates. But
Alam said some 2018 production cars
will have over-the-air capabilities for the
head unit, or control box, and its info-
tainment apps and features, and that the
instrument cluster and new connectivity
for safety features soon will follow.
Greaves said he thinks it will be at
least five to 10 years before the majority
of new vehicles will be equipped with
over-the-air updating capabilities.
Berholtz predicts that by 2020, most
vehicles will have the capability to
update all the issues that arise with their
systems.
Then the possibilities are limitless.
For instance, Greaves said AT&T already
is getting requests to do over-the-air
updates at factories and port locations,
so that a vehicle’s information and sys-
tems can be instantly synchronized with
local laws, mapping information and the
like.
Once used for crash response and security, high-tech
connections will offer relevant services on a daily basis
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GREAVES ALAM
OVER-THE-AIR CARE
15. As consumers’ lives become increasingly integrated to a network of devices,
data and applications, Faurecia’s experts have made comfort, customization
and connectivity a priority within the vehicle. With the advent of the
autonomous vehicle, our vision has evolved to ensure Faurecia’s interiors
enhance the life on-board experience and drive well-being, so that drivers
become passengers and driving becomes the distraction.
VISIT US AT THE CONNECTED CAR EXPO (NOVEMBER 16-17) TO SEE HOW
WE’RE VISUALIZING THE FUTURE.
LET US MAKE
DRIVING
THE DISTRACTION.