IT gets behind the wheel of a car

IT in cars may not create mobile offices, but there will be productivity benefits

A few years back The Economist ran a survey on the future of the car. At the end, it noted that road congestion was increasing; but it refused to worry about that. Why get angry about traffic jams, it argued, when everyone would soon be working at the wheel?

Today that sounds complacent. Visions of “the car as office” have not come to pass. True, a minority of British drivers still flouts the ban on using a mobile phone while driving, and in New York City use of mobiles while driving is back to the levels that existed before a ban was introduced. But while IT directors might like employees to work more from vehicles, conditions at the dashboard still bear no comparison with those at the desk.

There are reasons for this. The product development rhythms and security that surround in-car consumer electronics are very different from those that surround the electronic control of the vehicle itself. Incompatibilities are rife between the dozens of complicated networks in a car; and there is always the chance that some music or a hacker might one day play havoc with basic safety.

Nevertheless, there is progress. Bluetooth has come to the car. After nine years of life, Microsoft Automotive has products in the mainstream: the voice recognition software in Windows Automotive, for example, is available on the Citroen Xsara, allowing drivers to converse hands-free with ease. Meanwhile, BMW’s Car IT division, formed in 2003, has been recruiting electronic engineers by the hundred, and has arranged for dealers to build interfaces for iPods directly into its 7-Series saloons.

Perhaps the most fascinating efforts to bring IT to the steering wheel are to be found in IBM’s Automotive Software Foundry. Next year, Honda will fit Big Blue’s Embedded ViaVoice software as standard on its North American Acura RLs. That will allow owners of this model to issue it with 700 commands. They will also be able speak any of nearly two million US street and city names and receive turn-by-turn voice guidance to their destinations. Perhaps worryingly, Acura drivers will also be able to request local dining information.

What will this mean for IT directors? Something rather more significant than staff listening to restaurant reviews. In-car navigation will raise the productivity of field engineers and sales staff – especially in the US, where finding anyone’s office on a strip off a freeway is about as impossible as finding an IT firm’s office anywhere near Heathrow.

With IBM’s help, the Acura RL will also integrate real-time traffic data into its navigation display – a first for the US. That should bring further time savings.
Internet Protocols will certainly integrate voice, instant messaging, video conferencing and documents into the vehicle.

Perhaps, however, it is in the management of fleets, and especially of America’s overstretched trucking industry, that the benefits of automotive IT will be greatest. Microsoft has strengths that stretch from remote diagnostics and basic automotive CAD through to vehicle warranty and dealer management systems. And it cannot be long before US legislators demand that vehicles automatically film the accidents they are involved in.