The connected car

The connected car
Jun 4th 2009
From The Economist print edition


Cars are becoming more connected, both to remote systems for navigation and information, and to each other


Illustration by Allan Sanders






IN “KNIGHT RIDER”, a 1980s television show, Michael Knight fought for justice with the help of KITT, an artificially intelligent Pontiac Trans Am. The pair chatted amiably, with KITT sensing and reacting to nearby objects, navigating and looking up information about Mr Knight’s immediate surroundings and deadly adversaries. KITT could even drive itself. Thirty years on, many of the fantastical Pontiac’s features are becoming reality.
A modern car can have as many as 200 on-board sensors, measuring everything from tyre pressure to windscreen temperature. A high-end Lexus contains 67 microprocessors, and even the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, has a dozen. Voice-driven satellite navigation is routinely used by millions of people. Radar-equipped cruise control allows vehicles to adjust their speed automatically in traffic. Some cars can even park themselves.
Once a purely mechanical device, the car is going digital. “Connected cars”, which sport links to navigation satellites and communications networks—and, before long, directly to other vehicles—could transform driving, preventing motorists from getting lost, stuck in traffic or involved in accidents. And connectivity can improve entertainment and productivity for both driver and passengers—an attractive proposition given that Americans, for example, spend 45 hours a month in their cars on average. There is also scope(oportunidade) for new business models built around connected cars, from dynamic insurance and road pricing to car pooling(transporte de veículos) and location-based advertising. “We can stop looking at a car as one system,” says Rahul Mangharam, an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania, “and look at it as a node(nódulo) in a n