Car manufacturers evolving
When is a car company not a car company? When it is evolving into a software company. We were very interested to read this article from ZDNet – Cars become ‘datacenters on wheels’, car makers become software companies
Ford Motor Company, for one, no longer considers itself an automobile manufacturer. Ford is now a software company. Vijay Sanakaran, director of application development for Ford, spoke at the IBM event, pointing out that the latest Ford Fusion model has 16 million lines of code, and most cars produced today have 70 microprocessors connected to hundreds of sensors and actuators that have thousands of multiplexer signals. On-board processes supported include customer safety, adaptive cruise control, and parallel parking assist.
They then go on to say about the Ford presentation,
Interestingly, Sankaran pointed out that Ford sees its mission to employ design to deliver “a mobile digital lifestyle”.
Mobile Digital Lifestyle
At first glance, this does elicit a “Nooooo!” from us. Digging deeper, however, we don’t want to lose the safety aspects that the software provides. It also provides the ability for tracking and telematics, a boon for Fleet Managers in looking after their company fleets.
Joy of Driving
Software will never replace the smile you get when you hear a well-tuned engine roar into life, the moments when a car takes a run of corners perfectly, the smell of a new interior when you open a car door for the first time. It won’t even perfect the feeling of “Ruler of The World” when you get the last parking place in a packed car-park. If it makes driving easier, and frees us all up to enjoy these things, then we’re all for the “mobile digital lifestyle”
And if it can help this poor driver who couldn’t parallel park, well, who could be against it?