GM HOTSPOT (AND V2V?)

DO YOU feel out of touch when you drive off on an errand and realize you’ve left your mobile phone at home? Today’s new cars are often Bluetooth-ready, but thus far it’s the driver’s responsibility to bring along the car’s phone link.

But wait. GM has announced that it’s going to make each of its cars an internet hotspot with its own high-speed broadband connection.

GM is teaming up with AT&T to offer hotspot connectivity in 2014, available on most of its Model Year 2015 vehicles sold in the U.S. and Canada. The link will be 4G LTE (as in Fourth-Generation, Long Term Evolution), one that’s 10 times faster than 3G.

Embedded 3G connectivity has been available on some Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler models since 2012. Audi has a plan for 4G LTE availability on its A3 in Europe this year, with this coming to U.S. A3s in 2014.

An embedded hotspot has benefits beyond the obvious cell phone linkage. The updating of infotainment—nav maps, restaurants, movie houses, for instance—becomes straightforward, with no change of hardware or fear of obsolescence. Real-time traffic assessments are easy, as is streaming video for back-seat passengers.

Think OnStar and its GM Concierge—but soon your car could be like a rolling Starbucks.

Well, not exactly Starbucks, because GM’s OnStar never has been free, and subscription details have yet to be offered for this proposed new service.

It’s expected that GM will retain “traditional” smartphone connectivity, if for no other reason than satisfying car buyers who balk at the idea of dual monthly subscriptions, one for the smartphone, another for the GM/AT&T connectivity.

GM OnStar has a bit more than 6 million subscribers at two different service levels.

This would be a prudent business move. Today, GM OnStar has a bit more than 6 million subscribers—accounting for perhaps only 10 percent of its vehicle sales since the feature’s 1996 introduction. The basic OnStar Safe & Sound service costs $18.95/month; Directions & Connections for post-2006 vehicles is $28.90/month ($36.95/month for earlier cars).

Vehicle-to-Vehicle, V2V, could be the next significant safety feature in personal mobility.

Another potential benefit—V2V—takes humans out of the connectivity. The concept of vehicle-to-vehicle communication and interaction could be the next major safety feature in the evolution of personal mobility. We already have smart cruise control and accident mitigation through automatic braking. Some say autonomous vehicle control—as with Google’s Smart Car—is only a few years away.

V2V has been around for almost 15 years now. In fact, it has been so slow in developing that the Federal Communications Commission is getting impatient in its frequency-band assignment responsibility. The FCC reserved 5.9 GHz for V2V back in 1999. Three years later, automakers and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started research.

In 2010, this research suggested that V2V had a potential for reducing vehicle accidents by 79 percent. Last year, NHTSA deployed 2800 cars, trucks and buses gathering data around Ann Arbor, Michigan. Earlier this year, it said a position could be taken soon, one option being regulatory action, another being a call for more research.

The challenge is how best to allocate the available band width. Foregoing V2V in the interest of wider WiFi (by 14 percent) could speed up the latter. On the other hand, which is societally more beneficial: giving Bobsy in the back seat a better streaming video or saving Papa’s butt when he’s driving carelessly? ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2013