Car-Integrated PCs and Communication

[telstar1]

I've read a few articles about how cars of the future will have fully integrated computers both for telemetrics, and also for entertainment of the passengers. Most articles neglect to delve into how the actual communication between the car and the ISP will occur. Anyone know what's most likeley? Will it all be done using cellular? Wouldn't that drive costs through the roof? Is there anyway for cars to have an always-on broadband-like connection that is cost-effective?

I'm curious where others think this might go ... and to know when something like this might be more mainstream.

 

[f95toli]

3G cell phones?
Where I live you can get 384 kB/s everywhere using a 3G phone and I think it is possible to double that speed if you use the right equipment.
It is quite neat, especially if you use bluetooth to connect the laptop to the phone (or you can use buy a PC-card for the laptop).

I think 4G is suppose to run at 2 Mb/s but that technology does not exist yet.

 

[Wahsapa]

Mini-ITX.com
EPIA Center
VIA Embedded
IOGear

so this is what you do. you buy a VIA EPIA MII 1.2 ghz C3 motherboard; install it in your car with a screen, hook it up to your stereo(get a nice stereo). then you buy a bluetooth compact flash card from IOgear and plug it into the compact flash slot of the EPIA motherboard. you also get a wifi pc card and plug it into the EPIAs pc card slot.

then you go to att.com and buy an EDGE phone with bluetooth. you set the phone to 'bluetooth modem' mode and configure your EPIAs bluetooth card as a modem.

you now have internet access in your car.

or atleast its going to work something like that in the future

 

[Wahsapa]

btw EDGE is the wireless internet access ATT provides to its cell phones(ie: what u bought from them). if the cell phone has bluetooth it could be configured as a modem for anything else bluetooth to talk to it

 

[Wahsapa]

it doned on me that you may be talking at IPv6. IPv6 or MIP or something like that i cant really remember is the next version of internet protocall addressing. in IPv6 its possible to jump host providers(ISPs) while keeping the same IP address. this allows your car to drive around networks provided by different ISPs while maintaing the data to be sent uniterupted

 

[f95toli]

Why would you need that?
Assuming you are using a 3G (or the Edge, which is a temporary solution) connection you can not use more than one operator at a time anyway, and your ISP=the cell phone company.
"Handover" between diffrent 3G networks are built into the system.so you do not need to tak4 care of that in the IP.

The possibility to switch networks is however usefull if you are using a wifi-connection.

 

[telstar1]

Okay, so assuming you use EDGE ... That's great for on-demand use ... but won't that usage and billing model not fit into a world where we've become accustomed to always-on internet. My thought is that much of the computing activity in a car's PC may be things that you'll always want running ... streaming music ... real-time traffic info ... etc.

I'm assuming that EDGE bills you based on per-minute-usage.
Is there any technical data solution that would offer constant availability without costing you a million dollars a month?

Thanks,
telstar

 

[f95toli]

With 3G you are always on-line. You are either paying flat-rate or per Mb.
I am not sure about Edge since it uses old technology.

 

[Wahsapa]

att offers an unlimited transfer amount for 90 bucks amonth on its EDGE phones, which is cheap, it would cost less then gas for the car. you assumed wrong on the pay-per-minute, 100 bucks a month gets you a 100kb/s+ connection wherever u can get a cellphone signal.

if u want streaming music or real time traffic info turn on your radio in the future its not going to be EDGE phones but towers and wi-fi cards using IPv6, cell phones arnt gonna use IPv6 but cars with computers in them will.

i think verizon in new york is installing a wi-fi antenna at every pay phone and that all of manhatten is blanketed

 

[f95toli]

Isn't 3G cell phones available at all in the US? Then ýou even get streaming video(bad quality but still).

Edge is definitly not the future, it is just a cheaper alternative sold to compnies that can not afford 3G yet. 3G has been up and running in Japan for a cauple of years and about one year in many European countries. I am a bit suprised that it has been so slow in the U.S

WiFi can never replace 3G (and and in a few years 4G) because you would need base stations everywhere.
Where I live (Sweden) we wil have 95% 3G coverage from three different networks in about a year (right now it is about 60% percent or so) which means that you will be able to watch streaming video even in a deep forest, try doing that using WiFi

 

[Wahsapa]

a big thing over here in the us is getting unused tv channels for internet 'devices.' the fcc is already researching it and tv channel 'wi-fi' cards are being developed. a large portion of the backing behind this is intel and there new 'wi-max' wireless technology which im pretty sure is gonna some how make its way into mobile centrino technology(only seems logical for intel) but tv channel internet definately seems to be where the US is going with its wireless internet technologies. i WISH the US would have adapted to cell phone technologies earlier but im also glad its matured before hitting our market.

a hard thing for us is coverage, europe is small so its much easier and happened much faster that they get all this technology everywhere not to mention being ahead of the game already and well... japans an island. i was reading somewhere china and indian and a bunch of developing nations have a huge interest in IPv6 because IPv4 is running out of room.