Sponsored video: Toyota Dominoes - spirit of Toyota innovation

"A car company with a positive environmental effect" sounds like an oxymoron. Well Toyota is trying to show that this is not impossible with the launch of Toyota hybrid technology!

Their new Fuel cell vehicle (FCV) shows that cars can be eco-friendly.

In case you are wondering how a Fuel Cell Vehicle works, read on....
IN a FCV, the Fuel Cells generates electricity through the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to power the motor driving the vehicle. Hydrogen, which replaces conventional fuels (Petrol and Diesel) is an environment friendly energy source that can be produced from various raw materials. However, the most amazing thing in FCVs is that they have zero emissions or in other words, zero CO2 emissions during operation.

The dominoes picking themselves up in this clip captures the essence of the spirit of Toyota innovation.



Explore Toyota's Global website to learn more and watch more videos on their YouTube page.

This post is sponsored by Toyota, but all of the thoughts are our own.

Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Center in Carlsbad.

Amazing car designs from the Mercedes-Benz design center in California - Carlsbad, USA.

Michigan's Anti-Tesla Ban: Bloomberg is Off Base

Bloomberg has an op-ed "Detroit Fights Innovation -- Again" which in fact is not about the Detroit Three of GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler [the merger was consummated on Oct 12th] or even manufacturers, but about Michigan and (indirectly) automotive dealers. It makes the very tenuous claim that state policy that blocks Tesla from running company stores (in contravention to existing state law) is tacit protectionism that represents a step backward. Indeed, the article implies that the restriction is ultimately aimed at preventing a Chinese invasion. In fact the policy is misguided because history shows that there's no need to fear factory stores, at least as long as they're not set up by a car company so as to undermine their own existing dealers.

First, there's the red herring: China. The editors – there's no by-line, though David Shipley is listed at the bottom – ignore that GM and VW are the biggest players in China, and that purely domestic firms are in a tailspin (Warren Buffett has thrown away a pile of money on BYD [比亚迪汽车]). Two firms less successful in China, Honda and Volvo, are however already exporting. The camel's nose is well inside the tent: all of China's major players are multinationals who already have dealerships spread across all 50 states. And protecting the Detroit Three? Don't they editors realize they have but 46% of the US market?

Second, multiple automotive firms in multiple countries across multiple decades have tried and failed with factory stores. If you read carefully, you'll even find Tesla talking about defects with their distribution model. A modern dealership is comprised of six interlinked businesses: new vehicle sales, used vehicle sales, used car wholesaling (trade-ins), finance & insurance [including warranties], repair services, and parts sales, both retail and wholesale. (Some add a seventh to the mix, body shops, which in practice are a very different business from service & repairs.) So a manager must handle trade-ins, push used car sales and otherwise place a priority on things other than selling new cars in order to make a profit. On top of that, dealers are in a constant battle over what sort of physical "store" is needed, how much and what kind of advertising is necessary, and many other decisions important from a financial or strategic perspective. All this requires an ability to say "no" to the factory. No company has ever granted the manager of a factory store that level of discretion.^Note

More important for potential new entrants, independent dealers provide billions in financing to a car company, because they hold inventory, not the OEM. The real estate is theirs as well. Any potential new entrant that needs a large distribution footprint -- that is, any company outside of the supercar niche -- can't afford to ignore that. If Elon Musk wasn't so good at bilkingmilking investors, he would need that money, too.

So the Bloomberg editors are accurate that Michigan -- which is far from being in the vanguard on this issue -- should not concern itself with Tesla's retail strategy. They are however accurate for the wrong reasons: factory stores have been a bloodbath for all who have tried, and will remain so. Indeed, they're critical to a car company's financial viability. Contrary to the editorial, it's not incumbent car companies that should be concerned, or existing dealers. It's Tesla shareholders and bondholders who should worry.

---

Note: The factory rep who has actually sold a car to a real customer is the rarest of creatures. To my knowledge there are none with the experience of running an independent dealership. Then there are incentives: a factory rep works for a salary, and their career depends on saying yes to their boss. They are not offered compensation commensurate with what the principal of a (successful) independent dealership can earn. So both corporate incentives and practical knowledge stand in the way.

Jaguar Land Rover opens its first overseas manufacturing plant

Jaguar Land Rover has opened its first overseas manufacturing facility in China. The award-winning Range Rover Evoque will be the first model to be built in a joint venture with Chinese auto company Chery Automobile Company Ltd worth RMB 10.9 billion. This is in fact the first Chinese-British automotive joint venture.

The 400,000 square-metres plant, is located in the Changshu Economic Development Zone north of Shanghai.

They expect to build three Jaguar Land Rover models with total production capacity of 130,000 units a year by 2016 (for the Chinese market only). The facility features highly-automated press shops – including cutting-edge aluminium and steel technologies – along with a steel body shop comprising 306 robots, an energy-efficient paint shop and an ergonomically-friendly final assembly line.

Some interesting information:

• Jaguar Land Rover first established a presence in China just over a decade ago.
• China is Jaguar Land Rover’s single largest market with over 100,000 vehicles sold in the last fiscal year
• In addition to China, Jaguar Land Rover has confirmed plans to create a local manufacturing facility in Brazil and has a local assembly facility in Pune, India.

A question of architecture

The second of a series on the QNX CAR Platform. In this installment, we start at the beginning — the platform’s underlying architecture.

In my previous post, I discussed how infotainment systems must perform multiple complex tasks, often all at once. At any time, a system may need to manage audio, show backup video, run 3D navigation, synch with Bluetooth devices, display smartphone content, run apps, present vehicle data, process voice signals, perform active noise control… the list goes on.

The job of integrating all these functions is no trivial task — an understatement if ever there was one. But as with any large project, starting with the right architecture, the right tools, and the right building blocks can make all the difference. With that in mind, let’s start at the beginning: the underlying architecture of the QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment.

The architecture consists of three layers: human machine interface (HMI), middleware, and platform.



The HMI layer
The HMI layer is like a bonus pack: it supports two reference HMIs out of the box, both of which have the same appearance and functionality. So what’s the difference? One is based on HTML5, the other on Qt 5. This choice demonstrates the underlying flexibility of the platform, which allows developers to create an HMI with any of several technologies, including HTML5, Qt, or a third-party toolkit such as Elektrobit GUIDE or Crank Storyboard.

A choice of HMIs

Mind you, the choice goes further than that. When you build a sophisticated infotainment system, it soon becomes obvious that no single tool or technology can do the job. The home screen, which may contain controls for Internet radio, hands-free calls, HVAC, and other functions, might need an environment like Qt. The navigation app, for its part, will probably use OpenGL ES. Meanwhile, some applications might be based on Android or HTML5. Together, all these heterogeneous components make up the HMI.

The QNX CAR Platform embraces this heterogeneity, allowing developers to use the best tools and application environments for the job at hand. More to the point, it allows developers to blend multiple app technologies into a single, unified user interface, where they can all share the same display, at the same time.

To perform this blending, the platform employs several mechanisms, including a component called the graphical composition manager . This manager acts as a kind of universal framework, providing all applications, regardless of how they’re built, with a highly optimized path to the display.

For example, look at the following HMI:



Now look at the HMI from another angle to see how it comprises several components blended together by the composition manger:



To the left, you see video input from a connected media player or smartphone. To the right, you see a navigation application based on OpenGL ES map-rendering software, with an overlay of route metadata implemented in Qt. And below, you see an HTML page that provides the underlying wallpaper; this page could also display a system status bar and UI menu bar across all screens.

For each component rendered to the display, the graphical composition manager allocates a separate window and frame buffer. It also allows the developer to control the properties of each individual window, including location, transparency, rotation, alpha, brightness, and z-order. As a result, it becomes relatively straightforward to tile, overlap, or blend a variety of applications on the same screen, in whichever way creates the best user experience.

The middleware layer
The middleware layer provides applications with a rich assortment of services, including Bluetooth, multimedia discovery and playback, navigation, radio, and automatic speech recognition (ASR). The ASR component, for example, can be used to turn on the radio, initiate a Bluetooth phone call from a connected smartphone, or select a song by artist or song title.

I’ll drill down into several of these services in upcoming posts. For now, I’d like to focus on a fundamental service that greatly simplifies how all other services and applications in the system interact with one another. It’s called persistent/publish subscribe messaging, or PPS, and it provides the abstraction needed to cleanly separate high-level applications from low-level business logic and services.

PPS messaging provides an abstraction layer between system services and high-level applications

Let’s rewind a minute. To implement communications between software components, C/C++ developers must typically define direct, point-to-point connections that tend to “break” when new features or requirements are introduced. For instance, an application communicates with a navigation engine, but all connections enabling that communication must be redefined when the system is updated with a different engine.

This fragility might be acceptable in a relatively simple system, but it creates a real bottleneck when you are developing something as complex, dynamic, and quickly evolving as the design for a modern infotainment system. PPS addresses the problem by allowing developers to create loose, flexible connections between components. As a result, it becomes much easier to add, remove, or replace components without having to modify other components.

So what, exactly, is PPS? Here’s a textbook answer: an asynchronous object-based system that consists of publishers and subscribers, where publishers modify the properties of data objects and the subscribers to those objects receive updates when the objects have been modified.

So what does that mean? Well, in a car, PPS data objects allow applications to access services such as the multimedia engine, voice recognition engine, vehicle buses, connected smartphones, hands-free calling, and contact databases. These data objects can each contain multiple attributes, each attribute providing access to a specific feature — such as the RPM of the engine, the level of brake fluid, or the frequency of the current radio station. System services publish these objects and modify their attributes; other programs can then subscribe to the objects and receive updates whenever the attributes change.

The PPS service is programming-language independent, allowing programs written in a variety of programming languages (C, C++, HTML5, Java, JavaScript, etc.) to intercommunicate, without any special knowledge of one another. Thus, an app in a high-level environment like HTML5 can easily access services provided by a device driver or other low-level service written in C or C++.

I’m only touching on the capabilities of PPS. To learn more, check out the QNX documentation on this service.

The platform layer
The platform layer includes the QNX OS and the board support packages, or BSPs, that allow the OS to run on various hardware platforms.

An inherently modular and extensible architecture

A BSP may not sound like the sexiest thing in the world — it is, admittedly, a deeply technical piece of software — but without it, nothing else works. And, in fact, one reason QNX Software Systems has such a strong presence in automotive is that it provides BSPs for all the popular infotainment platforms from companies like Freescale, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.

As for the QNX Neutrino OS, you could write a book about it — which is another way of saying it’s far beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say that its modularity, extensibility, reliability, and performance set the tone for the entire QNX CAR Platform. To get a feel for what the QNX OS brings to the platform (and by extension, to the automotive industry), I invite you to visit the QNX Neutrino OS page on the QNX website.

A sweet ride? You’d better 'beleave' it

Is Autumn the best season for a long, leisurely Sunday drive? Well, I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but in my neck, the trees blaze like crimson, orange, and yellow candles, transfiguring back roads into cathedrals of pure color. When I see every leaf on every tree glow like a piece of sunlight-infused stained glass, I make a religious effort to jump behind the wheel and get out there!

Now, of course, you can enjoy your Autumn drive in any car worth its keep. But some cars make the ride sweeter than others — and the Mercedes S Class Coupe, with its QNX-powered infotainment system and instrument cluster, is deliciously caloric.

This isn’t a car for the prim, the proper, the austere. It’s for pure pleasure – whether you take pleasure in performance, luxury, or beauty of design. Or all three. The perfect car, in other words, for an Autumn drive. Which is exactly what the folks at Mercedes thought. In fact, they made a photo essay about — check it out on their Facebook page.


Source: Mercedes

Buying a car with a budget of only RM65000 ++ in Malaysia

I was thankful that once we came back to Malaysia, a lot of people have been helping us out, especially our parents. Initially, we used my mother-in-law's old Proton Wira and later on was my dad's old Wira, which I am still using. Since both my wife and I are working and not at the same place, we needed to have two cars as I could not send and pick here up from her office. We start looking around for cars here and we decided to live within our means and set out a budget of RM 65000 for the new car. My wife also had one condition - that the car must be automatic as she was still recovering from her leg fracture. We also did not want a small Perodua car and we came up with a list of cars (in the so called popular B-segment) which we could buy with our limited budget, namely:

1. Honda City (starting at RM75800)
2. Toyota Vios (starting at RM73213)
3. Nissan Almera (starting at RM66827)and
4. Proton Preve (Starting RM61471)

Looking at the list, we realised that we could only afford the Proton and if we wanted a better car, we would have to increase our budget.
After driving a Volvo S40 in the UK for several years, we were not really looking forward to driving a Proton. However, the more research I did about the Proton Preve, the more impressed I was with the model. We went to see it at the Proton showroom near our house in Taman Megah, PJ and we decided that the Proton Preve Premium version was what we wanted. However, it was still beyond our budget at around RM72K (approx. £13650).

We were very fortunate because Proton suddenly announced a Merdeka/ Hari Raya discount of 5% across their complete range of models. This suddenly brought the Proton Preve Premium version within our range at around RM68,000 (solid colours) and really great value as it has loads of features not present in the basic Honda, Toyota and Nissan models. This includes a Turbo engine, touch screen with built-in sat-nav, 6 air bags, push button start, automatic lights and wipers, etc.. The offer also included 3 years free service and range of gifts including free in-car wifi hub with access for a year, free SmartTAG, full tank fuel, etc.

So that's the story in brief about how my wife ended up with a Proton Preve 1.6 CFE CVT Premium car powered by the Campro CFE 1561cc turbo engine with 7 speed ProTronic transmission and mounted on great looking 17" alloy wheels with 215/45 R17 tyres.

Watch out for a more detailed review of the car later.

(updated 22 October 2014).

Snippets of a Study on the Future of Mobility

According to a recent Auto Study on the future of mobility conducted by New York based company MRY, via Whitman Insight Strategies, owning a car is still an important part of our day-to-day life.

This study surveyed 1,000 smartphone owners – 500 Millennials, 500 35+) and cover everything from consumers’ thoughts on the “connected car,” to which automakers are perceived to be the most innovative (and how that translates to sales).

The findings reveals that unsurprisingly that mobile phones matter a lot more to people, slightly less than cars. Among adults 35+: 94% say their cars are important vs 82% phones. But for Millennials, it’s 87% cars, 86% phones. Overall, SMS comes in at 72%, high def TV 55%, Facebook 47%, newspaper subscription 32%, and Twitter and Instagram around 20%.

Across ages, access to a car (90%) trumps helping others (77%), raising a family (73%), voting (68%), and being wealthy (43%). However, the youth just want to get rich as being wealthy is a FAR bigger deal for Millennials (53%) vs adults 35+ (33%) - one of the biggest value gaps MRY found in the study.

As for car ownership, 96% of surveyed individuals own or lease a vehicle, and 91% think that owning a car is still an important part of their day-to-day. Even 87% of the Millennial population, which is more aware of car-sharing services and other transportation options, agrees that owning a car is essential. This means that auto manufacturers need to keep people happy, because at least 40% of surveyed individuals are likely to use car-sharing services if offered in their communities.

To put things into perspective: new vehicle sales are around the 16 million mark, with the average sticker price north of $30,000 (See link). That’s $480 billion. A shift in attitude leads to changes in purchase behavior and even a 1% change could mean a $5 billion impact on sales.

However, car-sharing still has a long way to go. Even though Uber ranks above all of the major auto brands when measured against the intersection of innovation and personal connection, it is still a relatively unknown entity. Only 22% of surveyed individuals were familiar with Uber, falling behind Zip Car (33% familiar) and just ahead of Lyft (18% familiar).

Attending SAE Convergence? Here’s why you should visit booth 513

Cars and beer don’t mix. But discussing cars while having a beer? Now you’re talking. If you’re attending SAE Convergence next week, you owe it to yourself to register for our “Spirits And Eats” event at 7:00 pm Tuesday. It’s the perfect occasion to kick back and enjoy the company of people who, like yourself, are passionate about cars and car electronics. And it isn’t a bad networking opportunity either — you’ll meet folks from a variety of automakers, Tier 1s, and technology suppliers in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere.

But you know what? It isn’t just about the beer. Or the company. It’s also about the Benz. Our digitally modded Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG, to be exact. It’s the latest QNX technology concept car, and it’s the perfect vehicle (pun fully intended) for demonstrating how QNX technology can enable next-generation infotainment systems. Highlights include:

• A multi-modal user experience that blends touch, voice, and physical controls
• A secure application environment for Android, HTML5, and OpenGL ES
• Smartphone connectivity options for projecting smartphone apps onto the head unit
• A dynamically reconfigurable digital instrument cluster that displays turn-by-turn directions, notifications of incoming phone calls, and video from front and rear cameras
• Multimedia framework for playback of content from USB sticks, DLNA devices, etc.
• Full-band stereo calling — think phone calls with CD quality audio
• Engine sound enhancement that synchronizes synthesized engine sounds with engine RPM

Here, for example, is the digital cluster:



And here is a closeup of the head unit:



And here’s a shot of the cluster and head unit together:



As for the engine sound enhancement and high-quality hands-free audio, I can’t reproduce these here — you’ll have come see the car and experience them first hand. (Yup, that's an invite.)

If you like what you see, and are interested in what you can hear, visit us at booth #513. And if you'd like to schedule a demo or reserve some time with a QNX representative in advance, we can accommodate that, too. Just send us an email.

The Proton Iriz - pictures

Had the chance to try out the new Proton Iriz a few days after it was launched. There were three variants at the showroom at  Taman Megah, PJ, near my house in Malaysia.

Quite impressed - Proton has indeed come a long way.

The green one is the manual variant.












There was an automatic white car outside (for test drive). Loved the sound of the exhaust. They have tuned it to sound like a much more powerful sports car.







The grey one is the premium variant with six air bags, rear cameras, touch screen GPS, turbo engine and loads of other extras.

Are you ready to stop micromanaging your car?

I will get to the above question. Honest. But before I do, allow me to pose another one: When autonomous cars go mainstream, will anyone even notice?

The answer to this question depends on how you define the term. If you mean completely and absolutely autonomous, with no need for a steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, then yes, most people will notice. But long before these devices stop being built into cars, another phenomenon will occur: people will stop using them.

Allow me to rewind. Last week, Tesla announced that its Model S will soon be able to “steer to stay within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by reading road signs and using traffic-aware cruise control.” I say soon because these functions won't be activated until owners download a software update in the coming weeks. But man, what an update.

Tesla may now be at the front of the ADAS wave, but the wave was already forming — and growing. Increasingly, cars are taking over mundane or hard-to-perform tasks, and they will only become better at them as time goes on. Whether it’s autonomous braking, automatic parking, hill-descent control, adaptive cruise control, or, in the case of the Tesla S, intelligent speed adaptation, cars will do more of the driving and, in so doing, socialize us into trusting them with even more driving tasks.

Tesla Model S: soon with autopilot

In other words, the next car you buy will prepare you for not having to drive the car after that.

You know what’s funny? At some point, the computers in cars will probably become safer drivers than humans. The humans will know it, but they will still clamor for steering wheels, brake pedals, and all the other traditional accoutrements of driving. Because people like control. Or, at the very least, the feeling that control is there if you want it.

It’s like cameras. I would never think of buying a camera that didn’t have full manual mode. Because control! But guess what: I almost never turn the mode selector to M. More often than not, it’s set to Program or Aperture Priority, because both of these semi-automated modes are good enough, and both allow me to focus on taking the picture, not on micromanaging my camera.

What about you? Are you ready for a car that needs a little less micromanagement?

The Strati -World's first 3 D printed car

Welcome to the age of printed cars. Arizona based car manufacturer Local Motors has come out with the World's first 3 D printed car - the Strati. It won the 2014 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award in New York yesterday.


The car chassis/frame, exterior body, and interior features are made from ABS plastic reinforced with carbon fibres. The electric engine, wheels and other parts were sourced from Renault’s Twizy. It takes the company around 44 hours to print out.

It only has a top speed of about 40mph (60km/h) but I am sure the speeds will improve as time goes by. I am just thinking at the possibilities. In the future, you can probably print out spare parts at home.

Espresso and Pizza

photos fixed Jan 3, 2015

The base post lies at Espresso and Pizza on October 7, 2014 on The Truth About Cars.

I don’t normally post about vehicles themselves, but I am endlessly fascinated by the industry, and constantly surprised to learn of new niches. On the finance side, I’m amazed at the variety of vendors that show up at conferences such as those sponsored by Auto Finance News. One of these years I’ll make it to SEMA (the Speciality Equipment Market Association), which by reputation has both the credible and the incredible. But back to my topic: once in a while I do find products – or rather niches, I’m not a “car guy” – that intrigue.

I have fond memories of the local Good Humor trucks, which once made the rounds of Detroit. Then there was the lunch truck at the Chrysler Mack Stamping plant, where I worked some decades ago. Perhaps they’re still in business, but of late I see few such. Yes, the funnel cake van is a fixture at community festivals here in rural Virginia, and at least one of the local BBQs sell their pulled pork from a truck. The vendors of sausages and gyros unload everything from a trailer to set up under a tent, while the Ruritans sell hot dogs and burgers from a modified trailer. Other than the huge step vans on Constitution Avenue in DC, today I seldom see truck-based vendors, and the ones I do see are very utilitarian in their setup.

In Japan the historic model is the pushcart vendor (yatai 屋台). Going back to the 1800s, the Tokyo (Edo-mae) variety of sushi started out that way, a snack food sold on the streets, low not high cuisine. Into the 1970s (but now largely vanished) you could find yatai in the evening outside train stations, selling noodles or yaki-imo (sweet potatoes kept in hot gravel) or tako-yaki (octopus “donut holes”). It was in Tokyo that the phrase “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” first took on meaning for me, because that was another staple of street food. Such are not unknown in the US; you still find pushcarts in Central Park and elsewhere in New York [by which I of course mean Manhattan]. When I worked on Wall Street (well, actually Pine Street) I was fond of hot pretzels. But in Japan the modern version of the pushcart vendor is likewise relegated to the grounds of the local shrine during community festivals (matsuri).

Then I spent a year in suburban Japan. There you encounter a modern version of the yatai of old, imaginative and entrepreneurial. These are (often) young couples in “kei” trucks (mini minivans) fitted out to be one or another sort of mobile restaurant. You encounter them in suburban parks and other places families frequent, or in urban plazas. [In most of Japan parking along the street is not an option. In the areas I frequented the police made no exception in the late evening, when streets were only occupied by the occasional taxi and by drunk sarariman tipsying towards their train home.]

Here and below are photos by Smitka

Entrepreneurial, imaginative. First, the imaginative. To be practical, imagination must be constrained, not given free rein. Keeping things small(er) is one such constraint, pushing creativity in much of the world in directions irrelevant to the US environment. In Japan you find many adaptations to narrow streets and small lots. There are the local restaurant delivery services. At one time that would have been a Chinese restaurant or sushi shop, but tastes have changed and now that niche is dominated by contemporary sorts of foods. In the US delivery is done by employees in their own car. Not so in Japan – it’s by company scooter. In Chiba (a city of 900,000 just east of Tokyo) that might be the local Pizza Hut franchise. [I was never tempted to sample their fare...] Similarly, the backhoe that as I write is digging a trench to improve my driveway’s drainage is small, but it’s a monster compared to the construction equipment at sites in urban Japan.

So I should not have been surprised at vendors in their “kei” minivans, laid out to take advantage of every cubic centimeter. I unfortunately don’t have a photo of my favorite, a “kei” that a couple fitted with a wood-burning oven appropriate for two small pizzas. Not a viable business? Actually, it was about right – they didn’t have much workspace to toss the dough and lay on the toppings, and with the very thin crust they used – something I’ve seen in Milan and Tokyo but not the US – a “pie” didn’t take long to bake. The wait wasn’t bad. Theirs was a one-off, a personal project, but it looked something like this:

My most recent encounter was with a mobile coffee shop. I had a chance to chat with the owner/barrista in between customers. He had designed the layout himself, and helped do the fitting. Water, propane for heat, a grinder, an espresso machine, a sink, a fridge … the whole works, and he roasted his own beans [his logo proclaims that: 自家焙煎]. He wasn’t however in the suburbs but instead near Tokyo Station, taking advantage of real estate laws that set fairly restrictive floor-area ratios forcing newer office buildings to include an off-street plaza. He had a rotating schedule of such locations where he’d negotiated access (presumably for a fee). While he had an awning and some seating, most of his business was take-out. That sultry summer day he was busy enough, though he’s inclined to take the day off in truly inclement weather. Here is the van, with the “master” at work. (Click to enlarge!)

Home Roasted Beans	Master at Work	Service Counter

In my experience restauranteurs are quite finicky about their setup. This entrepreneur may have been willing and able to take a hand in finishing off his creation (see his 大月珈琲店 Facebook page for photos). However, welding and fitting are not part of the typical Japanese skill set, where “do-it-yourself” does not include even the most basic of household repairs. So with a little bit of digging I found several companies that specialize in such, including ZECC, Maku, Aian Cook ["Iron Cook"], and (winner of the best name) Mobil Cafe Mom’s: Production of Customized Car. The used car page on GooNet lists 104 “mobile retail” vehicles for sale, with prices from around $12,500 for a used truck to $25,000 for a brand new one, albeit none of these have appliances. An example from carsensor.net lists one with already equipped with sinks, plumbing and exhaust fan at $17,000. Yahoo Auctions Japan likewise lists numerous vehicles, so it appears to be an active segment. (I didn’t check Rakuten; in Japan eBay botched its initial entry and is not a player.)

Now I’m sure there are similar specialized firms in the US, and maybe on the West Coast mobile vending remains a lively business model. Yes, there are unusual promotional vehicles, such as the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile – there’s one on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. But I’ve not seen such whimsical “mobile kitchens” outside of Japan.

Links to (Japanese) pages with photographs:

1. Pizza Boccheno
2. ZECC, which specializes in making “mobile retail” vehicles. Lots of photos.
3. Pizza Ci Vediamo [note the Coleman brand tent!]

[Note: max "kei" dimensions are 3.4m x 1.48m x 2.0m with an engine of 360 cc - a Smart is too wide and has too big an engine.]

A question of concurrency

The first of a new series on the QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment. In this installment, I tackle the a priori question: why does the auto industry need this platform, anyway?

Define your terms, counseled Voltaire, and in keeping with his advice, allow me to begin with the following:

Con•cur•ren•cy \kən-kûr'-ən-sē\ n (1597) Cooperation, as of agents, circumstances, or events; agreement or union in action.

A good definition, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough for the purposes of this discussion. Wikipedia comes closer to the mark:

“In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations execute simultaneously, and potentially interact with each other.”

That’s better, but it still falls short. However, the Wikipedia entry also states that:

“the base goals of concurrent programming include correctness, performance and robustness. Concurrent systems… are generally designed to operate indefinitely, including automatic recovery from failure, and not terminate unexpectedly.”

Now that’s more like it. Concurrency in computer systems isn’t simply a matter of doing several things all at once; it’s also a matter of delivering a solid user experience. The system must always be available and it must always be responsive: no “surprises” allowed.

This definition seems tailored-made for in-car infotainment systems. Here, for example, are some of the tasks that an infotainment system may perform:

• Run a variety of user applications, from 3D navigation to Internet radio, based on a mix of technologies, including Qt, HTML5, Android, and OpenGL ES
• Manage multiple forms of input: voice, touch, physical buttons, etc. 
• Support multiple smartphone connectivity protocols such as MirrorLink and Apple CarPlay 
• Perform services that smartphones cannot support, including:
  
  • HVAC control
  • discovery and playback of multimedia from USB sticks, DLNA devices, MTP devices, and other sources
  • retrieval and display of fuel levels, tire pressure, and other vehicle information
  • connectivity to Bluetooth devices
• Process voice signals to ensure the best possible quality of phone-based hands-free systems — this in itself can involve many tasks, including echo and noise removal, dynamic noise shaping, speech enhancement, etc. 
• Perform active noise control to eliminate unwanted engine “boom” noise 
• Offer extremely fast bootup times; a backup camera, for example, must come up within a second or two to be useful
   

Jugging multiple concurrent tasks

The primary user of an infotainment system is the driver. So, despite juggling all these activities, an infotainment system must never show the strain. It must always respond quickly to user input and critical events, even when many activities compete for system resources. Otherwise, the driver will become annoyed or, worse, distracted. The passengers won’t be happy, either.

Still, that isn’t enough. Automakers also need to differentiate themselves, and infotainment serves as a key tool for achieving differentiation. So the infotainment system must not simply perform well; it must also allow the vehicle, or line of vehicles, to project the unique values, features, and brand identity of the automaker.

And even that isn’t enough. Most automakers offer multiple vehicle lines, each encompassing a variety of configurations and trim levels. So an infotainment design must also be scalable; that way, the work and investment made at the high end can be leveraged in mid-range and economy models. Because ROI.

Projecting a unique identity

But you know what? That still isn’t enough. An infotainment system design must also be flexible. It must, for example, support new functionality through software updates, whether such updates are installed through a storage device or over the air. And it must have the ability to accommodate quickly evolving connectivity protocols, app environments, and hardware platforms. All with the least possible fuss.

The nitty and the gritty
Concurrency, performance, reliability, differentiation, scalability, flexibility — a tall order. But it’s exactly the order that the QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment was designed to fill.

Take, for example, product differentiation. If you look at the QNX-powered infotainment systems that automakers are shipping today, one thing becomes obvious: they aren’t cookie-cutter systems. Rather, they each project the unique values, features, and brand identity of each automaker — even though they are all built on the same, standards-based platform.

So how does the QNX CAR Platform enable all this? That’s exactly what my colleagues and I will explore over the coming weeks and months. We’ll get into the nitty and sometimes the gritty of how the platform works and why it offers so much value to companies that develop infotainment systems in various shapes, forms, and price points.

Stay tuned.

POSTSCRIPT: Read the next installment of the QNX CAR Platform series, A question of architecture.

Labor Market Update: little bad news, but no acceleration

I post below a series of graphs on the US labor market updated through September 2014. As I read it, the latest CES (Current Employment Survey) and CPS (Current Population Survey) releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show more of the same – job growth a bit above population growth, little bad news, but no hint of an acceleration in the economy that might soak up what I estimate to be a 7.6 million shortfall in total employment, and 8.7 million gap if we subtract the rise in those working involuntary short hours. All this is calculated correcting for demographic effects including baby boomer retirement. As the graphs indicate, there's been no drop in participation by older Americans; the brunt of our recession was born by prime-age workers and especially new school leavers.

Changes in Basic "Headline" Employment Number

Changes in Employment less those working involuntary short hours

Jobs Shortfall relative to demographics-corrected normal level

How long until we return to normal??

Total U + Discouraged + Short Hours Remains at Historic High

Drop in Employment Levels Was Younger and Prime Workers

Participation by Older Workers Has Risen

Before the Recession those 55-59 stayed in the LF longer, so some evidence of early retirements

Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway buys auto retailer VT Inc.

From Slate Magazine: "Warren Buffett's Latest Deal Has Officially Made Car Dealerships Cool"

I don't think so. I have a LOT more to write on this as someone who has spent a career life in the retail auto business AND worked in the van Tuyl organization. This time, Warren might have bit off more than he can chew

This is a REALLY BIG DEAL!!!!

Ford Poised to Realize an Upturn in Margins?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2538735-is-ford-on-the-cusp-of-an-upturn-in-margins?app=1&uprof=53

A good piece from Seeking Alpha on Ford, instructive in the importance of margins, or as we call it in the retail auto business, "Gross Profit," what consumers hate to pay. "Success for any company begins with gross margins as this tells you how much it costs a company to make whatever it's selling. This is a pure look into a business' ability to show pricing power with its suppliers and demand from its customers."

In For The Long Haul

The original for this post is at TheTruthAboutCars.com, which in turn draws upon a post by Alexander Dawejko done for my Economics 244 course. I have added another paragraph here.

ZF Friedrichshafen is buying TRW; JCI sold its automotive business to Gentex and Visteon. Are we in a new era of supplier M&A activity? The previous wave didn’t work out well – Dana, Tower, Dura, Lear and others ended up in Chapter 11.

So how about Federal-Mogul? They too went on an acquisition binge in the late 1990s, including the British firm T&N. In the process they took on debt, with a $2.75 billion package just for the T&N purchase. As with others, they bit off more than they could chew. Federal-Mogul’s downfall however wasn’t operational issues but one T&N factory that had used asbestos. The accompanying $1 billion-plus in costs tipped them into Chapter 11, and it took until 2007 – 6 years – for them to emerge. So where are they heading?

Now back in 1999 Carl Icahn, a corporate raider, started buying shares in Federal-Mogul. The value of his initial holdings vanished in Chapter 11, but he also bought Federal-Mogul debt, a lot of it, and in 2007 emerged as the dominant shareholder in the new firm. Icahn’s modus operandi had been to acquire a majority stake in a company – the list includes Viacom, Marvel Comics, Blockbuster and Time-Warner – and then replace management with his own associates. They then would dismember the company in search of cash, with Icahn unloading his holdings as soon as practical, to make way for the next target.

Obviously 2008 was not a good time to unload anything automotive, and overall profits have since been spotty. But by 2012 profits were looking up, and Icahn split the firm into two pieces, separating powertrains (a $4.2 billion business) from aftermarket ($3.1 billion). This made sense only as a prelude to Icahn’s selling one or both of pieces. Consistent with preparing for a sale, he appointed an associate, Daniel Ninivaggia, as co-CEO of the aftermarket portion. [See a Sept 3rd Automotive News story.]

In a visit to a Federal-Mogul R&D center in Plymouth, Michigan we [Dawejko and the rest of the class] saw how focused their people were on designing and manufacturing new products. Most of the class had never heard of the test equipment we saw. Unlike the tribology labs, some of the products under development were self-explanatory, such as the corona discharge spark plug about which TTAC reported in 2011. What became clear is that Federal-Mogul is in fact a high-tech operation that spends 5% of revenue on R&D. They have been a PACE supplier innovation finalist 32 times, and an award winner 11 times. In the context of the automotive product cycle, however, technology is not a route to quick profits.

[In autos] technology is not a route to quick profits

Back to Icahn. The new co-CEO of the aftermarket half of Federal-Mogul may be an Icahn executive, but unlike the people Icahn installed on the board, Ninivaggia previously spent 6 years at Lear. He is an industry person, and not just an M&A specialist. In the same vein, Rajesh Shah, named CFO in 2013, has a long career working for auto suppliers, and came from another supplier rather than from Wall Street. Looking forward Ninivaggi noted, “There’s been a significant consolidation in the industry and as our customers have become very large companies, we need to do the same thing; we need to grow fast, improve our capabilities and expand our product lines”. It will take some years to show that the newly autonomous aftermarket operations are firmly profitable.

M&A may be a useful tool as major suppliers work to adjust their portfolio to match their global footprints, selling pieces that don’t fit to erstwhile rivals and buying similar operations from their competitors. Federal-Mogul is itself an assemblage of such pieces, cobbled together over the past 20 years. (An aside: one engineer the prof knows worked for five different firms, while never changing his desk at what is now a Federal-Mogul facility just outside Ann Arbor.) At the Plymouth tech center we were presented with their R&D roadmap, shared with their customers. They’re looking a decade down the road, 3 product cycles, for what future drivetrains will require. If they get that right, they will be one of 2-3 global players left in each of their product segments, with profits to match.

Pension fund managers operate on a 60 day cycle; the customers of hedge and restructuring funds take longer to get restive. Neither is compatible with the auto industry. History suggests that buying and selling automotive firms is not a quick route to riches for anyone but the lawyers and investment bankers who participate on a fee basis. Wittingly or not, Icahn is in this one for the long haul.

...there's irony when corporate raiders turn into stable shareholders...

Icahn isn’t alone in holding onto things; Wilbur L Ross with International Automotive Components has been “in” for a long while as well. Is there not irony when corporate raiders turn into stable, major shareholders, so that these firms look more like privately held firms investing across the business cycle than ones whose strategy is driven by the stock price of the moment?

By Alexander Dawejko ’17 and Michael Smitka, Economics Department, Washington & Lee University

The second generation Proton Perdana

The second generation Proton Perdana was unveiled last year and is only available exclusively to Malaysian Government officials. The car is available in 2.0 and 2.4 litre models and according to reports, is based on the 8th generation Honda Accord.

Saw one a few days back in PJ and it really looks nice.

Stuck at traffic lights when I took this picture.

2014 Proton Perdana Front Three Quarter CC BY-SA 3.0
Paul Tan paultan.org's contribution to Wikimedia