Many cars already connect to iPods, cellphones, and other personal electronic devices. In the not- to-distant future, they will also connect to the Internet, other cars, and roadside systems. For automakers and automotive suppliers, this trend toward ubiquitous connectivity presents many opportunities, but also many challenges.

Take, for example, connectivity to personal electronics. Consumers today want to use their MP3 players and smartphones even when driving. They also expect to be constantly connected, using their portable devices to “Tweet,” “Facebook,” or geotag throughout the day. It is only a matter of time before consumers demand that the car becomes an extension of this plugged-in lifestyle. For automakers, the opportunity is clear: If they can help the consumer stay connected in a safe, reliable, and legal fashion, they can differentiate their brand and build customer loyalty.

The problem is, the automobile must always play catch-up. In the personal electronics industry, it takes from 6 to 18 months to bring a product to market. But in the auto industry, where a new product must be planned into the vehicle’s manufacturing process and undergo extensive testing and validation, the process often takes three or more years. As a further complication, an in-vehicle system that connects to personal electronics must stay relevant for at least 10 years. But how can it do that if the MP3 players of today become the 8-tracks of tomorrow?

Figure 1 — By combining connectivity to the cloud with connectivity to portable devices, a car infotainment system can display cleaned metadata and enable downloading and purchasing of music.

To address some of these problems, automotive engineers can implement systems with modular, upgradeable software architectures. In other cases, they can keep content and applications up to date by moving functionality from embedded modules to the Internet. For example, navigation databases, music metadata sources, and speech recognition back-ends can run on a perpetually refreshed server, rather than be distributed through costly DVD updates or bay module reprogramming. A remote server provides a host of capabilities — such as streaming media, application downloading, and realtime traffic reports integrated into navigation services — that are difficult or impossible to implement using only on-board resources.

The economy is also driving the car towards greater connectivity. Pressure to reduce engineering costs and time to market has grown more intense than ever. Meanwhile, burgeoning complexity is driving up the cost of software development as a percentage of the car’s total cost. As a result, automakers must create new ways to reduce bill of materials costs and streamline the software development process. Increased connectivity can reduce time to market and the embedded engineer’s burden, by driving some of the complexity back into the cloud (Figure 1). In fact, by leveraging Internet services, an automotive OEM can even create new revenue streams.

Multiple flavors of connectivity

Figure 2 — Personal lifestyles, economic pressures, and the need for market differentiation are driving automakers to implement multiple forms of connectivity.

A car can be “connected” in several ways, as illustrated in Figure 2. The types of connections include the Cloud, portable devices, within the vehicle, and the surrounding environment.

Connected to the cloud. In this case, an in-vehicle system derives some or most of its functionality from Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Google, Twitter, or other Internet-based services. To achieve this goal, the system requires a network access device (NAD) and a wireless network with near-ubiquitous coverage. Depending on the application, network requirements range from 2.5G cellular to wireless broadband technologies such as 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Connected to portable devices. This category includes connectivity to iPods, Zunes, PlaysForSure/Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) devices, USB storage devices, portable navigation devices (PNDs), and Bluetooth headphones. It also includes connectivity to a phone (typically through Bluetooth), which can serve as a NAD for Internet access. The phone connection can stream media and provide GPS location data, phone book contacts, and calendar management.

Connected within the vehicle. This approach leverages the connection between the center-stack console, rear-seat entertainment unit, digital instrument cluster, and other in-car modules. For example, the modules can shuttle streaming multimedia around the vehicle. Such high-bandwidth traffic exceeds the capacity of the CAN bus and requires at least a high-speed MOST network or perhaps Ethernet audio/video bridging (AVB).

Connected to the environment. This form of connectivity includes vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-roadway communications for collision avoidance and traffic management. Lane departure warnings, driver drowsiness alerts, and other driver-assist technologies also fall into this category, as do parking assist and adaptive cruise control.