The Dispatcher
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V o l u m e - I s s u e Telematics Industry 08-05 Insights by M a r c h 2021 Michael L. Sena THE DISPATCHER IN THIS ISSUE Vehicle Testing: There is no way to test a car virtually .... 2 Dispatch Central .............................................................. 10 THEElectric Vehicle D NewsISPATCHER ...................................................... 10 Is there no end to Geely’s partnerships ........................... 10 Chinese Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV ................................ 11 There’s a new political climate on the climate in DC ...... 12 VW goes it alone on its driverless software ................... 14 DrivingT HENeat: Can DU.S. TakeISPATCH- Its Cars Without ICE? ......... 16 Europe and U.S. following different paths ..................... 16 Musings ofER a Dispatcher:THE The Button D Doesn’tIS- Work ..... 20 and 4TH ANNUAL PRINCETON PATCHERThe SYMPOSIUM ON THE SMARTDRIVINGCAR SUMMIT FUTURE NETWORKED CAR 2021 17 DECEMBER 2020 – 15 APRIL 2021 A VIRTUAL EVENT - 22–25 MARCH 2021. This year’s summit was originally scheduled to be held The 2020 Future Networked Car Symposium was a hy- in May. It is now be a virtual event spread over a num- brid event, held just before COVID-19 caused most of the ber of weeks. See the program and register at: world to enter a period of restricted travel and remote working. Previous events had always been held in con- https://orfe.princeton.edu/conferences/sdc/ junction and co-located with the Geneva International The focus of the 4th Annual Princeton SmartDriving- Motor Show. Due to the cancellation of the Motor Show, Car Summit will address the challenges of commer- the event was moved to FNC headquarters where some cialization and the delivery of tangible value to com- of the Symposium’s participants and attendees gath- munities. Conference organizer ProfessorT AlainHE L. ered, D and theISPATCHER remainder took part online. Kornhauser says: “We've made enormous progress With the 2021 Motor Show cancelled, FNC and UNECE with the technology. We're doing the investment, have decided that the FNC 2021 Symposium will be to- however this investment delivers value only if is com- tally virtual. It will be held on four successive days in mercialized, made available and used by consumers March, each day consisting of three-hour sessions dedi- in large numbers to deliver value that is commensu- cated to one of four important topics. The complete pro- rate with the magnitude of the investment made to- gram is now ready. See 20 program at: date.” THEhttps://www.itu.int/en/fnc/2021/Pages/default.aspx DISPATCH- ERTHE DIS- 1 | P a g e T H E D ISPATCHER M a r c h 2 0 2 1 PATCHER THE DISPATCHER "Telematics Industry Insights by Michael L. Sena March 2021 – Volume 8, Issue 5 Vehicle Testing: There is no way to test a car virtually CARS ARE NOT clothes, and connected cars are even less so. The idea of outsourcing vehicle assembly and parts production to low-labor-cost countries like China as if they were baseball caps or jeans might have been justifiable twenty years ago when the cars were going to be sold 1. I say ‘might’ because the terms there or in the Asia region.1 However, for companies with that the companies had to accept their principal engineering functions and major markets in in order to gain the right to build factories were designed to transfer Europe and the United States, to set up manufacturing in the intellectual property of the Asia for cars that will be exported to Europe and the U.S. western countries to China. The may bring short-term economies of scale in production, advantage of building in China was to avoid the egregiously high im- but will end up creating a wealth of problems. The same is port taxes. true for building a car in the U.S. or Europe and exporting it to China. The reason is connectivity. In this article I will discuss why it is preferable from the connectivity standpoint to assemble a car in the region2 2. A region is defined here as one where it will be sold, why it is essential that the car be of the major countries/regions in driven to every part of the region and thoroughly tested the world: the United States of before it is delivered to customers, and why the pandemic America, the People’s Republic of China and the European Union. has made thorough testing anywhere nearly impossible. The other countries of North America, Asia and Europe along There were aleady two major challenges with building with South America, Africa and the highly connected cars in one place and shipping them to Pacific countries are part of one of other markets before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early the three markets depending on 2020: the regionality of mobile network infrastructure and how closely their normative princi- ples and market dynamics are to the governmental approach to data privacy. I discussed one of the three. the data privace issue in the lead article to the September 2018 issue of THE DISPATCHER. The three regions, the U.S., EU and China, have distinctly different approaches to data privacy and principles of ownernership of data, with the individual being the owner of his data in Europe, business having a claim to ownership in the U.S. and the state controlling all data in China. A third problem that was present but not totally appreciated or understood by most vehicle OEMs was the absolute necessity of thoroughly testing the connected systems and services to ensure that they were working in all corners of the region where the cars would be sold. The pandemic exacerbated the testing problem to the point of 2 | P a g e T H E D ISPATCHER M a r c h 2 0 2 1 making it nearly impossible to carry out tests. Let’s look at why these problems exist and what might be done to solve them. OEMs are still learning that that today’s cars are not your father’s Oldsmobile Vehicle connectivity is not something that is tacked onto a car, like a battery-operated portable TOMTOM or GARMIN navigation system. It’s not a smartphone sitting in a hands-free holder. Jacques Nasser ‘got that’ at FORD twenty years ago, and he got fired for it. From being in a leadership position at the end of the 1990s, FORD has spent the last twenty years trying to make connectivity work with a Bluetooth smartphone. On a scale of one-to-ten, Ford is around a two. The majority of European and Japanese car companies hover just about the five mark. The standouts are GM, BMW and VOLVO. Vehicle connectivity is a combination of systems that are embedded in the vehicle and services that are connected to those systems. It is based on two-way communication over a wireless network using either an open Internet for services that connect to systems that are totally blocked off from vehicle functions, or a secure point-to-point connection that requires encrypted protocol and security certificates. Some services, like SOS or roadside assistance, require voice and data while others, such as remote diagnostics or software updates, are data-only. Connected vehicle systems must be built into the design of the vehicle because those systems must be integrated into the vehicle’s electronics control network (bus) and connected to many of the vehicle’s sensors and electronic control units (ECUs).3 Connected vehicle services must be built into the company’s 3 . There are post-factory-fit de- strategy and—this is the important part—they must be tailored to vices, like those for theft notifica- tion and stolen vehicle tracking or both the customers and the regulations of the markets in which for usage-based insurance, but the vehicles will be sold. Each regional market (e.g., Europe, North these can operate in autonomous America, Latin America, Asia) has unique prerequisites, and each mode with no connections to the country or state within those regions have even more specific vehicle’s systems or a need to be integrated in the OEM’s connectiv- constraints. ity strategy. The diagram below shows a basic embedded telematics system that can be used for automatic and manual crash notification, roadside assistance, theft notification, stolen vehicle tracking, remote door and vehicle control services, among others. The communications module, often referred to as a telematics control unit or TCU, consists of the phone modem and the SIM-card or SIM-chip. The SIM is provided by a mobile network operator 3 | P a g e T H E D ISPATCHER M a r c h 2021 (MNO) who is responsible for ensuring that the phone is able to communicate with both data and voice in all of the markets where it is intended to be used. The SIM is placed in the TCU by the manufacturer of the TCU unit. The TCU is delivered to the factory where the car is being produced and placed in the vehicle. The vehicle is shipped to the market region where it will be sold, delivered to a dealer and eventually sold and handed over to a customer. TCU units are like any other computer: they don’t know what to do until you provide them with instructions. They need to know where to send data in different situations. There might be different destination points for different services. They need to know where to direct a phone call, also according to what specific service is required or where the vehicle containing the TCU is located when the service is requested.