THE HANSEN REPORT ON AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS. A Business and Technology Newsletter VOL. 19, NO. 10◆◆ PORTSMOUTH, NH USA DEC. 2006/JAN. 2007 Cost of Radar Is Hughes Telematics Makes Going Down Business Case First OEM Customer: Chrysler developed embedded equipment platform. “A big part of making the business case Knee-deep in a program to deliver an work for telematics is the cost of the em- SiGe Sensors by 2008 end-to-end solution for the Chrysler bedded equipment itself,” noted Erik Most innovation in automotive elec- Group by the 2010 model year, Erik Goldman. “The platform—including a tronics comes from the semiconductor Goldman, president of Hughes Telematics fairly powerful ARM processor, quite a bit industry. Improvements in silicon germa- Inc., thinks the time is finally ripe for of memory, GPS, a communications mod- nium (SiGe) technology will soon lead to telematics. “I’ve been watching the ule, CAN interface to vehicle buses, and radar sensors that are significantly more telematics space since the 1990s. I’ve seen possibly a Linux operating system—will affordable than sensors made using gal- it rise. I’ve seen it fall. I’m very familiar set a new pricing standard.” Mr. Goldman lium arsenide (GaAs), which is what they with some of the strengths and weaknesses indicated that the embedded platform will replace. GaAs semiconductors are far of the historical model. There’s a unique could cost less than $100 to OEMs, espe- more difficult to build than those made opportunity with the resources we have cially if it is employed as a standard fea- from SiGe. through Apollo Management, the re- ture across all the OEM’s vehicle lines. What’s remarkable about silicon ger- sources we have through Hughes Com- HTI aims to make its margins on the manium is that semiconductors made us- munications, the progress that OnStar telematics services it provides and plans to ing the material can be produced on the has made, and the real efficiencies that charge as little as possible for the embed- same lines, using the same processes, as technology can now deliver,” said Mr. ded equipment. In contrast, the embedded those used to make silicon integrated cir- Goldman from the company’s headquar- platform ATX uses in Mercedes vehicles cuits, and they function very well at fre- ters in Atlanta, Georgia. is produced by Continental, so the quencies that are way too high for silicon. Hughes Telematics is majority-owned supplier’s margin must be included in the In June 2006 a research team from IBM by Apollo Management, a private equity hardware price. (Continental also will and Georgia Institute of Technology dem- firm with $27 billion of capital under supply the hardware for the recently an- onstrated a SiGe transistor operating at management. In the mid-1990s when it nounced Ford Sync mobile device plat- 500 GHz, a record. The first radar sensors was part of GM, Hughes collaborated in form Ford developed with Microsoft.) made using a SiGe chip set will operate at the development of OnStar. Hughes Telematics had hoped to be 24 GHz, nowhere near the record. They The emergence of Hughes Telematics able to announce its deal with Chrysler in will be used in production vehicles as is the first serious indication that the in- time to make a big splash at the Los An- soon as 2008. dustry might be reawakening since Ford’s geles Auto Show, but the carmaker did The great benefit to the auto industry telematics entry, Wingcast, imploded in not give it the green light until January 5, is that radar sensors made from SiGe will June 2002. Two years later, in March just in time for the North American Inter- eventually cost as little as $20 each, 2004, Wall Street showed little interest national Auto Show in Detroit. Chrysler roughly one-fifth the OE price now paid when telematics service provider ATX has not yet announced which models will for sensors made from GaAs. Radar sen- tried unsuccessfully to launch its IPO. first be equipped with the telematics plat- sors are comprised of an RF (radio fre- ATX and OnStar have been the only form or when the service will be available. quency) front-end, which contributes major telematics service providers in Initially Hughes Telematics will pro- about 50% to the sensor’s cost, and a digi- North America. Much, much bigger than vide voice and data communications via a tal signal processor for computation, per- any other telematics service provider in digital cell phone network to supply basic haps 35% of the cost. The packaging of the world, OnStar says it has well over 4.5 emergency services like crash notification, the sensor and software account for the million subscribers. roadside assistance and stolen vehicle rest. Hughes Telematics Inc. (HTI) believes tracking. That capability would be With the RF part done in SiGe, not it can change the business equation by complemented in the first year by a data only will it be much smaller and cheaper, providing an end-to-end solution that in- downlink, provided by either XM Satellite but some of the circuits that had been cludes a national two-way digital com- Radio or Sirius Satellite Radio, so the separate can now be integrated on the munications network, telematics service OEM or a dealer could broadcast to all or Turn to Radar, page 2 center and its own in-house designed and Turn to Hughes, page 3 German Carmakers Agree to XML Standard for HMI At a meeting this past November at will lead to two important benefits. First, that will implement a use case based on DaimlerChrysler facilities in Stuttgart, the cost for software development should the standard. That developer could be Germany, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, go down. And second, the bigger benefit: Elektrobit Automotive or IAV GmbH, an DaimlerChrysler and Porsche engineers If we have an automatic process for de- automotive engineering firm that’s a joint agreed to accept version 1.0 of a new stan- signing the HMI, creating this XML using venture between Volkswagen (50%), Si- dard they’ve been developing, which will tools, and then integrating the XML into emens VDO (20%) and others. Or one of use XML, the extensible markup language the software using an automatic process, the carmakers in the group could imple- used on the worldwide web, to specify the then we have the possibility to change ment the use case. HMI (human machine interface) require- HMI features very late in projects—by Initially the HMI standard will be used ments of audio and navigation systems. only changing the data, not the underly- to specify audio and navigation systems Further, the standard will also facilitate ing software,” said Mr. Pollex. and eventually it could also be applied to automatic testing of HMI code. Thomas Fleischmann, a project man- the instrument cluster. But that will have Volkswagen expects to be able to re- ager at Elektrobit Automotive, pointed to wait a few years until clusters have lease its first RFQ based on version 1.0 by out another benefit, “With this approach, enough memory and CPU power to the end of 2007. Volkswagen already has HMI development will become indepen- handle the XML software layer. some audio projects underway that use dent from application development, Now that version 1.0 has been agreed this XML process but not version 1.0 that which will help the OEMs establish their to, the HMI standards group is open to the group has developed. brand-specific look and feel.” Elektrobit taking input from engineers beyond Ger- “The benefit of this standard is that Automotive, formerly 3SOFT, has experi- many. “All of our results and our discus- every OEM will have the same interface ence working in an XML-based develop- sions are open to everybody,” said Mr. to its tier one,” declared Alf Pollex, who is ment process. Pollex. “It’s all free. They can look at responsible for HMI concepts, develop- The next step in development of the what we have done. If they want to ment and testing for the Volkswagen standard is to move beyond the paper change something they can make recom- Group. “The HMI framework of a radio specification, which is difficult to under- mendations, which we will consider.” built at Blaupunkt or Visteon will be stand because the XML description is very The specification is available in En- nearly the same regardless of whether it is complex. Some time in January, the stan- glish. For more information please contact for DaimlerChrysler, VW or Audi. That dards group intends to hire a company [email protected]. ◆ Radar... Continued from page 1 same chip, allowing designers to use a less As radar sensors trickle down from the expensive, garden variety DSP device. luxury-car segment to less expensive ve- THE HANSEN REPORT ON Lower cost radar sensors will help spur hicles, M/A-COM, which also makes an AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS significantly higher volume production of RF module used in 77 GHz narrow band advanced safety features such as side ob- long-range sensors for ACC applications, © 2007 Paul Hansen Associates, 150 ject detection and stop-and-go adaptive could be producing as many as several Pinehurst Rd., Portsmouth, NH 03801, cruise control (ACC). hundred thousand short-range and 30,000 USA. Telephone: 603-431-5859. Fax: 603- M/A-COM, a unit of Tyco Electron- or more long-range sensors annually by 431-5791. Email: [email protected]. ics, is likely to be among the world’s lead- 2011. All rights reserved. Materials may not be ing suppliers of radar sensors.