4 ms·

Ford Goes WiFi With Mobile Hotspots For SYNC Vehicles

12 points by bishvili 17y ago

jbrun 17y ago
Very cool, this reminds me of the TED talk by ZipCar founder who wants cars to become wi-fi spots, creating an ad-hoc national network. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and_her_next_big_idea.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and...
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  I wonder how much money a car manufacturer could bring in by turning their entire vehicle output as wi-fi spots for a mesh network. I know there are tel-co's in my area that want customers but cannot buy-out the fibre network from competitors. As they're already cellular providers a wi-fi mesh network with 3G internet could enable them access to an entire city. It could be simple to establish, simply offer everyone with a warranty free in-vehicle wi-fi when they bring it in for anything. With every warrantied vehicle required to return for an oil change within 3-6 months, you can turn tens of thousands of cars into a wi-fi mesh. This could turn dense-urban areas into mesh networks very rapidly, with a maximum of 6 months till a dense network is developed. Heck add a processor, ram and a SSD to the wi-fi device and you could sell your car network's processing power for use as a supercomputer for data crunching purposes. The potential is massive and could provide major innovation and income opportunities that vehicle manufacturers have never thought of.
  - mey 17y ago
    I always figured there was an interesting opportunity for mesh networks on cars going down the highway. From car to car communication, transporting large data chunks down the highway (stored on car for several mile between mesh endpoints), or even emergency broadcasts.
arohner 17y ago
>The worst part? We'll have to wait until the introduction of Ford's second-gen SYNC system sometime next year. No, the worst part is the fact that you need to buy a new car to get a clean solution to wireless. I recently bought a car with built-in bluetooth and satellite nav; it's my first car with any serious user-computer interaction. I bought the car used, built in '06. What I realized is that what I really want is for the satellite nav screen to be a secondary output for my iphone. I don't want their nav, I want to just run google maps. I don't want to sync my phone contacts list into the car's phone contacts. AFAIK, there is no way to send an address from my iphone to the nav system, and the nav UI is terrible. When new cars cost two orders of magnitude more than new phones, there really needs to be a better interface. There's no justification to buying a car because it has an ipod dock or whatever the next big thing is. The computer screen in the car should be an open API for the iphone to plug into, and the iphone should have an open API for controlling external monitors and input devices (once the hardware supports it). For me, this is the solution to pg's "iphone as a development platform". Of course, the car manufacturers will have none of it. There's a reason car computer technology is 5-10 years behind consumer electronics.

12 points by bishvili 17y ago

jbrun 17y ago

Very cool, this reminds me of the TED talk by ZipCar founder who wants cars to become wi-fi spots, creating an ad-hoc national network. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and_her_next_big_idea.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and...

electromagnetic 17y ago
I wonder how much money a car manufacturer could bring in by turning their entire vehicle output as wi-fi spots for a mesh network. I know there are tel-co's in my area that want customers but cannot buy-out the fibre network from competitors. As they're already cellular providers a wi-fi mesh network with 3G internet could enable them access to an entire city. It could be simple to establish, simply offer everyone with a warranty free in-vehicle wi-fi when they bring it in for anything. With every warrantied vehicle required to return for an oil change within 3-6 months, you can turn tens of thousands of cars into a wi-fi mesh. This could turn dense-urban areas into mesh networks very rapidly, with a maximum of 6 months till a dense network is developed. Heck add a processor, ram and a SSD to the wi-fi device and you could sell your car network's processing power for use as a supercomputer for data crunching purposes. The potential is massive and could provide major innovation and income opportunities that vehicle manufacturers have never thought of.
- mey 17y ago
  I always figured there was an interesting opportunity for mesh networks on cars going down the highway. From car to car communication, transporting large data chunks down the highway (stored on car for several mile between mesh endpoints), or even emergency broadcasts.

arohner 17y ago

>The worst part? We'll have to wait until the introduction of Ford's second-gen SYNC system sometime next year. No, the worst part is the fact that you need to buy a new car to get a clean solution to wireless. I recently bought a car with built-in bluetooth and satellite nav; it's my first car with any serious user-computer interaction. I bought the car used, built in '06. What I realized is that what I really want is for the satellite nav screen to be a secondary output for my iphone. I don't want their nav, I want to just run google maps. I don't want to sync my phone contacts list into the car's phone contacts. AFAIK, there is no way to send an address from my iphone to the nav system, and the nav UI is terrible. When new cars cost two orders of magnitude more than new phones, there really needs to be a better interface. There's no justification to buying a car because it has an ipod dock or whatever the next big thing is. The computer screen in the car should be an open API for the iphone to plug into, and the iphone should have an open API for controlling external monitors and input devices (once the hardware supports it). For me, this is the solution to pg's "iphone as a development platform". Of course, the car manufacturers will have none of it. There's a reason car computer technology is 5-10 years behind consumer electronics.