Cars

Future of Transport: is it electric?

ianwaring Cars, Future Trends

I keep seeing inferences that the economics of making and running a car will drive a wholesale move to electric power in less than 10 years time. A Tesla can accelerate 0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds. A full tank in a BMW i3 gives 100 miles range and costs £2.00 to fill. The simplification of the drive train should drive manufacturing and maintenance costs right down. I’m starting to see more Nissan Leafs, BMW i3s, Teslas and Renault electric cars on the road – the latter reminding me of the old 2 seater Messerschmidt Sausage Cars that routinely drove around UK roads in the 1960s. And rumours abound that even Apple are looking at offering their own electric car in 2020 or so.


Meanwhile, I wonder if there are even more compelling transport simplifications. The two wheels in front, one behind of 1950s Morgan cars look like they’d be great fun for one seater transport like these from Toyota or Sway models. Lean like skiing.


Kudos to Jean-Louis Gassee for doing something I’ve not seen done elsewhere; a back of the envelope calculation of how much electricity capacity needs to be added if you assume a wholesale switch to electric power. For the USA, with a current capacity of circa 1 Terrawatt per year, the extra load would amount to an extra 1.3 Terrwatt capacity needed. See: Monday Note. I just wonder if the UK Government are agonizing over future Electricity Capacity needs – as well as tax implications – if the shift to electric power really is as compelling as folks believe.

The Internet of Things withers – while HealthKit ratchets along

ianwaring Apple, Cars, Fitness, Google, Gym, HomeKit, iBeacon, Kickstarter, Low Energy Bluetooth, Medical, Mobiles, Software, Watches Leave a comment

FDA Approved Logo

I sometimes shudder at the estimates, as once outlined by executives at Cisco, that reckons the market for “Internet of Things” – communicating sensors embedded everywhere – would be likely be a $19 trillion market. A market is normally people willing to invest to make money, save money, to improve convenience or reduce waste. Or a mix. I then look at various analysts reports where they size both the future – and the current market size. I really can’t work out how they arrive at today’s estimated monetary amounts, let alone do the leap of faith into the future stellar revenue numbers. Just like IBM with their alleged ‘Cloud’ volumes, it’s difficult to make out what current products are stuffed inside the current alleged volumes.

One of my sons friends is a Sales Director for a distributor of sensors. There appear good use cases in Utility networks, such as monitoring water or gas flow and to estimate where leaks are appearing, and their loss dimensions. This is apparently already well served. As are industrial applications, based on pneumatics, fluid flow and hook ups to SCADA equipment. A bit of RFID so stock movements can be automatically checked through their distribution process. Outside of these, there are the 3 usual consumer areas; that of cars, health and home equipment control – the very three areas that both Apple and Google appear to be focussed on.

To which you can probably add Low Power Bluetooth Beacons, which will allow a phone handset to know it’s precise location, even where GPS co-ordinates are not available (inside shopping centres as an example). If you’re in an open field with sight of the horizon around you in all directions, circa 14 GPS satellites should be “visible”; if your handset sees two of them, it can suss your x and y co-ordinates to a meter or so. If it sees 3 satellites, that’s normally enough to calculate your x, y and z co-ordinates – ie: geographic location and height above sea level. If it can only see 1 or none, it needs another clue. Hence a super secret rollout where vendors are offering these LEB beacons and can trade the translation from their individual identifiers to their exact location.

In Apple’s case, Apple Passbook Loyalty Cards and Boarding Passes are already getting triggered with an icon on the iOS 8 home screen when you’re adjacent to a Starbucks outlet or Virgin Atlantic Check-in desk; one icon press, and your payment card or boarding pass is there for you already. I dare say the same functionality is appearing in Google Now on Android; it can already suss when I get out of my car and start to walk, and keeps a note of my parking location – so I can ask it to navigate me back precisely. It’s also started to tell me what web sites people look at when they are in the same restaurant that i’m sitting in (normally the web site or menu of the restaurant itself).

We’re in a lull between Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, and next weeks equivalent Google I/O developer event, where Googles version of Health and HomeKit may well appear. Maybe further developments to link your cars Engine Control Unit to the Internet as well (currently better engaged by Phil Windley’s FUSE project). Apple appear to have done a stick and twist on connecting an iPhone to a cars audio system only, where the cars electronics use Blackberry’s QNX embedded Linux software; Android implementations from Google are more ambitious but (given long car model cycle times) likely to take longer to hit volume deployments. Unless we get an unexpected announcement at Google I/O next week.

My one surprise is that my previous blog post on Apples HomeKit got an order of magnitude more readers than my two posts on the Health app and the HealthKit API (posts here and here). I’d never expected that using your iPhone as a universal, voice controlled home lock/light/door remote would be so interesting to people. I also hear that Nest (now a Google subsidiary) are about to formally announce shipment of their 500,000th room temperature control. Not sure about their Smoke Alarm volumes to date though.

That apart, I noticed today that the US Food and Drug Administration had, in March, issued some clarifications on what type of mobile connected devices would not warrant regulatory classification as a medical device in the USA. They were:

  1. Mobile apps for providers that help track or manage patient immunizations by assessing the need for immunization, consent form, and immunization lot number

  2. Mobile apps that provide drug-drug interactions and relevant safety information (side effects, drug interactions, active ingredient) as a report based on demographic data (age, gender), clinical information (current diagnosis), and current medications

  3. Mobile apps that enable, during an encounter, a health care provider to access their patient’s personal health record (health information) that is either hosted on a web-based or other platform

So, it looks like Apple Health application and their HealthKit API have already skipped past the need for regulatory approvals there already. The only thing i’ve not managed to suss is how they measure blood pressure and glucose levels on a wearable device without being invasive. I’ve seen someone mention that a hi res camera is normally sufficient to detect pulse rates by seeing image changes on a picture of a patients wrist. I’ve also seen an inference that suitably equipped glasses can suss basic blood composition looking at what is exposed visibly in the iris of an eye. But if Apple’s iWatch – as commonly rumoured – can detect Glucose levels for Diabetes patients, i’m still agonising how they’d do it. Short of eating or attaching another (probably disposable) Low Energy Bluetooth sensor for the phone handset to collect data from.

That looks like it’ll be Q4 before we’ll all know the story. All I know right now is that Apple produce an iWatch, and indeed return the iPhone design to being more rounded like the 3S was, that my wife will expect me to be in the queue on release date to buy them both for her.

Uber in London: The Streisand Effect keeps on giving

ianwaring Android, Apple, Cars, Driving, Future Trends, Google, Internet, Marketing, Mobiles, Politicians, Software Leave a comment

Uber Logo

With the same overall theme as yesterday, if you’re looking at your future, step one is to look at what your customers would value, then to work back to the service components to deliver it.

I’ve followed Uber since I first discovered them in San Francisco, and it looks a simple model – to the user. You want to go from where you are to another local destination. You typically see where the closest driver is to you on your smartphone. You ask your handset for a price to go to a specific destination. It tells you. If you accept, the car is ordered and comes to pick you up. When you get dropped off, your credit card is charged, and both you and the taxi driver get the opportunity to rate each other. Job done.

Behind that facade is a model of supply and demand. Taxi drivers that can clock on and off at will. At times of high demand and dwindling available ride capacity, prices are ramped up (to “surge” pricing) to encourage more drivers onto the road. Drivers and customers with voluminous bad ratings removed. Drivers paid well enough to make more money than those in most taxi firms ($80-90,000/year in New York), or the freedom to work part time – even down to a level where your reward is to pay for your car for a few hours per week of work, and have free use of it at other times.

The service is simple and compelling enough that i’d have thought tax firms would have cottoned onto how the service works, and to replicate it before Uber ever appeared on these shores. But, with a wasted five years, they’ve appeared – and Taxi drivers all over Europe decided to run the most effective advertising campaign for an upstart competitor in their history. A one-day 850% subscriber growth; that really takes some doing, even if you were on the same side.

I’m just surprised that whoever called the go-slows all over Europe didn’t take the time out to study what we in the tech industry know as “The Streisand Effect” – Wikipedia reference here. BBC Radio 2 even ran a segment on Uber at lunchtime today, followed by every TV News Bulletin i’ve heard since. I downloaded the app as a result of hearing it on that lunchtime slot, as I guess many others did too (albeit no coverage in my area 50 miles West of London – yet). Given the five years of missed prep time, I think they’ve now lost – or find themselves in fast follower mode to incorporate similar technology into their service before they have a mass exodus to Uber (of customers, then drivers).

London Cabbies do know all the practical use of rat runs that SatNav systems are still learning, but even that is a matter of time now. I suspect appealing for regulation will, at best, only delay the inevitable.

The safest option – given users love the simplicity and lack of surprises in the service – is to get busy quickly. Plenty of mobile phone app prototyping help available on the very patch that London Black Cab drivers serve.

More evidence of the Relentless Migration from CapEx to OpEx

ianwaring Cars, Driving, Future Trends, Google, Mobiles Leave a comment

Google Self Driving Car

There’s been quite a lot of commentary in the last week following Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s presentation at the Re/code Conference; he got to show this video of the next iteration of their self driving cars. For a bit of history leading up to that announcement, i’d recommend watching two videos on the progress of this project to date, and then the video Sergey showed last week:

  1. Sebastian Thrun – the project lead – giving a presentation about self driving cars in 2011 and showing a few of them in action here (it lasts 4 mins, 14 seconds).
  2. A video that Google produced with a twist near the end here (3 mins 1 second long).
  3. And the video of the new exploratory design announced this week here (2 mins 53 seconds).

My brain diverted another way to most. Have you ever seen and experienced Uber? You open an app on your Smartphone, which identifies where you are located. You tell it where you’d like to travel to, and it will tell you (a) how long a wait until a taxi will arrive to collect you and (b) the fixed cost of the journey. If you accept both, your taxi is scheduled, collects you, drops you off and the charge made to your credit card. Done! The system is set so that both driver and passenger rate their experience, so that good service from both ends of the transaction is maintained.

It’s probably well known that most cars purchased are tremendously under utilised and taking up valuable parking space in Cities all over the world. There are separate innovations where drivers can clock on and off at any time they wish, and obviously less resources available results in the pricing rising – to encourage more Uber drivers back online to service the demand. There are also periods of exceptional demand where Uber will jack the prices right up – transparently to all – to ensure there are the right number of drivers available to service the very busy customer demand periods (like rush hours).

Uber have stirred controversy in the Taxi industry because anyone (with lack of bad references) can be a Uber driver, and part time working is a personal choice. Those who work full time, as self employed drivers, often get much higher pay than most routine licensed Taxi drivers; in New York, reckoned to be north of $90,000/year gross and (after car finance and depreciation costs) around $60,000/year. Drivers who operate part time can use the income to offset the cost of their cars, partly or completely, if that is their choice.

The bit that caught my imagination was what would happen if a City (or a private company) bought a fleet of these Google cars and hooked them into Uber. After use, they go to their next collection point or back to a well researched cache – ready for the best possible service to the next likely passenger. Or to the Petrol Station to be refueled (and I hope a manufacturer recall doesn’t end up with fleets of them working back to their factory, all at once!).

I guess in the early days, there will be idiots on the road who’ll try to psych them out, but once an integral piece of local life, I think a Google/Uber combination would be tremendous. Not least, as yet another glowing example that paying for a shared resource is much cheaper than the inefficiencies inherent in expensive, rarely used Capital assets.

CapEx is the past, OpEx is the future.

Gute Fahrt – 3 simple tips to make your drivers safer

ianwaring Cars, Courses, Driving, Training Leave a comment

Gute Fahrt - Safe Journey

That’s German for “Safe Journey”. Not directly related to computers or the IT industry, but a symptom of the sort of characters it attracts to the Sales ranks. A population of relatively young drivers of fairly expensive and quite powerful cars. In our case, one female manager in Welwyn who took it as a personal affront to be overtaken in her BMW. Another Salesman in Bristol, driving his boss to a meeting in Devon in his new Ford Capri 2.8 Injection; the mistake was to leave very late and to be told by his Manager to “step on it”. I think he’s still trying to remove the stain from the passenger seat.

With that, the rather inevitable bad accident statistics, not least as statistics suggest that 90% of drivers think they are better than average. As a result, every driver in the company got put on a mandatory one day course, an attempt to stem that tide. The first thing that surprised me that the whole one day course was spent in a classroom, and not a single minute driving a car. But the end result of attending that one class was very compelling.

As was the business change example given previously (in http://www.ianwaring.com/2014/03/24/jean-louis-gassee-priorities-targets-and-aims/), there were only three priorities that everyone followed to enact major changes – and to lower the accident rate considerably. In doing so, even my wife noticed subtle changes the very next time she rode in our car with me (a four hour family trip to Cornwall).

The three fundamentals were:

  1. Stay at least 2 seconds behind the car in front, independent of your speed. Just pick any fixed roadside object that the car in front goes past, and recite “only a fool breaks the two second rule”. As long as you haven’t passed the same object by the time you’ve finished reciting that in your mind, you’re in good shape. In rain, make that 4 seconds.
  2. If you’re stationary and waiting to turn right in the UK (or turning left in countries that drive on the right hand side of the road), keep the front wheels of your car facing directly forward. Resist all urges to point the wheels toward the road you’re turning into. A big cause of accidents is being rear-ended by a car behind you. If your front wheels are straight, you will just roll straight down the road; if turned, you’ll most likely to fund yourself colliding head on with fast oncoming traffic.
  3. Chill. Totally. Keep well away from other drivers who are behaving aggressively or taking unnecessary risks. Let them pass, keep out of the way and let them have their own accidents without your involvement. If you feel aggrieved, do not give chase; it’s an unnecessary risk to you, and if you catch them, you’ll only likely embarrass yourself and others. And never, ever seek solace in being able to prove blame; if you get to the stage when you’re trying to argue who’s fault it is, you’ve lost already. Avoid having the accident in the first place.

There were supplementary videos to prove the points, including the customary “spot the lorry drivers cab after the one at the back ran into another in front”. But the points themselves were easy to remember. After the initial running of the course in the branch office with the worst accident statistics, they found:

  • The accident rate effectively went to zero in the first three months since that course was run
  • The number of “unattended” accidents – such as those alleged in car parks when the driver was not present – also dropped like a stone. Someone telling porkie pies before!
  • As a result, overall costs reduced at the same time as staff could spend more face time with customers

That got replicated right across the company. If in doubt, try it. I bet everyone else who rides with you will notice – and feel more relaxed and comfortable by you doing so.