Smartphones: New Toolbelts for Company Drivers
April 23, 2010
The company car as smartphone - the smartphone as company car? Mobile communications devices and vehicles are growing ever more tightly integrated, and it appears an "App" is "born" every few minutes, including vehicle and business-related electronic tools touted to aid employee productivity and efficiency.
In the upcoming Automotive Fleet May issue, Editor Mike Antich writes about the increasingly sophisticated fleet applications whereby smartphones and their next-generation iterations will become "extensions of desktop fleet management systems," evolving into "integral components" of the fleet management of the future.
Who will even need a desktop? Indeed, company drivers - and fleet managers - seem destined to morph into complete traveling offices, continuously tethered to the job and the task at hand - literally.
Coming to a Vehicle Near You
Tracking consumers' adoption of mobile communications connectivity - now a lightening-speed phenomenon - auto manufacturers are designing and equipping vehicles with interactive wireless capabilities not imagined just a few years ago.
General Motors' OnStar - the granddaddy of such in-vehicle communications - just unveiled, with Chevrolet, a smartphone application that will allow owners of the Volt electric vehicle 24/7 connection and remote control of vehicle functions and OnStar features. Drivers will communicate with their Volts "from Droid by Motorola, Apple iPhone, and Blackberry Storm smartphones," using real-time data to manage everything from setting the Volt's charge time to unlocking the doors, says Chevrolet.
Chrysler's uconnect system is the umbrella name for a selection of connectivity technologies with advanced voice recognition controls, including phone, entertainment media center, navigation, and Internet. The uconnect Web feature provides high-speed data transfer, combining WiFi and 3G cellular connectivity.
Ford is hailed in an April Fast Company magazine piece as "transforming the car into a powerful smartphone, one that lets you carry your digital world along with you and then customize it." Author Paul Hochman calls the next generation of Ford's platform SYNC technology - MyFord Touch - a "killer user-interface upgrade," coming first to the 2010 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX, then to the 2011 Focus.
Customizable and with a voice recognition system developed by Nuance Communications that "will let you talk to the car was if it were another human being," MyTouch Ford allows drivers to control their smartphones and run mobile applications through dashboard controls, writes Hochman.
The new user-interface is green, says Ford, not only providing drivers real-time "coaching" in optimizing mpg, but also an Eco-Route navigation tool option that instantly calculates the most fuel-efficient route.
Ford officials cite tech analysts who expect smartphone applications to soar to a $4 billion industry in the next two years and predict the connection-in-hand devices will become the No. 1 source for Internet access by 2015.
Our Constant Connection
With smartphone "toolbelts" of applications designed for any need today's consumer and business person can imagine - and beyond - our symbiotic connection to work, home, family, friends ... the world at large ... is assured.
We will never be alone. In some small part of at least one human's spirit, however, there's a nostalgic longing for what once was the one place we were sure to be out of reach - in isolated splendor within our engine-propelled traveling compartments - with just our thoughts or a song on the radio.