Article
Big Brother or Less Bother
Automotive Electronics, February/March 2005
Think of a world with no speed bumps and no speed cameras, your account
is automatically debited as you drive for the cost of insurance, tax,
tolls, parking fees and fines for parking and speeding. Integrated in-car
GPS and communication systems could mean that all your car's movements
can be monitored and your car could be automatically decelerated in
low speed zones or even immobilised. Someone will know where your car
is at all times.
But on the other hand also think of a world where you don't have to
stop at toll booths while you struggle to find the money, no more searching
for change to feed the parking meter, where you only have to pay insurance
on the miles you do and don't have to subsidise those who drive all
day and where, if you break down, the rescue services will automatically
be notified and know where to find you. Your car can also inform you
when there is traffic congestion ahead and suggest another route.
Like it or hate it the idea of "Big Brother" watching your
car is possible; but how far away is the technology and the reality
of a national system?
Vehicle Telematics is the term for performing the sort of things described
above. It is made possible by the combination of a number of existing
technologies that are complex but available at low cost through volume.
The technologies provide the functions of location, communication, information
about the vehicle and information about the geography of the area in
which the vehicle is located.
Examples of these technologies are:
Location - provided by a GPS unit. Currently these are based
on the Navstar satellites; later this decade an alternative (the Galileo
system) will become available
Communication - cellular phone systems provide the communication
and in Europe this means the GSM system, usually in GPRS mode
Vehicle information - Engine management units have been used
in most cars for some years. The function of these units has been extended
to provide monitoring of many functions of the vehicle
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - Digital map information
can be processed to relate the vehicles location to specific roads,
car parks, etc.
Most of the technology for vehicle telematics already exists and different
subsets of it are in use today. The key is in combining the power of
these technologies.
What is happening now?
In the mid to late nineties telematics was thought to be a huge growth
area but the business case for the services it could provide was not
well thought out and telematics as a big business area failed to take
off.
Some cars are already fitted with in-car units which are used for remote
diagnostics and enable the option of in-car navigation products. In
Europe at the moment factory fit is mainly limited to the up-market
vehicle manufacturers like BMW. It is expected that this will, like
other car refinements, filter downmarket. One report states that Ford
will be equipping all cars by this year some time and in the UK the
facility was offered as an option on most cars in the range from November
2004. Increasingly the basic hardware and software will be factory fitted
in the vehicles. Where this is not done then there may be a problem
interfacing with the vehicles engine management and information systems
particularly as there are no standards in this area. Forecasts indicate
that all cars will be factory fitted by 2012. However, this will still
leave a large number of cars on the road with no units or with incompatible
ones.
The real applications to date have been in vehicle fleet management
where the business case is much clearer. The main areas of application
have been car rental fleets and in freight logistics management. The
potential benefits in these areas were recognised some time ago and
implemented in order to gain a commercial advantage. Several large freight
fleet operators have systems in operation which monitor vehicle movement
and performance and enable the operators to re-route vehicles to maximise
utilisation.
Norwich Union is already conducting a trial to monitor vehicle use
and is currently implementing a service of "pay as you use"
insurance premiums.
An associated area which is relatively large and active is Electronic
Fee Collection (EFC) which is the collection of fees from vehicles for
a variety of reasons such as:
· Motorway tolls
· Lorry road use charging
· Restricted Access Charging (Congestion charging)
· Parking
There are a number of systems in operation across the world with more
being planned. Most of them use microwave radio, DSRC (Digital Short
Range Communication) at 5.8GHz and consist of an in-vehicle unit that
responds to devices mounted on gantries at tolling stations. These do
not therefore strictly use location except in the sense that the vehicle
unit says "I am X and I am here" and the gantry contains the
location information. Systems for this purpose could use GPS as the
means to determine vehicle location and there is pressure from the EU
to do so using the Galileo system. However, the timescale for this is
such that there will be a large installed base of DSRC systems by the
time the Galileo GPS system is available.
Nevertheless this is an active area and one in which the business case
is relatively clear. There are several working motorway toll collection
and road usage schemes in operation and many studies and trials in this
area.
What of the future?
The technologies are already available in terms of in-car unit (demonstrated
by commercial fleet management systems and in-car navigation systems)
but to get a universal unit appropriate to a national or pan-European
system will require agreement on common technology and standards (preferably
between countries) - already divergent - and will require a very low
cost unit.
Exciting evolving technologies will play a part in these systems. Voice
recognition technology is already available from manufacturers like
Honda and BMW to control in-car equipment and to access navigation information.
Head-up displays, originally designed for use in fighter aircraft, are
now available as an option from BMW and display conventional instrument
functions and navigation information. Like other technologies these
will develop and filter downmarket where they prove to increase driver
comfort and vehicle safety
The different components of current systems are interconnected in different
ways; mainly by the use of dedicated wiring. Although the data rates
required are relatively low it is likely that manufacturers will integrate
these functions in to vehicle bus systems such as MOST
Most of the systems in use today either provide services to individual
car drivers or operate on relatively small fleets of vehicles. Implementing
a national scheme will be an altogether different challenge.
The sheer size of the problem is daunting. There are over 31 million
licensed vehicles in Britain and traffic now totals over 500 billion
vehicle kilometres per year. If the system is to operate in real time
then, assuming that a vehicle's position must be logged at least every
half kilometre, a thousand billion messages will be sent across the
communications network. These then have to be logged and interpreted
to keep track of all vehicles and produce billing information etc. This
will require an IT system of almost unimaginable size and complexity
and the implementation of very large IT systems is notoriously difficult.
The UK government has already indicated that a national road charging
system will become a necessity in order to make better use of the UK
road capacity particularly in terms of alleviating increasing traffic
congestion. The government Feasibility Study of Road Pricing, published
in 2004, indicates that road charging will almost certainly be implemented
at some time in the future. Although the study indicates that it is
unlikely to be practical until 2014, the Lorry Road Use charging scheme,
to be introduced in 2007/8, will anticipate many of the features of
a national charging scheme. However it is not clear whether it will
be compatible with a later system for all vehicles.
It would be highly expensive to introduce a scheme and running costs
have been estimated as £3billion a year. However the potential
savings are also large - there is potential for £12 billion worth
of timesavings. A very low cost car unit will be required to minimise
the upfront cost of equipping 30 million vehicles.
Apart from the technical challenges there will be major social and
political issues to overcome; politically there must be some benefits
to users in order to get public acceptance. There will be advantages
for the public in terms of better traffic flow but these are difficult
to quantify and it will be necessary to overcome perceptions of a "Big
Brother" system.
There are practical problems of fitting very large number of vehicles
with units although increasingly these will be factory fitted to new
vehicles. Also,, what do you do with a mixed population of some cars
with and some without?
Controlling the speed of vehicles remotely will certainly be technically
possible but this is not seen as any part of a national system. This
has already been considered for stopping or slowing stolen vehicles
but has very difficult safety implications. By way of example, stopping
a stolen vehicle in the outside lane of a motorway is not a good move
and what if the system slows a speeding motorist and someone runs in
to him?
Conclusion
These vehicle telematics applications won't be easy to implement, technically
or politically - and it won't happen for a long while. However, the
technical building blocks are there, it will come and it will assist
in optimising use of the UK road network.
