Venyu Blog

One of the hot catch-phrases in IT these days is something called “The Internet of Things.” According to its still-changing definition, the Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. Conceptually, the real and the virtual world would blur if all objects of daily life were equipped with radio tags (think radio-frequency identification popularly known as RFID) which, in turn, could then be identified and inventoried by computers.

This concept came to the foreground recently when I was digitally thumbing through Wired.com and discovered the provocative headline, “Cloud Connectivity Turns Cars Into Chameleons.”

Turns out that plug-in hybrids that can run on electrical motors or even traditional combustion engines may one day be able to pick and predict their powertrain use depending on location and past driving habits. And how will that prognostication occur? Through the cloud, of course.

The “cloud-connected” prototype announced by Ford in concert with Google I/O back in May was shown for the first time publicly at the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Orlando in October. According to the Wired article, “with no driver input, the (Ford) Escape can automatically turn its gas engine on and off depending on whether it’s entering a dense urban zone where only EVs are allowed, which are common in Europe.”

In terms of the Escape it uses historical data to predict whether a driver is going to be traveling through an exclusion zone (electrical equipped cars only), and then adjusts the powertrain accordingly and ensuring the driver “won’t run out of juice in EV-only mode.” Similarly, the car may be able to optimize its hybrid drivetrain for the highway and back road portions of a commute, or keep the battery topped off in anticipation of a stop-and-go slog.

Ford vehicles equipped with Sync are already cloud-connected. But the use of such technology for purposes other than driver convenience is a departure, and foreshadows a world of vehicles that connect with one another in addition to their drivers.

“Those services thus far have been used for infotainment, navigation and real-time traffic purposes to empower the driver,” said Ford Vehicle Controls Architecture and Algorithm Design technical expert Ryan McGee. “This technology has the potential to empower our vehicles to anticipate a driver’s needs for various reasons, such as optimizing a vehicle’s powertrain efficiency.”

In the article Ford explains the supporting technology this way: Each driver would have to opt in to an encrypted usage profile that securely collected data about driver behavior and habits. When the driver got into the car, the vehicle would access that data to predict where the car was about to be driven and optimize the powertrain accordingly. If the car had any questions along the way, it could ask the driver. (shades of 2001’s menacing HAL-9000)

“Once the destination is confirmed, the vehicle would have instant access to a variety of real-time information so it can optimize its performance, even against factors that the driver may not be aware of, such as an EV-only zone,” McGee said.

But back to the “Internet of Things.” A contributor to Forbes online, Tom Gillis, suggests in his article “Authenticate or Die” that as things in our everyday infrastructure are gaining intelligence that harnesses the processing power of computers, they also become vulnerable to attack.

Gillis cites researchers with iSec Partners which demonstrated how it’s possible to force some cars to unlock their doors and start their engines by sending special text messages to a car’s anti-theft system. Also, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has asked the security industry to help develop a roadmap to build “motor vehicle safeguards against cyber security threats and ensure the reliability and safety of automotive electronic control systems.”

I don’t know about you but there’s something obliquely “Big Brotherish” about cloud equipped cars. In the wrong hands —hackers, other cybercriminals, suspicious spouses or even the government — improved gas mileage and powertrain performance aside, it just may not be worth the risk.