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Presentation at Geneva Car Show to Focus On Enabling Safe Web Browsing While Driving

Now that the World Wide Web is migrating to the car, the international Connected Vehicle Trade Association (www.connectedvehicle.org) and connected vehicle services provider ATX Group (www.atxg.com), of Dusseldorf, are championing an initiative to collaborate on how drivers and passengers can safely access the Internet.

In a presentation scheduled for 5:30 p.m. CET on March 4, 2009 at the Fully Networked Car forum held in conjunction with the Geneva Auto Show, Arnaud de Meulemeester, ATX Europe managing director, will detail the initial steps toward defining the attributes needed to communicate to in-vehicle devices. ATX and the CVTA will seek to recruit interested, European entities to help lead the initiative. ATX, which already enables Web connectivity to select vehicles in Europe, also advocates the creation of a specific top-level domain — “.car” (dot-car) — to help ensure safe Web browsing in the vehicle.

CVTA is organizing a working group that will include automakers, suppliers, technology firms and content providers, for the purpose of developing a framework that would apply to embedded, in-vehicle and mobile Internet devices. Some of the issues the group will examine include what kind of content should be accessible and how it would be displayed; minimization of driver distraction through the use of speech technology; firewalls, viruses and other related issues and components of Internet delivery. The working group is chaired by Paul Thorpe, OSS Nokalva, a leading vendor of software development toolkits that enable companies to develop standards-based applications.

“Internet content is beginning to enter the vehicle environment, and we need to bring together all relevant stakeholders to identify the safest means of interacting with this content,” said Scott McCormick, CVTA president.

De Meulemeester, an early advocate of the dot-car domain concept, plans to present Fully Networked Car forum attendees with an overview of the initiative’s goals as well as next steps needed to harmonize at least 12 current initiatives on the issue.

“While the primary focus is to give motorists the ability to surf the Web in their vehicles, there are other key issues for automakers involved in the scope of this initiative,” noted de Meulemeester. “Beyond meeting consumer expectations and reducing lead time to deployment, other considerations include ensuring flexibility of the interface for the life of the vehicle to customization according to vehicle model, country and driver type.”

ATX entered the European market in 2003 through its acquisition of PASSO, a unit of Mannesman/Vodafone. Significant achievements of ATX’s European business unit include the development of a unique Web interface with emergency dispatch centers that adds data to information verbally provided by ATX response specialists. ATX Europe was also involved in the earliest developments of delivering Web-based content into the vehicle.