MUNCHEN – The warm glow of success is usually the reward for being the first to achieve anything – that is unless someone else claims to have got there beforehand.
It’s like that in the car industry at the moment, with makers scrambling to be the first to offer on-board Internet access.
Bavarian luxury carmaker BMW is claiming a multimedia milestone with the new 7 series limousine due to shed its dustsheet for the first time at the Frankfurt car show (September 13-23) but at the same time Volkswagen and the builders of the Smart minicar say they have already trodden this territory.
Audi and Mercedes are gearing up for online access from the cabin although experts are already asking themselves whether what is being offered is just the ability to log on from behind the wheel or genuine Internet access.
In their own way, all the contenders have a right to claim first place. After all, virtually every company has its own interpretation of what Internet access actually is.
Micro Compact Car (MCC) will supply customers with a Smart minicar fitted with a Palmtop organizer, a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) cellphone and the headset that is a legal requirement in Germany, but that doesn’t mean the driver has the complete ability to surf the Internet.
The system enables access to a web portal but only WAP pages can be called up. Users can choose between sending and receiving e- mails, home banking facilities or taking advantage of shopping discounts available to Smart owners online only.
Critics say this does not amount to a properly integrated system. Over at Volkswagen the picture is much the same. The Wolfsburg-based maker says the “first production car with Internet access is a Volkswagen Golf.”
What they mean though is a special edition of the bestseller available in limited numbers exclusively via the Worldwide Web.
VW says the Internet compatibility will be provided by a pocket PC and a cellphone. The mini-computer is mounted on a special dash console. The driver can uses this facility to call up so-called mobility services.
These comprise information about the weather, traffic conditions and the way shares are performing on the stock exchange. E-mails are also part of the package. Yet this is not information technology mated to the car itself.
BMW says this package is exactly what will be on offer in the new 7 series to be unveiled in Frankfurt. This carries an electronic system integrated into the car and dubbed iDrive.
A circular knob at hip level between the front seats can moved in any of eight directions. It governs functions which would normally require an array of separate buttons. The monitor display is mounted in the middle of the dashboard.
The system can be used to log into BMW’s Internet portal where drivers can choose from menus for online banking, e-mail despatch, weather or telephone numbers.
One of the key advantages of the set-up over what is on offer from the competition was explained by Tobias Nickel of BMW: “Someone who calls up the address of a restaurant or hotel does not need to make a note of it. It can be directed to the navigation system instead.”
The kind of surfing web fans are used to carrying out from home is not possible in the BMW and it probably isn’t what the designers were aiming for. The driver is supposed to concentrate on driving and according to Nickel, an easily readable size of script on the Internet screen is as important as a rapid download function.
The system is designed to still work properly at 200 kilometres an hour on the autobahn, the German motorway, but it’s worth reflecting on the necessity of high-speed surfing.
“We’ve been thinking seriously about cutting off access above a certain speed,” said Nickel. Before that can happen tests will have to be carried out to discover what exactly is an Internet-compatible driving speed.
The problem of speed is holding up progress on getting the Internet into the cabin.
Mercedes offers a new mobile service with access to an online portal but the telephone is the transmission medium and for the time being that is going to make “real” surfing from the car impossible.
“The bugbear here is always the cellular phone,” said Albrecht Eckel of Mercedes. Current models cannot cope with the necessary high level of data transfer and until new-generation UTMS cellphones are introduced not much is likely to change.
