auto parts: May 2012

It pays to uncover... the new QNX reference vehicle

As you know, we are gearing up for Telematics Detroit next week and bringing our brand new reference vehicle to the show. I would tell you what kind of car it is, but that would take away all the fun! We posted some pictures earlier but we wanted to give you a few more to see if you can correctly guess the brand name and model.

And to make it interesting, if you’re right, we’ll give you a $25 gift certificate to Starbucks! We will award gift cards to the first 25 people who respond with the correct answer and currently reside in the United States or Canada.

Earlier votes don’t count; you have to vote on Twitter, starting today. Simply follow our handle at @QNX_Auto and tweet @QNX_Auto with your guess, and you’ll be entered. And stay tuned on Twitter, where we’ll post more pictures. Don’t have Twitter? You can vote here, but you must include your email. And in order to play fair, QNX employees aren't eligible - shucks.

Check out the pictures below and get your votes in early. The car will be unveiled, and winners notified, on June 6. Good luck!

Report from CTIA Wireless: Apps in the Car

You wouldn’t think that CTIA Wireless, a mobile show, would be a good venue for a car guy. But automotive journalist Doug Newcomb put together a set of panels that managed to attract everyone from the automotive industry who attended the show.

I met a good number of friends from a variety of automakers, tier one suppliers, and hardware and software vendors. I also had the distinct pleasure of participating in one of Doug's panels, which was moderated by Damon Lavrinc of WIRED.

The topic was the future of apps in the car, and it generated a spirited discussion. Panel participants included Geoff Snyder from Pandora, Michelle Avary from Toyota, Henry Bzeih from Kia, and Scott Burnell from Ford — all experts on the topic.

Andy speaking on the

apps panel. Videos of all

the panels are now online.

In general, we agreed: apps are coming to the car. They have already arrived in several cases, and it’s only a matter of time before they come to mass-market vehicles. And apps are not for North American alone: it's a worldwide phenomenon.

Mind you, we engaged in lively debate on a number of questions: What role does the mobile app developer play? How to deal with the fragmentation caused by different OEM app platforms? How to deal with driver distraction? And when will the "one man app" ever make it into the car? We all had good and varied opinions on these topics, and the session was very well received by the audience.

Derek Kuhn, QNX vice president of sales and marketing, also participated in a panel session, titled "Can we all just get along… for the consumer's sake?". That panel focused on how the industry as a whole can create a more seamless experience for the consumer. Derek's co-panelists included Mark Harland from GM, Leo McCloskey from Airbiquity, Brian Radloff from Nuance, and Niall Berkery from Telenav.

Did I mention? Videos of all the panels are now on Doug Newcomb's website — check them out!

SOLD - JZZ 30 - Soarer - Half Cut

SOLD To Local Customer
This Half Cut Model Soarer JZZ 30 - Engine 1JZ - GTE - Auto, Selling Together With Long Shaft And Rear Axle

Selling As Is Where Is Basis

To View Engine Revving, Click Video Below:-

General View Of The Half Cut

General View Of The Odometer

Mileage Reading :- 180952 Kilometers Or 112438 Miles

Engine Tag Information

Chassis Number

Front View Of The Engine Bay

Side View Of The Engine Bay

Inner Part Of The Engine

Front Turbo

Rear Turbo

Side View Of The Auto Gear Box

Back View Of The Auto Gear Box

Long Shaft

Rear Axle With Complete Frame

General View Of The Half Cut

Those Who Live In Glass Houses...

Obama is attacking Romney over Bain Capital's unsuccessful run with a Michigan auto supplier, Cambridge Industries. Obama should be careful, because Romney's supporters might start reminding everyone what happened under Car Czar Steven Rattner.

A very "Private equity" like takeover of GM and Chrysler, under which plants, dealers, and many many jobs were cut, in order to re-organize the companies. The only difference here is that Rattner was using taxpayer money instead of investor money to back the re-organization, but his goals were essentially the same as Bain's would have been: improve shareholder (taxpayer) value by re-structuring the operations into profitable enterprises.

OnStar RemoteLink app comes to BlackBerry smartphones

This just in: The RemoteLink App from OnStar, which allows smartphone owners to remotely start their vehicles, check fuel levels, and lock or unlock their doors, is now available for the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 phones.

RemoteLink has been available for iPhone and Android phones, but many OnStar subscribers have asked for a BlackBerry version of the app. In response, Onstar wrote a new version for the BlackBerry platform, in HTML5.

“Writing the app using HTML5... positioned us to be more flexible supporting new phone operating systems,” said Steve Schwinke, director of advanced systems development for OnStar.

Opening screen
for RemoteLink
© GM Company

In 2011, OnStar added navigation to RemoteLink, allowing users to search for a destination on their smartphone and send it directly to their vehicle. Users can then access the route through the QNX-powered OnStar system.

By leveraging OnStar’s connection to the vehicle, the app can report on oil levels, tire pressures, fuel level, and lifetime miles per gallon. It also offers remote commands, such as remote start, door lock/unlock, and horn/light activation.

According to OnStar, a total of 821,000 smartphone owners actively use the RemoteLink app.

To read OnStar's press release, click here. To download the RemoteLink app from BlackBerry App World, click here.

On a related note, here's a conversation between QNX's Andy Gryc and OnStar's Steve Schwinke. The topic: how HTML5 can benefit the auto industry.

Concept car out. Reference vehicle in.

Our big announcement for Telematics Update is that we are not showing a concept car. Odd news, you say. The truth is, we're not building a concept car because we are building a reference vehicle. Splitting hairs? Not really.

Unlike the Corvette and the Porsche, our demo for this show will be based on the exact same technology that our customers are using today to design their next-generation systems.

So why vehicle instead of car? Is it a truck? Nope. A van? Negative. What about a motorcycle? Double negative.

I was hoping to give you a sneak peek at what we are working on but I'm not allowed to give away the details. However, I did manage to get these shots – let me know if you can see the vehicle. :-)

A cool surprise at the Elektrobit auto summit

Recently, our good friends at Elektrobit invited the QNX team to participate in their German Executive Automotive Summit. It was an outstanding event with all of the leading OEMs and tier ones represented. The day was filled with engaging speakers and plenty of opportunities to network.

Elektrobit held the event in a small castle near Erlangen. In the courtyard, several cars featuring Elektrobit technology (and, in almost all cases, QNX technology) were on display. The car from Delphi was especially interesting. It's a full-blown race car, complete with everything you'd expect in a track vehicle — but it also has two rear seats. These seats allow mere mortals like you and I to vicariously share the racing experience with a professional driver at the wheel.

As I stood next to it, drooling, I noticed that it was equipped with an infotainment system, mounted on the back of the driver's seat. I leaned in to have a closer look and, to my delight, saw that it was running the QNX OS. Who knew?

EPA's Hybrid Payback Calculator

The EPA has posted a very nice interactive hybrid vehicle payback calculator. It lets you quickly adjust assumptions to see how long a hybrid or electric vehicle would pay for itself based on fuel savings.

For example, comparing a Chevrolet Malibu Eco to a base gasoline Malibu, 12,000mi/year, 60% city driving, gasoline at $3.75, the tool says that you would save a whopping $200/year on gasoline, and that the $550 MSRP difference would be paid off in 2.7 years.

Clearly, the Malibu Eco isn't an irresistibly good deal, because that $200/year in fuel savings is going to cost you several cubic feet of trunk space.

Ethics of Manuals?

Over at Salon.com, David Sirota asks if it is "ethical" to drive a manual transmission. The reason for his question is recent news that more people are choosing manuals, and also, that automatics are now sometimes equal to or better than manuals in fuel economy.

I find it odd that he only considers fuel economy in his question.

A more careful ethicist would also consider the resources going into the transmission. For example, a manual will over its lifetime consume one or two clutches. An automatic (unless it is one of those rare CVTs) will consume several changes of automatic transmission fluid, a.k.a. oil.

Also, consider that automatics usually cost about $1000 more than a manual. Why is that? Simply, omplexity. The automatic has more parts, including electronic controls. More parts means more manufacturing footprint to make it.

It seems to me that manuals are more "ethical" than automatics until such time as their fuel economy gains can overcome the manuals advantage in simplicity.

Making the smartphone connection: The state of automotive navigation in Japan

A guest post from Yoshiki Chubachi, the automotive business development manager for QNX Software Systems in Japan

The market for navigation systems in Japan grew rapidly until 2006, but since 2007 the yearly volume has reached the saturation point, at about 2.9M units. For instance, in 2008, consumers purchased 900k after-market systems, 1.1M dealer-installed systems, and 909k factory-installed systems. In 2010, those numbers had changed slightly: 1.01M after-market systems, 1.03M dealer-installed systems, and 858k factory-installed systems (source: Yano Research Institute).

That said, the market is starting to experience a shift from after-market to factory-installed devices. Automakers and their tier one suppliers are struggling to differentiate their products by implementing value-added features.

To get a feel for current navigation trends in Japan, let’s look at some notable after-market products that shipped in 2011. As you'll see, smartphones are exerting a major influence on this market, both in terms of system design and user features:

Pioneer AVIC-VH09CS — This high-end system combines augmented reality technology with a front-view camera, overlaying your route on a live video of the road. It also implements a collision warning system by measuring the distance of the car ahead. Other features include terrestrial digital TV (full HD and 1seg), DVD video, AM-FM, CD and SD music, iPod connectivity, and music ripping and encoding.

Clarion NX501 — The smartphone world seems to drive navigation trends, and the Clarion NX501 is no exception. It offers a touchscreen UI that supports swipes, flicks, and other finger gestures similar to those found in smartphones and tablets. Suzuki factory-installed systems also use the type of user interface.

Fujitsu-Ten AVN-F01i — This system comes with three bundled iPhone applications: Twitter Drive (combines tweets with location data), Where is My Car (uses augmented reality to show your parking location on the phone screen; great for finding your car in large parking lots); and News Reader (allows the system’s text-to-speech engine to read out news articles). The system connects to the phone through Bluetooth.

Panasonic CN-H500WD — The system also lets you use finger swipes to operate navigation and audio functions, including a scrolling map. It comes with a smartphone application that provides POI search, which is downloaded to the navigation system through Bluetooth.

Mitsubishi NR-MZ50 — This system provides an “OpenInfo” service based on Pioneer’s Smartloop system, which provides traffic data from a Pioneer server. VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) is a popular traffic data service in Japan that is similar to the RDS-TMC standard, but its coverage is limited to main highways. The smartphone receives traffic data, derived from anonymous traffic probe information, wherever the VICS service isn't supported. Information from the phone is transmitted to the navigation system through Bluetooth.

Connectivity between navigation systems and smartphones remains an issue in Japan. Conventional cell phones are equipped with the Bluetooth DUN profile, which enables data communication between the nav system and the phone, but unfortunately, some carriers still don’t support this profile. Until they do, lack of connectivity will remain a roadblock.

Nonetheless, using smartphones to deliver applications and the user experience has become a major trend in Japan’s navigation systems. Some automotive tier one suppliers, such as Pioneer, already provide navigation applications on the phone. The QNX CAR 2 application platform, with its mobile connectivity features and auto-centric HTML5 framework, offers an ideal foundation for enabling this approach.

In Memoriam Carroll Shelby

I should have had my camera with me. Because if I had photos to show you, you’d understand. Too late now!

It happened in Wilno, a small town in rural Ontario. I had just stepped out of the local tavern when I saw the thing, only meters away.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

It lay close to the ground, absolutely still. Its striped, muscular frame suggested immense power, and its skin reflected the blood-red rays of the setting sun. I stood frozen, refusing to believe what my eyes were telling me.

Moments passed, and I decided I had nothing to lose. I began to walk towards it. Closer… closer… closer.

Finally, I was standing over it. No response. So I reached down and, ever so gently, stroked it. And then it happened. A voice behind me, yelling a question. I mustn’t have responded, because the question was repeated.

“So would you like a peek under the hood?”

"Yes", I said.

Beneath the thing’s hood was a gleaming and oh-so-potent 427 V8. And the thing itself was an AC Cobra, immaculately restored to its mid-60s glory. For the next 30 minutes, the Cobra's owner treated me to a bumper-to-bumper inspection of the car, inside and out. I must have exclaimed “Cool!” about 100 times. Because it was.

The best part? When the owner started it up. The car's engine and side-mounted exhaust pipes erupted into sonic mayhem, right off the decibel scale. Pure rock ‘n’ roll.

Ever since then, I have had the comfort knowing that, on the highways of Ontario, there can be found an unalloyed embodiment of one man’s automotive vision and imagination. A man whom I've never met, but whose work I've admired for more than 45 years. An man who, just recently, left us. The car, an AC Cobra. The man, Carroll Shelby.

RIP Carroll.

Fireman's Lowrider Towncar

I spotted this wild Lincoln Towncar lowrider cruising Southfield today. He had tiny red wheels, lots of chrome, red tinted windows, and a fire dept. sticker on the rear screen. His rear axle was braced and chrome plated, as were many other suspension parts.

I found a video about the car on the Detroit Free Press site.

Sound "bytes" from CTIA Wireless 2012

Several of my colleagues went to CTIA Wireless this week, and yes, they took the connected Porsche with them. No surprise there, of course: we’ve also taken the car to CES, MWC, BBW, and numerous other events. (Sorry, I’m really into acronyms today.) The Porsche, with its QNX-powered mobile connectivity and HD hands-free audio, seems to impress people no matter where it goes, and the reaction at CTIA was no different. In fact, the folks from Black Enterprise were so stoked, they awarded the car a CTIA Best in Show award. How cool is that?

Here’s a snap of the award, sitting on the car’s dash:

Meanwhile, Boonsri Dickinson of BYTE met up with Andy Gryc to ask him about QNX’s vision and technology for the connected car. Here's a video of their conversation — in the Porsche, of course:

Andy didn't spend all of his time in the passenger seat. Both he and Derek Kuhn also participated in connected car panels moderated by automotive journalist Doug Newcomb. The panels included "Apps in Automotive: The Future of In-Car Content" and "Can We All Just Get Along, for the Consumer's Sake?". From what I've heard, both sessions were taped, and I hope to post a link to the videos next week.

Video: Bridgestone Airless Tires

Bridgestone's airless tire concept isn't new, it was unveiled a few months ago, but somehow I missed this video from the Tokyo Motor Show. It has a nice animation about how the non-pneumatic wheel works: specially shaped plastic spokes carry the load, and deform to absorb impacts.

There are major engineering challenges to be solved for designs like this, so these aren't exactly a few months or even years away from mass production. For example, how do you keep debris from getting caught between the spokes? How will the spokes do when hit with red-hot brake rotors in a repeat braking situation? What happens if you drive over a few large nails, which penetrate through the friction layer and into the spokes, will the wheel still perform?

These type of wheels do have some very interesting tuning possibilities. For example, they could have a different lateral stiffness (very high) than radial stiffness, so impact harshness could be reduced while keeping a sharp turn-in feel.

A few years ago, Michelin brought out a concept the called the Tweel (tire+wheel). After some initial publicity, the Tweel seems to have disappeared--I can't find any new news about it on Michelin's web site any more.

Find great deals on tires online at CARiD.com.

QNX and its customers nab finalist spots in 2012 Telematics Update awards

Every year, the world's top automakers and automotive suppliers vie for a chance to win a Telematics Update award. In 2011, for example, Audi, BMW, Hyundai, OnStar, and Toyota took top honors in categories such as best infotainment solution, best safety technology, and best cloud-based application.

These companies may have won in a variety of categories, but they share one thing in common: they all use the QNX platform.

As with 2011, so for 2012. If you look at this year's shortlist, you'll see that several QNX customers and technology partners are again in the running. The finalists include GM, whose MyLink system is up for best global infotainment solution, and OnStar, whose FMV system is up for best aftermarket solution.

This pattern is nothing new. Back in 2009, for example, more than 50% of the Telematics Update award winners either worked with QNX as a technology partner or used the QNX platform in their in-car systems.

And did I mention? QNX itself is up for a Telematics Update award this year! The QNX CAR 2 application platform, which drove home with a Best of CES Award in January, is a finalist in the industry newcomer category.

Two of the QNX-powered systems shortlisted for this year's Telematics Update awards:

GM MyLink and OnStar FMV

It's hard to know what pleases me more: that QNX has been singled out for an award, or that QNX has once again helped its customers make the shortlist. Either way, I'm stoked.

The winners will be unveiled June 5, just prior to the Telematics Detroit show. In the meantime, my congratulations to all the finalists.

Anatomy Of A Scam: Nigerian Check Fraud

So you get an email from someone you have never met, offering you a "work from home job". You get to keep a sizeable sum of money, in return for simply "processing payments" or some such thing.

If you bite, this is what will happen.

An blandly named fellow, such as "Mark Nelson", will arrange to send you a check, usually by FedEx or priority mail (to give it an air of urgency).

He will ask you to deposit the check, keep some money for yourself, and then split up the rest into smaller Western Union or Moneygram payments.

The reason they use Western Union is that it is not really traceable and can not be revoked. All they need is the Money Transfer Control Number and they have the cash, simple as that.

Then, your bank will sock you with fees and expect you to pay back the fictitious money.

Here we have an example where the package was apparently sent from Boise, ID. However, using the tracking number on the label will show that it actually came from Pennsylvania!

Acceptance

April 30, 2012, 2:06 pm

DREXEL HILL, PA 19026

Next, notice that the check supposedly was sent from one "Sarah Sparks", but it is signed by yet another character, "James J---" (it is hard to tell". It is NOT signed by "Mark Nelson". And it was apparently purchased by "Tony Nguyen".

The fake check itself is pretty good, however, you might notice small flaws. For example, in this case, the ink used for the check account number, check #, signature, and other information was the same color of black and slightly raised (like a laser printer would produce). There is no actual "water mark" on the check paper, when you hold it up to the light you only see printed ink. Also, the "reflective ink" watermark that the front of the check claims is there is not in fact reflective, it is just yellow.

Don't be fooled. There is no such thing as a "work at home" job which pays $100's of dollars an hour for cashing checks and sending out Western Union payments.

SOLD - EP 91 - Glanza - Half Cut

SOLD To Local Customer
This Half Cut Model Glanza EP 91 - Engine 4E -FTE - Manual , Selling Together With All The Parts Shown In The Photos

Selling As Is Where Is Basis

To View Engine Revving, Click Video Below :-

Video Showing Both The Rotors Turning The Same Direction

General View Of The Half Cut