It’s inevitable that components more recognizable as belonging to our computers will end up in our vehicles, and Delphi Corp. lends momentum to that trend with an onboard Universal Serial Bus (USB) port unveiled at this week’s 2006 Convergence Transportation Electronics conference.
Delphi says the USB port – ubiquitous in the computer industry as a means of transferring data between sources – serves as an easy interface that allows occupants to connect all manner of consumer-electronics devices with the vehicle electrical system.
The USB port can be installed without tools in either the glove compartment or dashboard, and front covers can be individually tailored to any customer specification. Delphi says the USB Consumer port is designed to computer-industry standards and is fully robust for vehicular duty cycles.
The company also says its USB Consumer port has “highly competitive” production costs, and there will be future multi-port applications to enable data exchange with audio/video, telematics, global-positioning system and other components.
