One-Way Wiring

It's not easy understanding the mission or relevance of the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C) when the language that surrounds it is one of hazy technogarble. The lexicon includes words such as “internetworking,” “interoperability” and “vehicle interface,” not to mention a gaggle of acronyms and “test specifications.”

For those in the industry who aren't electrical engineers working on the next-generation luxury car navigation system, this is the salient point about AMI-C: Electrical architectures for telematics systems are enormously expensive to design and produce because every vehicle is different and every electrical system must be custom made.

AMI-C — a consortium of eight auto makers and two dozen suppliers — has created a new architecture that can be applied to all vehicles, from company to company, reducing complexity, cutting product development time and saving big money. That's a language everyone in the industry speaks.

Design engineers can visit the www.ami-c.org website right now, download the specifications and put them to use. Problem is, AMI-C's work has been slow to find its way into the engineering trenches for two key reasons: AMI-C is a non-profit corporation made up of dozens of companies — most of them competing head-on with each other, so the organization lacks an aggressive marketing arm.

Second, AMI-C is governed by strict antitrust provisions, which prohibit participating companies from discussing specific product planning, timing and pricing with each other. The companies must jointly develop an architecture that benefits everyone in the industry — not just those writing the specification.

Who is AMI-C? Fiat Auto SpA, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault SA and Toyota Motor Corp. are the main members, with contributions from suppliers big and small, including Delphi Corp., Visteon Corp., Denso Corp., Yazaki Corp., Alpine Electronics and XM Satellite Radio.

The organization was formed in 1998. Earlier this year, AMI-C published its specifications, and the infrastructure now is undergoing a battery of tests.

AMI-C President Dave Acton of GM says auto makers “pay over and over” to design expensive vehicle electrical systems that mean nothing to consumers. What AMI-C offers is a template that can be used for every vehicle, be it a 2-seat roadster or a 7-passenger SUV.

The impact on suppliers is equally significant. On current vehicle programs, the component supplier must understand the specific software and physical interfaces for that vehicle and then write the code enabling its radio, navigation system or other electronic device to work properly. “They have to learn the latest and greatest technology to interface with the OEM electrical system,” Acton says.

Product-development times have been a problem as well. It takes as long as four years to launch a new vehicle; in the rapidly evolving consumer electronics sector, a new product is obsolete within a year. So today's vehicle programs launch with outdated electronic devices because the sourcing decisions were made years earlier, and the electrical architecture is locked in, prohibiting component upgrades.

AMI-C's solution decouples automotive cycle times from that of consumer electronics. “We could meet the vehicle as it came down the assembly line and plug in the latest and greatest component,” Acton says. “It could launch with the best product, and over the life of the vehicle, upgrade it from both a hardware and a software standpoint. It could be easy to switch in the new system with a standard interface.”

Such flexibility is unheard of today because information and entertainment systems are hardwired into vehicles. “But the AMI-C architecture is standard and doesn't change,” Acton says. “AMI-C gives OEMs and suppliers enablers.” Consumers would be empowered as well. The same Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, for instance, would work seamlessly from a GM vehicle to a Honda vehicle equipped with the AMI-C architecture.

AMI-C's high-speed, fiber-optic network would serve as a gateway for as many as 10 devices, such as camcorders and MP3 players, to be plugged-in throughout the vehicle.The plugs would be standardized, much like USB ports on today's home computers. The OEM would decide where to place the plugs in the vehicle interior.

OnStar, the emergency roadside service created by GM, is fertile territory for massive cost savings generated by AMI-C. Currently, OnStar is on 44 of 60 '03 GM models, and each has its own specifically designed OnStar controller. One component of AMI-C is the Vehicle Services Interface, which would allow the same OnStar controller to be used across multiple vehicles and even across multiple brands.

How soon before we see AMI-C-equipped vehicles on the road? Again, it's a question OEMs cannot answer without violating antitrust rules.

But Acton is convinced it's only a matter of time before the industry discovers the beauty of the AMI-C architecture. “I guarantee it will work safely in vehicles,” he says. “It opens technology and business possibilities we could have never solved before.”