Hard discs in automobiles enable
sophisticated navigation, entertainment and
diagnostic capabilities. Market researcher IDC
estimates that automotive hard drive use will
soar from 520,000 units in 2003 to nearly 6
million units in 2008. A Seagate estimate puts
hard disc penetration in new cars at about 50
percent within 10 years.
“Seagate is getting into the front end of this
market,” says Dan Good, Seagate vice president
of advanced market concepts. “We’re developing
tight working relationships with automakers
and their suppliers and engineering drives that
meet their needs.”
Organizational restructuring at Seagate has
made it easier for the company to develop technology
platforms that meet the needs of specific markets,
according to Rob Pait, the company’s director
of global consumer storage marketing.
In Overdrive
Since launching its “Overdrive” project, an
initiative to develop business between the company
and automakers and their suppliers, Seagate
has worked with the largest OEM automotive customers
in the world and many of their top suppliers
of audio, video and navigation solutions. These
partnerships are helping Seagate understand
the market dynamics and technical requirements
needed to lead in the automotive industry.
Automotive HDD applications are emerging in
three areas: navigation, entertainment and diagnostics.
Navigation and entertainment will see the most
growth in the next two-to-three years, according
to Good. Diagnostic applications are expected
to take off within three-to-five years.
Navigation is likely to be one of the first
productized hard-drive applications for autos.
A typical map database of the U.S. now fills
six CD-ROMs, or one DVD, and map databases are
growing daily with updated routes, points of
interest and other storage-intensive information.
Map graphics are expected to get even more complex,
including three-dimensional, satellite-based
data and animated imagery. These capabilities
are rendering insufficient the CD-ROM and DVD
storage used today.
Fortunately, hard drives meet the capacity
requirements, and their read/write capability
gives them another big advantage in an automobile
connected to a network via GPS (global positioning
system) or other means. With a hard disc, a
car’s navigation system can integrate real-time
data, such as construction and traffic updates,
on the fly.
Keep Your Eyes on the Road
Of course, a cutting-edge navigational system
won’t always keep you out of traffic. To pass
the time, you’ll need an on-board entertainment
system powered by a Seagate hard drive. Today’s
audio and rear-seat entertainment options are
only the beginning.
Many see satellite radio as a glimpse of what
the future holds for car-based entertainment—and
the thin end of the wedge for the network technology
that will deliver it. “Real-time connectivity
between a car and the network will change the
automobile to the same degree that the Internet
has changed computing and the cellular network
has changed telephony,” says Pait.
Interoperability and fair use issues will have
to be resolved, but a car’s entertainment system
is likely to become an extension of a home-entertainment
system. Drivers will be able to share music,
video and other media between home and car,
perhaps through a network or via a portable
storage device that plugs into the dashboard.
One automotive supplier already has a DVR-like
radio in the works that digitizes content for
playback at the user’s discretion.
Electronics have made their way into many of
a car’s mechanical systems, and it’s fairly
common now for an automobile to be plugged into
a diagnostic device when it’s being serviced.
Yet onboard chips and sensors are still relatively
rudimentary, and the data they collect is fairly
basic.
High-capacity onboard storage could bring automotive
system diagnostics to a new level, according
to Good. When sensor data can be stored centrally
in a hard disc, troubleshooting becomes much
more effective.
Detecting Problems Faster
“In our analysis, an automotive dealer said
many warranty calls have to do with intermittent
problems like engine trouble and sensor problems,”
says Good. “With a central repository for automobile
computer and sensor data in the hard drive,
sophisticated diagnostics at the service location
can analyze the problem more readily.”
Clearly, automobiles must deal with environmental
conditions far more demanding than those a laptop
faces, including temperature extremes and gradients,
shock and vibration, and high-altitude conditions.
For instance, a car-based hard disc must be
able to endure a temperature range of –40 degrees
C to 85 degrees C—a much more demanding specification
than what’s engineered into a typical hard drive
for computers. That’s because drivers don’t
stay put in one relatively stable environment.
Hard drive suppliers must deliver products that
can withstand the harsh extremes of the Arizona
desert in summer or a bone-chilling Minnesota
winter.
The perception of hard discs as fragile is
quickly changing, however. Miniaturization is
a key factor: a 1-inch drive is more resilient
to shock and vibration than a 3.5-inch drive.
Manufacturers can also engineer their drives
to run in “modified” mode in autos. In other
words, a drive might not be fully operational
at the most extreme conditions, but those conditions
will not damage the drive and the data stored
on it.
To supply hard drives as all these applications
come online, Seagate is building on its close
relationships with automakers and their suppliers,
a market that is more specialized than Seagate’s
traditional customer base. And with this still-evolving
market, Seagate is taking the long view.
“The automotive market grows slowly and steadily,”
says Good. “Product lifecycles are long, but
it is a ‘sticky’ business. Relationships are
loyal and long-term. Seagate’s early work in
this market could pay off big time.”
