Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/643092
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2016 Motoring III TOYOTA is accelerating its initia- tives to provide customers with greater convenience and data security in its telematics systems, announcing a next- generation connected vehicle framework. This builds on the advances that have been made in vehicle, IT and communications systems to add the benefit of connected technologies to Toyota models. Toyota's framework is anchored by the installation of a Data Communication Module (DCM) in more of its vehicles, beginning with the roll-out of 2017 models in the USA. Availability will then expand to other regions and countries. Adding DCM will con- nect Toyota vehicles to mobile telecommunications networks, expanding the ability to transmit data for products and services. Toyota will also provide an emergency notification as a standard feature on vehicles equipped with DCM. This is acti- vated when airbags are deployed during a traffic accident, helping secure prompt first-response as- sistance in an emergency. To build the IT infrastructure needed to support this signifi- cant expansion of vehicle data processing, a Toyota Big Data Center is being created. This will analyse and process data collected by DCM and use it to deploy services under high-level information security and privacy controls. Currently DCMs vary between countries and regions, but a standardised architecture will be developed for a uniform Toyota global DCM by 2019. Toyota will also create a function in the Smart Center to consolidate its worldwide DCM communica- tions. When customers are using their smartphone in connection with an in-car device, it is important to promote safe driving and the secure transmission of vehicle and customer information. To en- sure these qualities, Toyota will work jointly with UIEvolution to develop standard middleware for use with Toyota's in-car devices globally. Through this business collaboration, UIE will be able to develop a smartphone app which can provide vehicle data securely to third party service and app providers approved by Toyota. This means a customer can use their smartphone to access vehicle data in a highly secure environment through the Toyota Big Data Center, and Toyota can offer its customers safe and secure smartphone – car con- nection services. For more information on Toyota and its products visit the Toyota showroom situated in Mdina Road Zebbug log on the Toyota Malta Facebook page or call on 2269 4000. Toyota Connected New figures show autonomous driving is a way off IN the two months or so between the end of September and the end of November last year, Google self- driving cars racked up 424,331 miles. This is in addition to Google's online simulator that drives over three mil- lion virtual miles every single day. The results of all those miles make interesting read- ing, wherever you stand on the self-driving car debate. Over that time period and those miles, humans had to take the controls 13 times be- cause of near misses. There were 272 technical issues that also meant the car relin- quished control to a human. This covers both hardware and software problems, as well as unusual situations like temporary road works. Google reckons 69 of those incidents were due to safety concerns, although not all of them would have resulted in an accident, post-event analysis suggests. The results show that the number of hard- ware and software issues is falling as Google gets on top of fixes and upgrades as well as simply better reliability. But it does show that there are many million more miles to be covered before a fully au- tonomous car can take safely to the roads, whatever the location or conditions.