SAN JOSE, Calif.--Silicon Valley is sparking a revolution in alternative-fuel autos, but it may take awhile--too long perhaps--to effect change in Detroit, according to a panel of auto executives.
A group of electric and traditional carmakers spoke here Friday at the Joint Venture Silicon Valley conference about innovation, why alternative carmakers are attracted to the Valley, and whether nimble upstarts can overshadow the big Detroit automakers. The consensus was that Silicon Valley is commanding the attention of the auto world, whether it will dominate or not.
"We're not going to take over China or Detroit, but every carmaker has an outpost here and is watching what people are doing," said Felix Kramer, founder of nonprofit plug-in hybrid initiative CalCars. "This can be a real incubation area for new technology in automotive."
To be sure, Silicon Valley is rife with change when it comes to the merger of technology and autos.
Volkswagen, for example, recently funded Stanford University in order to develop a new car lab whose mission is to study "cutting-edge research in safety, comfort, and fun for the consumer driving the car," said Sebastian Thrun, while speaking at an artificial intelligence conference Thursday night. The lab, which will open later this year, will focus on new technologies such as computer-assisted driving--for instance, a car that could park itself. Eventually, self-driving or smart cars could help make driving more efficient and safe, Thrun said.
"When kids can drive themselves to soccer, and do away with the soccer parent, humanity will be better off," Thrun said.
Elon Musk's Tesla Motors, also based in Silicon Valley, is delivering its first production models of an electric two-seater roadster, for a price of nearly $100,000. It eventually plans to sell a four-door electric car for about half the price and then even more affordable models later.
Another Palo Alto upstart called Project Better Place, founded by former SAP executive Shai Agassi, recently announced that it will team with Renault and Nissan car companies, along with the Israeli government, to develop electric cars and electric-battery stations in that nation. It has raised $200 million to produce lithium-ion batteries and the facilities to recharge those batteries--and its cars are expected to be ready by 2011.
Google, based in Mountain View, also recently announced Recharge It, a project to convert hybrids to plug-in hybrids and test vehicle-to-grid technology, in which the vehicle's battery powers the electrical grid. Milpitas-based OEMtek is charging people $12,500 to convert their Toyota Prius into a more efficient car (getting 100 miles per gallon vs. 45 miles per gallon) with a larger battery.
San Dimas-based AC Propulsion, which makes an all-electric Scion eBox for $70,000, is also opening up an office in Palo Alto to service customers here, according to Tom Gage, CEO of AC Propulsion who spoke on the panel. (Gage drives an eBox, an electric car that gets 120 miles on one charge. The company's first customer was actor Tom Hanks.) AC Propulsion also supplies technology to Tesla Motors.
So why is Silicon Valley such a hotbed for alternative cars? It's the customers.
"The driving public here is among the most enlightened in environmental and policy issues," Gage said.
CalCars' Kramer, added to the sentiment: "The plug-in hybrid is the first thing to come here because of popular demand," he said, referring to the movement behind CalCars, Ourpower.org, and Google's plug-in effort. "There's a different customer here in the Valley, and that's why we favor this area."
Backing up his point, 30 percent of the people in the audience said in a poll that they drove a hybrid to the conference.
Byron Shaw, managing director of the Advanced Technology Office at General Motors and who's based here, spoke on the panel about the goals of GM, which is one of the first major car companies to say that it will develop a plug-in hybrid. Shaw said that the company plans to introduce the first rendition of the plug-in Chevy Volt in 2010 along with similar versions for the Saturn. He said that GM will also sell a bevy of alternative-fuel vehicles in the next decade, including electric cars, fuel cell cars, and vehicle-to-grid plug-ins.
"There's an opportunity to bring Silicon Valley and the auto industry together because the two don't always march to the same drum," he said. "We have a wealth of experience of building vehicles, but there are things changing that now, such as the conventional cost of fossil fuels. In the same way Silicon Valley has driven down costs of technology, it may happen with the auto industry, too."
That said, GM is slower than the technology industry, he said, and the company is driven by a fickle consumer. One consideration, for example, is that the battery for a hybrid plug-in must operate well in cold climates like Minnesota as well as warmer places like Phoenix. "The supply base just isn't there for electric vehicles," he said.
AC Propulsion's Gage said that after working in Detroit for eight years, he's seen that car companies can change for the consumer, but it will be especially challenging in the alternative fuel market.
"It's a major transformation for the car companies," he said, "the power train is different; fuel sources are different. We have to start small and build a market base, and it has to appeal to consumers. To come back to this, Silicon Valley is more advanced in this area. Grassroots efforts will continue."
CalCars' Kramer went further with his criticism.
"They're being too slow. It's a major wedge for climate change. They need to learn about versioning--getting cars on the road and seeing what people like," Kramer said.
The panelists finished by predicting how many cars would be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2028. Two of the men, Shaw and Kramer, forecast that it would be 80 percent of cars on the road by then. Gage was more conservative at only 20 percent. The question is: Will that be enough to turn the tide of global warming?
Feb 23, 2008
Is Silicon Valley the new Detroit for electric cars?
AMD goes open source with performance library
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is making its performance library available as open-source code, which should help developers build multithreaded applications for x86 machines.
The three-year-old library contains more than 3,200 software routines that focus on specific functions, such as handling audio and video data, according to Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions at AMD. This is the first time that AMD has released a proprietary library set and released it as open source.
"This is one of our ways to help developers write software that runs really well, [and] taking a little bit of the headache out of it for them," Lewis told Computerworld. "A developer can write these functions himself, or use these to save time. We've spent a lot of time tuning [these routines] so the code runs faster and the developer doesn't have to write the routine and then optimize it himself."
The AMD Performance Library is now being called Framewave Version 1.0. It's immediately available for download at this site.
Since the routines are focused on x86 machines, that means they should work for both AMD-based and Intel-based systems. "They're well tuned to take advantage of our architecture, but they'll also run very well on our competitor's products," said Lewis.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said this should be welcome news to programmers working on multithreaded applications.
"This is good for the market because ISVs and developers can use all the help they can get in creating applications that efficiently utilize multicore processors," he added. Multimedia workloads will particularly benefit as they can be extremely power hungry in terms of processing cycles. Moving this code to open source makes it easy for developers."
But Olds noted that this also is a smart move for AMD.
"Think about the position AMD is in. Intel has them out-gunned on chip performance," he added. "This is a card that AMD can play to make it easier to developers to make stuff work better on AMD chips, which may defray Intel's performance lead a bit. It might also help them win more developer fans -- developers who say that their products work on both AMD and Intel, but might perform better on AMD processors."
Hackers Turn Google Into Password Hunter
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow this week released a tool that turns Google into an automated vulnerability scanner.
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) this week released a tool that turns Google into an automated vulnerability scanner, scouring websites for sensitive information such as passwords or server vulnerabilities.
CDC first achieved notoriety ten years ago with its backdoor Back Orifice, which demonstrated in a highly public way just how easy it was to take unauthorized control of a Windows PC.
The new tool, called Goolag Scan, is equally provocative, making it easy for unskilled users to track down vulnerabilities and sensitive information on specific websites or broad web domains.
This capability should serve as a wake-up call for system administrators to run the tool on their own sites before attackers get around to it, according to CDC.
"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform, and this platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective," said CDC spokesperson Oxblood Ruffin, in a statement. "We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large website, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday."
The tool is a stand-alone Windows .Net application, licensed under the open source GNU General Public License, that provides about 1,500 customized searches under categories such as "vulnerable servers," "sensitive online shopping information" and "files containing juicy information."
The results are displayed as a list of links that can be opened directly in a browser. Example results include tell-tale error messages and Java applets for the remote control of surveillance cameras, according to CDC.
Goolag Scan is based on "Google hacking," the practice of exposing vulnerabilities via Google, which CDC says has been pioneered by a hacker going by the handle "Johnny I Hack Stuff."
Goolag Scan is, however, the first time such vulnerability searches have been built into a simple tool, according to CDC.
