Trucking industry
Another significant win for the WCEfA has been the Freightliner Truck Productivity Computer. In a press release dated November 1, 1999, Freightliner announced the Truck Productivity Computer (see http://www.freightliner.com/corp/press_release.asp?id=174). The Truck Productivity Computer is an Auto PC-type product that is significantly enhanced and made more rugged for the large truck environment. It will have many features for fleet management, driver and vehicle monitoring, navigation, log keeping, entertainment, and safety management.

Delphi Automotive Systems is the supplier of the hardware to Freightliner. This is a very interesting alliance since Freightliner is owned by Daimler-Chrysler. Daimler-Chrysler has been the one automotive company conspicuously absent from any public involvement with WCEfA. Now we have one of their divisions working closely with a former General Motors subsidiary on an WCEfA-based product. Watch this one closely.

Both Sirius and XM Radio have made announcements regarding support for the Truck Productivity Computer. The implication we can draw from this is that they should be able to easily support all WCEfA products, especially if they choose to use USB as their interface. This is another relationship to watch because both Sirius and XM are basically big fat data pipes, and an Auto PC could really do great things with such a data pipe attached to it.

Auto PC by any other name
I got my mitts on an article regarding WCEfA from the April 14 issue of Microsoft's employee newspaper, the Micronews. It gives some insight into what's going on there. The first part of the article announced the change in name from Auto PC to Windows CE for Automotive.

The name change came about from a change in focus "from providing an off-the-shelf product that auto and electronics makers could label as their own to an operating-system and tool-kit approach that enables manufacturers to tailor car computing systems to an individual automaker's needs." This was driven mainly by feedback from customers.

Reorg at Microsoft
In a very significant organizational change, the WCEfA group was split from the embedded and handheld systems group into its own business unit called the Microsoft Automotive Business Unit under the executive guidance of Microsoft's Dick Brass, vice president for Emerging Technologies. Bob McKenzie, long-time member of the Auto PC team, oversees this new unit referred to as MABU.

Codename: Diamond
Another interesting tidbit that came out of the newsletter was that, "Second-generation devices built on WCEfA are expected to appear in model-year 2001 vehicles from major North American and European carmakers." The program manager leading the effort on the next-generation WCEfA (i.e., Version 3) is focusing on making it easy to control the look and feel of the user interface while retaining compatibility with applications written for WCEfA platforms.

The project is codenamed Diamond, and its features will include DirectShow plug-ins for streaming media content including audible books, MP3, Windows Media, and MSN Mobile content. Microsoft is working hard to position itself as a major player in next generation in-car computing.