Cadillac has been leading the auto industry with electronics firsts. Its Infotainment system, the first in-car PC, will roll out in September, delivering e-mail to road warriors. Its Imaj concept car is set to test variations on the Infotainment system, even as engineers at e-Gm test new electronics concepts.

General Motors has taken pains to pursue the lead in automotive electronics, rolling out the best technology from its labs and even launching a whole new division dedicated to e-commerce. In the process, GM's once stodgy corporate bureaucracy is taking risks. Night Vision was, after all, a calculated risk. And Cadillac's new Infotainment system (the name for its in-car PC) is partially based on the premise that tomorrow's drivers will want access to their e-mail while they tool down the road.

"They're taking a chance, but it seems like they've got the right idea," said David Cooperstein, director of online retail for Forrester Research Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.). "It's a clear commitment by GM to get in front of the technology curve, which has not always been their typical way of operating."

Indeed, other manufacturers have had the same opportunity to bring PCs to automobiles, but have balked at the chance. At the 1998 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit, three automotive suppliers-Clarion Corp., Delphi Automotive and Ford Visteon-announced availability of prototype automotive PCs. Several automakers responded with promises to put that technology into their vehicles by the 2001 model year, but only GM has delivered.

Much of the impetus for GM's newfound corporate courage may lie in its creation of e-GM. Formed last August, the new division was inspired by the fact that the automotive market is changing dramatically. No longer are cars seen merely as a form of transportation-a means of going from point A to point B. Rather, they are increasingly viewed as locales for work and entertainment.

The role of e-GM is to help the world's biggest company respond to that change. It does so on two levels. First, it helps GM see the big picture-new electronic products, online services and e-business initiatives. Second, it aids the various GM divisions as they sort through the explosion of new electronic technologies. Such decisions as which data buses to use, what kind of processors, how much memory, whether to employ thin- or thick-client technology, can now be made with the help of computer-savvy engineers and managers from e-GM.

"Our job is to see what's possible and what's a stretch," said Karenann Terrell, director of e-vehicle product management for e-GM.

To accomplish all that, e-GM operates in a more entrepreneurial fashion than its parent company. Its executives don't labor from corporate offices. Rather, its team of "virtual managers" work from their homes, staying in contact by video teleconferencing and through daily meetings on Internet sites. Each morning at 7 o'clock, 16 e-GM managers meet on the Internet or tie into phone conferences. The team is young, ranging in age from 27 to 40 years old, but its composite knowledge of the electronics market is a function of that age.

"If you were in school or coming out of school in 1985, then you're probably in the right zone to work for e-GM," said Terrell. "That's where the majority of our managers come from."

The division's management team dedicates itself to the ultimate goal of bringing e-technology to the automotive industry. And to do that, it needs a staff that's not indoctrinated in the old ways of doing automotive business. Said Terrell, "e-GM is the antithesis of General Motors. This is an entrepreneurial effort."

Service orientation

Part of that entrepreneurial effort involves working with product development teams. On Cadillac's Infotainment system, for example, e-GM engineers teamed with engineers from Microsoft and Delphi Automotive to develop the hardware, software and user interface for the system. Over a 19-month period, 60 engineers from the three companies collaborated on the design. That's a departure for GM, which has traditionally been vertically integrated, and thus did most of its own design work.

Similarly, e-GM has been instrumental in the design of OnStar's Virtual Advisor. The Virtual Advisor, a wireless voice-recognition-based system that combines turn-by-turn navigation with the ability to send and receive e-mail, is expected to reach a million vehicles over the next few years. To bring the system to production vehicles, e-GM worked with OnStar, ultimately settling on thin-client technology-that is, few on-board electronics and greater remote processing power.

The result: OnStar's system takes advantage of remote, 1-GHz Web servers with 700 Mbytes of memory, and contains only 12 Mbytes of memory on board each vehicle. The decision to employ greater remote processing power enables it to have a 2,000-word vocabulary, engineers say. As a result, it helps GM achieve the "eyes on the road, hands on the wheel" policy that has been at the core of its electronic products.

Decision making of that sort has been critical for GM. Up to now, GM engineers say that the model for such decision making hasn't been in place. The reason: Car companies have been product-based, rather than service-based. In the future, however, e-GM managers say they know that will change. "The automotive industry has grown up with the idea that options and features sell the vehicle, but that's all changing now," Terrell said. "E-mail is a service, not a product."

Systems from Cadillac and OnStar show that GM is learning about the service-oriented end of the business. Cadillac's Infotainment system and OnStar's Virtual Advisor offer consumers an array of intertwined services, including e-mail, navigation assistance and cellular phone capabilities. "There's definitely been a change in vision among automakers," said Sawyer of Forrester Research. "They now see cars as platforms for services, and the Internet is a great way to deliver on that vision."

Delivering on the vision, however, has not been easy for automakers. "Sending data across an air-to-air interface has not been an area of strength for the automotive industry," Terrell said. "But the reverse is also true: Telecom companies don't know anything about cars."

Outside influence

To gain expertise in unfamiliar areas, e-GM has teamed with companies outside the auto industry. Key partnerships with two companies-General Magic Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Nuance Communications (Menlo Park, Calif.)-could ultimately be critical to the success of GM's service-related efforts. General Magic, which is partially owned by GM, develops voice user interfaces (VUIs) that are used in server-based voice-recognition systems. It then licenses the VUIs for use in voice-recognition systems developed by Nuance.

Voice recognition will form the cornerstone for systems such as the OnStar Virtual Advisor. Virtual Advisor will enable drivers to access stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores, weather and e-mail through their cellular phones. Using a voice-recognition system with a 2,000-word vocabulary, users will employ voice commands to go to the OnStar Web site. From there, they can link up to specific services, such as e-mail or stock quotes-all through voice commands.

For e-GM, however, the voice-recognition partnership is just one of many. Others include strategic alliances with America Online, NetZero, Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds.com. Executives at e-GM plan continued improvement to products like the Cadillac Infotainment system. An infrared port that's now used to download data from a personal digital assistant, for example, will ultimately be replaced by Bluetooth communications.

The role of e-GM is to determine when such technologies are ready for the automotive market. "There are a lot of products out there that are ready for the consumer electronics market, but they're not yet ready for an automotive environment," Terrell said. "It would be unrealistic for us to take off-the-shelf Bluetooth technology and put it into a car. It just wouldn't live in minus-40 degrees temperatures."