From Al,
I heard from Kyle Walworth of Visteon today. He's currently the manager of
Family Entertainment Systems, which develops rear seat entertainment
systems, TV, DVD, games, etc. A John Slosar (who I'm also awaiting to
hear from), runs all of the telematics activities at Visteon. In Kyle's
previous position, he developed Blue Tooth enabled radios and handset
communications. That area is currently run by a Dwayne Garwood. Kyle
would love to help out, and even visit, but defers the decision to John
Slosar. Visteon has a cool bluetooth demo for display. Kyle is a Stanford
alum, MSEE '95 and will contact John Slosar separately about our
discussion. Dwayne also works for John Slosar.
The blue tooth area is interesting. The basic mission is to let your blue
tooth enabled phone (which you'd already own anyway) interact with the
vehicle though the blue tooth protocol. The scenario: you get into your
car, your mobile phone is in your briefcase, it rings, your radio volume is
automatically muted, you answer the phone hands free (phone still in the
briefcase or your pocket) and speak with the caller. You hang up hands
free and the radio comes back on. Kyle says there are about 7 blue tooth
enabled phone models on sale in the US currently (Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson).
He suggested that the industry is tending towards embedding the
"telematics" in the mobile device. The OnStar system's business model is
struggling with it's all-inclusive set up (i.e. phone, telematics, gps, etc
built right into the car)
Kyle gave me lots of good contacts here in the Silicon Valley and back and
Visteon. Alex also had MobileAria on his list. I haven't called any
of these.
Visteon: intelligent vehicles, smart traffic, automated highways, etc, Tim
Tiernan 313-755-5184
Visteon Technologies, now called Horizon, Sunnyvale,Developing Navigation
"radios" for Visteon
Laura White 408-541-9075.
Wipro Technologies, Santa
Clara/Bangalore, developing Blue Tooth applications for vehicles
Contact: Satish Premanathan 408-557-4400
MobileAria, Mountain View, handles
the Delphi/Palm interface called Communiportt two contacts there, both are
VPs:
Steve Wallenberg 650-237-4408
Mike Lunford 650-237-4435
Aeris.net, San Jose, develops telemetry
systems, for remote engine diagnostics, vehicle tracking, asset tracking
Contact: Dan Jester 408-557-1998
MineTree Consulting - develops blue tooth ASICs for auto industry
Contact: Satish Premanathan 408-986-1000, x119
he's listed here on a Wipro page:
Satish
InfoMove, Los Gatos, Location based
services, maps, telematics on the handheld
Contact: Ron Allard 408-495-7549
Kyle also mentioned there was a BlueTooth developers conference in SF this
past December. We can probably find many vendors on that website, in the
case we want to pursue the blue tooth angle.
Visteon's corp desk phone is 800-847-8366
Let's meet or talk on Tues afternoon or Wednesday about narrowing down the
focus a bit. Al
Regards,
Al Nevarez
Stanford SKOLAR MD, Product Manager
650-354-3030
http://www.skolar.com
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