By Charles

It was nice to see how much interest there was in our recent post on how we develop “infotainment” features and electronics. A whole bunch of questions and ideas came in.

So many, in fact, that it seems right to take those on in a second post.

Regarding the hard drive in the ‘08 CTS, music can be brought in via most any USB-enabled device. And this music can be stored on the hard drive. There is software built in to it from a company called Gracenote that helps recognize and organize music brought in to the car – and even makes suggestions based on the styles of music one listens to. Gracenote’s CD recognition technology includes a database of more than 500,000 titles in every genre. That means when you rip CD tracks to the hard drive, the artist, title and genre info will appear, and, somewhat effortlessly, a music library can be built.

It’s the same sort of software, in fact, used by services like iTunes.

We did not choose to go to HD Radio – though a portable HD Radio unit can be hooked up via the car’s auxiliary input. The audio system supports a huge number of digital audio formats, though SACD is not one of them. Regarding iPod, connectivity, yes, info such as playlists and artist/title/genre will appear on the car’s screen (with the provided iPod cable.) However, we do not allow album artwork or videos to appear.

Stay tuned, I’ll be back soon with more to talk about on this.

Posted by Editor at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

By Liz

As we mentioned recently, the development process is at the point where we are making countless numbers of final checks before the launch. A big part of this is called our “Captured Test Fleet.” This is pretty simple: we are building several dozen cars that are intended to represent the “final” status of the 2008 car.

Then we drive the heck out of them.

We will attempt to drive as many miles as possible during the next several weeks; we could easily exceed a half-million total miles. Everything counts – from specific engineering tests, to simple things like driving to and from work, the kids’ baseball games, the grocery store … whatever.

Not a glamorous process, but important and effective. We’re in the process of putting people from all over the team (and even a few colleagues not directly on our team) into these very new cars built using the actual production process and parts. This is kind of like a final exam – except it lasts a couple of months. Everything everybody observes in the cars is noted and every mile driven is measured.

Posted by Editor at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

There are some important elements of car development and testing that do not occur on test tracks. Some don’t even happen inside the car at all. In my case, a lot of the development happens here in this room at a place we call the "bench." This is where a lot of the development of the "infotainment" aspects of the CTS happens. Not an exciting place to look at, but the results are technologies that go farther than we've ever gone before in terms of in-car electronics.

This bench is where we developed a huge package of available electronic features -- including a 40-gig hard drive, leading-edge iPod/MP3 integration, on-board USB port, and new navigation system with cool stuff like 3D imaging of major landmarks, simplified voice recognition and faster, better route planning with expanded real-time traffic and weather data. The "bench" gives a small team of us the chance to demonstrate and operate the systems in the exact same way as if we were driving in a real car. All the switches and controls are exactly as they would be in a car - even the "pop-up" navigation screen deploys just like it does in the real car.

It may not look like it, but this bench is also one heckuva a music system. I have a huge CD collection "ripped" onto the hard drive, thousands of songs from dozens of CDs, organized into a nice library with our music recognition software. My iPod basically lives here. We developed a special cord that will allow iPod users to charge the battery (via the USB port,) play their files and fully integrate with the car (steering wheel controls for advancing tracks, etc.) A couple of years ago, we actually visited the iPod engineers and designers in Silicon Valley to consult on this long before we settled on our designs. And, regardless of my own taste in music, everything sounds awesome - the Bose 5.1 Digital Surround is major league home theater technology. This audio system can play AM, FM and XM Satellite Radio, nearly all formats of digital audio files off of any USB storage device, iPods or other types of digital music players, CDs, DVDs (when the car is in Park,) and audio files ripped to the hard drive from CDs or other media, and even audio books from Audible.com (we'll have a special deal with that site for CTS owners.)

Not everything is confined to this room. We also do quite a bit of driving. One of the development cars I have now has some 23,000 miles on it - compiled in just a few months. The real-world aspect is especially important to test the ease with which drivers can use all the features in daily driving. It's a huge emphasis for us to add all these cool features in a way that adds fun, not complexity, to the act of driving. Also, the nav system is a pretty big leap forward, and something we tested on city streets, remote country roads and most everywhere in between. I think the coolest thing we did there was a function especially for road trips on interstate freeways, in which the nav can show you the gas stations, restaurants and services available near the exit ramps along your route. No more guesswork when you're on a freeway in an unfamiliar area.

It’s a whole lot of features, representing a ton of work. The goal is a car that is really advanced and sophisticated, but also very useful, intuitive and fun to operate.

Posted by Editor at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

By Rob

Driving huge numbers of miles in lots of new and different places all over the world, I’ve come to appreciate some things unrelated to my normal job in chassis development, such as really good navigation and audio systems.

We’ve spent a massive amount of time developing some new and interesting “infotainment” systems. While I rely on (and enjoy) these features a lot, I’m not an expert on how they were developed. We have a small team of electronics folks that sweat all these details – including working with the top experts in GPS navigation, iPod/MP3 players, home theater surround sound, etc.

In a few days, we’ll feature a special post or two from Charles Massoll in our electronics group, who will give us a little break from our regular “driving” posts to provide a look at how they test these high-tech electronics.

Posted by Editor at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

By Liz

This photo goes back in time about two years, in order to address something several readers have brought up. We’ve talked previously about “mules,” the test vehicles we use a lot in the early development of a future vehicle.

Mules are existing vehicles that we adapt -- sometimes in extreme ways -- into early test vehicles. This is vital, as we need to do a lot of development driving before we are able to build actual prototypes.

In our case, we built a couple of mules for the CTS in order to develop our chassis control systems far in advance – these include StabiliTrak, traction control, ABS and other chassis systems. We used production versions of the larger STS sedan. As this photo shows, we took an STS and literally cut it open to shorten the body to approach the more compact dimensions of the CTS. One thing that worked in our favor was that we knew, even early on, that we would be increasing the track width of the CTS (by 2 inches,) so the chassis dimensions of the car were close to that of the STS, even though the dimensions of the body are considerably different.

This is a shot from our prototype build shop, where this STS was overhauled.

Posted by Editor at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

By Rob

We just came back from some driving and testing in Germany, which I will summarize with some stories and photos soon.

Some of you on the blog have wondered why we’re testing when we’re seemingly so close to production on the 2008 car. The simple answer is that it never stops, not when we’re trying to reach the sorts of all-around performance we strive for. We have to verify all the production-tooled parts meet our performance targets, just like we validate during the prototype phase.

Speaking of which, I wanted to provide you with an update on where we are now in terms of our development process.

The 2008 model is in the stage where the final preparations are happening prior to the start of regular production. At this point, much of those preparations are in the manufacturing world.

Our plant in Lansing, MI (a great story unto itself) is indeed building some 2008 CTS cars – but not cars destined for public sale. This limited production run is part of the extremely detailed process in which that hugely important part of the business gears up, steadily preparing for that point at which we authorize that we’re ready to ship to our dealers around the world. That’ll happen later this summer in August or September. Our development team is just one participant in a huge process unfolding now to verify that the cars produced this summer is indeed ready to roll.

And as time goes on, we shift more focus on work beyond the 2008 model . . . stuff I can’t tell you about just yet.

Posted by Editor at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

By Liz

This multi-day trip covered some serious ground: several hundred miles a day. We routed it through some very different and very beautiful areas.

Like this one.

A lot of these posts we write are meant to display some of the specific technical aspects we evaluate on our vehicles. This is not one of those posts. Just a nice picture of some great scenery!

Posted by Editor at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Liz

Yeah, just like anybody else we make use of the roadside rest stops.

This is off of the I-10 freeway. In addition to the normal reasons for a rest stop, it’s a good chance to talk about what we are experiencing in the cars and switch drivers and cars.

We equipped the cars with radios to enable us to stick together and communicate instantly about issues happening during this long ride.

Posted by Editor at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)