News from the Blogosphere

Production is getting ready to start for our ‘08 CTS. This is a bit like getting ready to have a baby, minus the extreme physical pain! As such, our posts here have been less frequent. And we’re sorry about that.

Soon — as in any day now — we’ll be in a slightly more “normal” state. And there will be many more stories to share. Hang in there with us! More to come shortly. In the meantime, we’ve seen some interesting stuff online that somewhat relates to the world of vehicle testing:

Techno-ride

We had the chance to show off some of the electronic features on the CTS that were discussed in a recent blog post.

Now, here’s a look at how a top tech blogger summarizes the car’s infotainment, with a lot of info and tons of photos.

Audio Update

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.

The Bench

By Charles

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.

Special Guest

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.