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Detroit-based broadcast journalist Steve Ford, The Car Guy, delivered the Keynote Address during the Automotive Service Association's Congress of Automotive Repair and Service (CARS). Ford's presentation, Servicing the Machine of 2015, highlighted future-car technology issues to 2015 and beyond.

From his foundation premise that the service industry will be best to anticipate and prepare for future changes, Ford presented an overview of the most likely trends in vehicle technology and service requirements:

• An emergence from the slow-changing pace of vehicle innovations in the 20th Century into a new era of cascading solutions that promise to make vehicles cleaner, more reliable and safer. Most importantly, while vehicles will become more sophisticated, computers will converge with new media and wireless technologies to help rather than challenge service technicians.
   
• The second half of the 20th Century was a period where the auto industry leaned toward gas consumption and to the 21st Century as a fresh new era of true fuel conservation. Where the internal combustion engine [ICE] was produced throughout the 20th Century with incremental technology advancements, in the years leading to 2015 the ICE will see more improvements than in the first 75 years of the 20th Century.
   
• Positive ICE breakthroughs will include new environmental and performance enhancements from: Variable-engine displacement, variable compression, electronic and mechanical cylinder deactivation, infinitely variable valve timing [via microprocessor-controlled electromagnetic valve actuation], elimination of energy-depleting accessories and pumps supplanted by independent electromagnetic devices and additional emission-reducing technology improvements such as combustion chamber direct injection.
   
• The emergence of new 42-volt electrical systems [starting with upscale European auto manufacturers and then U.S. and Asian auto makers in the next several years] point to another new era in vehicle refinement. The prospect of breakthroughs in 42-volt electrical systems promise to minimize the added weight of all-new electrical and electronic systems while accommodating increased electrical loads. By tripling the amount of available voltage from 12/14 to 36/42, amperage is reduced by two thirds -- which translates into smaller wire, connector and component sizes. Benefits include increased fuel economy [via mechanical drive accessories, such as the power steering and water pump, being supplanted by 42-volt-powered pumps, as well as fuel economy improvements due to reduced weight].
   
• As world efforts continue toward elimination of such gases as C02, NOx and unburned hydrocarbons, fuel cell technologies point to promising assistance. The most common type appears to be the Proton Exchange Membrane [PEM]. The PEM fuel cell takes in oxygen on one side and hydrogen on the other. Inside, it strips the proton from the hydrogen and the remaining electron from the hydrogen molecule is channeled through an electrical load, such as an EV motor. Water vapor and heat come out of the exhaust. The main obstacles to hydrogen fuel cells remains an infrastructure to fuel distribution, as well as market acceptance and technician training.
   
• While Ford acknowledged the challenge of increased complexity of tomorrow's vehicles, he pointed to the past two decades as tougher than the future due to rapid changes in service and repair in absence of information and training. During the 1980s to 2000 technicians rarely had repair information that was as advanced as the vehicles they worked in their daily service bays.
   
• An unprecedented paradigm shift will take place in the years between 2001 and 2015 in the areas of information delivery, access, immediacy and streamlining. The arrival of the Internet and web-based information, satellite communications and wireless technologies in the service realm and consumer's world are at the threshold of a convergence for the wireless infrastructure.
   
• As standardized shop management and equipment computer protocols, such as AAIA's iSHOP [multiple shop systems and supply chain participants embrace single generic OBD-II-like communications], instant wireless transmissions will instantly and continuously connect OEMs, the aftermarket, shop management -- right into the technician's hand-held PDA [Palm-like or similar wireless information center].
   
• Ultimately, as microprocessor speeds advance geometrically, the wireless shop will merge with advancements in information delivery, with service technicians gaining a whole new dimension of tool support. At the end of Ford's presentation he removed his coat to reveal a belt-mounted wearable PC currently going into production from IBM.
   
• The wearable for the demonstration PC contained a 500 megahertz processor and a five-gigabyte hard drive, and was smaller than a VHS cassette tape. To add to his illustration of the wireless computer scenario, Ford then placed a heads-up display over his head and finished the last several minutes of his PowerPoint presentation while viewing and controlling his computer via the heads-up display and wearable PC.
   
• Ford concluded his presentation by suggesting to the automotive service industry that even as technicians race to keep up with vehicle technology, we should remember to work to help educate our customers about new cars. The image of the service industry to the public has to advance past the 20th Century into the 21st Century as well.