A proposal for a .car gTLD has been announced by ATX Group, the world’s largest independent provider of personalised telematics services to the automotive industry.The .car proposal aims to address how to safely access internet content through embedded and nomadic devices in motor vehicles.The proposal would do for websites for motor vehicles much like .mobi aims to do for mobile devices.ATX Group envisages .car websites would enable websites to be specifically designed to meet the challenging safety and consumer requirements for delivering web content into the vehicle.”The Web has become such a daily part of our lives, its pervasive use in the vehicle is inevitable and demands that the industry agree on specific formats that will adapt the traditional Web browsing experience to the driving experience,” said ATX President and CEO Steve Millstein. “This proposal is similar to the adaptation that was required to develop and interface between the smart phone and the Web. Browsing the Internet in the vehicle is a unique environment with unique characteristics.””Internet content is beginning to enter the vehicle environment, and we need to bring together all the stakeholders addressing safe means of obtaining, viewing and interacting with this content. This is a timely and important topic that we hope will draw global interest across a variety of affected industries.”In addition to Web content, it is envisioned that dot.car Web sites could also utilize such telematics-centric, real-time data as vehicle performance and maintenance diagnostics data, as well as vehicle location data. Also proposed is a telematics firewall process specifically designed to ensure the total protection of the vehicle from content that is delivered over the air to the in-vehicle browser for the entire life cycle of the automobile.As envisioned, the initial users will be automobile manufacturers and their technology, and communications partners and suppliers. This group would need to define requirements in regards to the expected user experience. While the primary vision of the dot.car domain is to give motorists the ability to surf the World Wide Web and experience customized Web browsing, automobile manufacturers would benefit from the process by:
- Ensuring flexibility to adapt the embedded user interface for the life of the vehicle
- Dramatically reducing lead time to market compared to the current embedded software design process
- Achieving the capability to customize according to vehicle model, country and motorist
- Facilitating easy customer access to content and updates
- Meeting customer expectations of web browsing while keeping a safe and convenient driving experience.
More information on ATX Group is available from atxg.com.