>>This past August, General Motors announced its "Web vehicle," featuring
voice-activated access to the Internet right from the driver's seat. To bring the Web
vehicle to market next year, GM has turned to Sun Microsystems, maker of the Java
programming language and operating environment. Sun CEO Scott McNealy probably
shocked a few Detroit executives at a press event when he said he "often refers to the
automobile as nothing more than a Java browser with tires."
Despite McNealy's enthusiasm for the automotive market, Sun will be racing behind
longtime rival Microsoft, whose Windows CE-based Auto PC replaces your car stereo
with a souped-up in-dash computer that plays your CDs, scans for radio stations, reads
you all your e-mail, looks up the address of your next appointment and tells you the best
route to take to get there. The Auto PC has been out for about a year.
Sun and Microsoft, while well known in the personal-computing and business worlds,
are relatively new to the space between your bumpers. Wind River Systems, a
lesser-known rival, has been selling its lightweight, powerful operating systems to
automakers for years. "The typical car has more than 50 microprocessors in it," explains
Jerry Fiddler, chairman and cofounder of Wind River. "They help you make your car
more reliable, more fuel-efficient and much safer."<<
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