Getting wired for a family road trip
It was the Manglapus family vacation.
Ria Manglapus, a colleague of mine, was driving while listening to her favorite jazz station on a portable satellite radio -- the Delphi XM2go.
That meant she could listen to the same station, with few interruptions, on the entire 700-mile trip from her home in Virginia to her vacation spot near Chicago.
Manglapus’ two sons -- 10-year-old Q (“just ‘Q,’ thank you”) and Bori, 15 -- were in the second row of the 2003 Honda Odyssey minivan, watching a movie on a small ceiling-mounted video screen. They were joined by their cousin Martin, 11.
When the movie ended, the boys slept. When they awakened, they pulled out tiny consoles and played electronic games.
Occasionally, Manglapus would point out a geographic point of interest. The boys politely acknowledged her attempt at education and then returned to their electronic beeps, booms and bangs. Manglapus returned to her music.
The family traveled with its own communications system -- three Nokia cellphones and two long-range Motorola walkie-talkies. Manglapus also took along a backup entertainment package just in case they wound up in a roadside hotel without cable TV -- a portable digital video disc player that also doubled as an MP3 music library and player. The DVD/MP3 player could be used in the minivan as well.
Sociologists might cite the Manglapus vacation as evidence of growing dysfunction in American family life. But consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers, and a growing number of automobile companies, see it as a goldmine.
The numbers are scattered but nonetheless impressive. Sales are booming, for example, in the satellite radio industry, dominated by Washington-based XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. in New York. They are subscription radio services, in much the manner of satellite and cable television. Satellite radio sales totaled $300 million last year, a 140% increase over 2003, according to figures provided by the Consumer Electronics Assn.
Sales of mobile DVD players are growing, along with mobile electronic navigation systems in cars and trucks. Sales of mobile video display screens and related equipment were $830 million last year, almost double their 2003 revenue. The trade association is predicting $2 billion in sales of mobile electronics accessories of all sorts this year.
We are witnessing a lucrative migration of the pleasures and conveniences of home to the automobile, afforded by rapid advances in digital electronics, said Tracey Malone, consumer electronics expert for Best Buy.
The growth of digital electronics is pushing the trend.
Big chain stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy have formed new retail divisions to handle the growing demand for gas-and-go electronic gadgetry. For example, Best Buy executives say they have 3,200 certified mobile electronics installers working at the company’s 660 stores nationwide.
It is a boom accompanied by some headaches.
Automobile manufacturers are scrambling to redesign their vehicles to accommodate all the portable electronics that consumers may want. The problem is how to anticipate what those items might be. But the reality is that “there is no way we can do that,” said Ron Miller, project leader for Ford Motor Co.’s intelligent vehicle technologies group.
“The best we can do is to find a way to make our vehicles more accessible to whatever is coming,” Miller said. Ford has been working on “power line communications” -- that is, finding a way to make the wires that carry an automobile’s electric currents double as conduits for high-speed data transmission.
