Garmin's Glass Cockpit

May 5, 2013

Garmin's Glass Cockpit

Experience with aviation technology helps Garmin improve in-car technology. Photo by Garmin

Consumers want in-car navigation—it's a popular feature. Yet once they have it, they're often dissatisfied. Nearly half of them downloaded apps to supplement the system in their car, according to a 2012 J.D. Power study. Dissatisfaction with other infotainment functions is significant, too. They can be difficult to use and don't always work as intended.

Enter Garmin.

The company, known for its hand-held navigation devices and aviation systems, sees consumer frustration as an opportunity. It introduced its own automotive infotainment system called K2 this year at the International CES. K2 will be available by early 2015, offering an integrated setup similar to MyFord Touch and the Cadillac User Experience (CUE).

The K2 at the consumer electronics show featured a 10.4-inch touchscreen in the center stack with a thin-film-transistor digital gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. Dubbed the "glass cockpit," K2 is like the digital display found in Garmin's Perspective avionics system in the Cirrus SR22 light aircraft.

Garmin isn't a newbie to autos, and it supplies the navigation for Chrysler's infotainment system and head units for automakers in Asia. Mercedes-Benz also recently announced plans to integrate Garmin navigation into its infotainment systems in the next four years.

K2 performs the basic tasks, such as integrating navigation, audio and vehicle information functions. But it also pulls real-time data from Garmin's servers through a Bluetooth-tethered smartphone or through an in-vehicle modem. That allows real-time traffic info, email and text messages to flow through third-party apps.

Information is displayed on the center touchscreen, as well as between the speedometer and tach. If one display goes down, the other will still function, reflecting Garmin's aviation-oriented redundancy mentality. A future head-up display is being designed into K2, as well.

Interestingly, the touchscreen doesn't incorporate haptic feedback. Garmin argues it's not particularly effective and said the screens suffer unacceptable response lags. There will also be some analog technology set below the display.

"In K2, we didn't put everything into the touch panel," product manager Kip Dondlinger says. "I'm still a strong believer in volume and temperature knobs and some preset buttons."

Integration is K2's strong suit. Other systems allow third-party apps to work with navigation, but when you find a restaurant and want to query a feature like Yelp, they require you to back out of the navigation, open other apps and search all over again. K2 will integrate these queries simultaneously with navigation, returning answers via a split screen. Queries can be made and answered with K2's voice-recognition system without specific command language.


By Eric Tegler