The Last Inch at 70 Miles Per Hour

More recently, personal area network connectivity in vehicles has evolved, bringing with it a new set of challenges and associated opportunities. Principal among these challenges is the last-inch problem. The telecommunications industry uses the term "last mile" to refer to the challenge of bringing high-bandwidth connectivity to individual homes. We use the term "last inch" to characterize the challenges of delivering computing services through in-vehicle human-machine interfaces (HMIs) to users who are sometimes driving at speeds upwards of 70 miles per hour. We focus on the nonfunctional requirements of security, privacy, usability, and reliability (SPUR)). These attributes both encompass safety concerns and offer insight into the consumer experience. We took the SPUR requirements into account in designing our vehicle consumer services interface (VCSI), a service-oriented middleware architecture that we\´ve implemented in a demonstration vehicle