Ctia Wow Insider Interview - Cadillac integrates wireless in the car with cue

>>John Walls: You’re about to find out how wireless is meeting the automotive space in some revolutionary ways. Cadillac is certainly at the forefront of some of those developments. Don Butler, the vice president of Cadillac, joins us to talk about that. And Don, thanks for being with us and on CUE, the Cadillac User Experience, tell me a little bit about that what has gone into it. Because as I saw from the keynote today, there’s quite a lot there. >>Don Butler: Quite a lot, and actually we started by trying to understand our customer’s needs and really what was working and not working for them In the driving environment, so our designers and our engineers spent literally months just riding around with customers and documenting how they use their devices, how easy or not so easy is it to pair Bluetooth phones for instance, that kind of thing. And then, understanding kind of where things were heading directionally from a technology standpoint in terms of touch and graphics, probably being more prominent. We kind of had to make make the call a couple years ago in terms of You know what we thought would be the prevailing means of consumers for interacting with the vehicle and it’s all kind of culminated in what we call, as you say, the Cadillac User Experience or CUE. And it’s really about three C’s, the way we see it, it’s about being connected in a very simple seamless way, so when you pair your phone for instance, obviously you can make and receive hands–free calls. But you also have access to any media in terms of music that might be stored on that phone. In a very integrated fashion such that you can manipulate with your steering wheel controls or you can do it by voice as well. So connected, convenient in the sense of making it so that it’s painless so that we make it easier for you to do things like store your phone for instance. So, we’ve got a distributed computing environment that removes the hardware, so to speak, away from the center which is a prime piece of real estate within the vehicle and we’ve got a nice compartment that’s hidden by a motorized door, that’s up to almost two liters of storage space, so for your iphone or any other devices that you want to keep out of the way, because you don’t want to be distracted by them, right? Put them out of the way, plug them into the USB port or pair it with Bluetooth and that way you’ve got access in terms of the convenience of that, but without having it clutter up the driving environment. so connected convenient and then the final one is control and what we mean there is making it easier for consumers within the vehicle environment to do things like enter a navigation destination so current systems today require you enter the city, the state and the address >>John Walls: The address, the number. Then you have some choices to make sometimes. Then one and another. >>Don Butler: Exactly, but what do consumers do today. When they go to Google for instance. They just start typing the address. Right, and then you’re prompted for what you might be looking for. So the same thing with CUE. One line address entry with a qwerty keyboard, which is a another first we’ve looked at opposed to just abcd. Then as you enter that, it will prompt you for what it thinks you’re looking for. So that you don’t have to type the full address. So connected, convenient, control and all done in a very seamless integrated way. A way that doesn’t distract the driver. In a way that keeps things simple. >>John Walls: What’s the experience you want people to have? Or what’s the overarching thought you want people to know about CUE? >>Don Butler: We are redefining the driving environment and how consumers interact with their devices in a very safe ‘eyes on the road, hands on the wheel’ way, while still taking maximum advantage of the capability of those devices. You know, we’ve rethought the driving environment, focusing on driving obviously principally, but also again taking advantage of those devices that you have and then the other thing is we are morphing into a place where consumers in terms of how they interact with the vehicle, very similar to how they interact with other devices in their lives and that’s the other thing that our designers and researchers found out when they talked to consumers, they said, don’t make me learn a totally different way, a totally new way of interacting with your vehicle. And the other thing too is, as we, particularly from a Cadillac standpoint want to become, quite honestly, more relevant to a younger set of buyers and younger generation of buyers, I mean tablets, smartphones and the way they interact with them today, I think we need to line up right with where that’s headed. Again, done in a safe way that helps people focus on the driving task at hand. >>John Walls: So it's okay to teach some old dogs new tricks. You want to teach some new dogs, new tricks too. >>Don Butler: Absolutely. >>John Walls: Thanks for joining us here in the buzz zone.