SMART'S THE WORD IN DETROIT

By LEON JAROFF

It is after midnight, and Larry is barreling along the freeway at 65 m.p.h., his car in cruise control. He is drowsy, his attention drifts, and he fails to notice the dimly lighted truck ahead of him. Suddenly, as he closes in on the truck, his car automatically slows to 50 m.p.h., maintaining a safe distance between the two vehicles.

Jolted into awareness, Larry decides to pass the truck. He does not see another car just beginning to overtake him, hidden in the blind spot on his left. But as he moves toward the passing lane, a warning light flashes on his dashboard, a buzzer sounds, and he quickly swings back, narrowly averting yet another collision.

Now fully attentive, he checks his location, pinpointed by a glowing dot moving along a map displayed on a dashboard screen, then exits the freeway and reads instructions on an adjoining screen. Finally, as he nears his destination, he is guided further by a computer voice that intones, "Turn left on Cherry Street."

This scenario, which sounds a bit like science fiction to most Americans, is already accepted as fact by the motor moguls in Detroit, where a remarkable technological transformation is occurring. Gone are the days when that city's machines were regarded as handsome and powerful but basically dumb brutes. Today the buzz words in the Motor City are "smart cars," vehicles that literally think for themselves, diagnose their own problems and compensate for their drivers' frailties and failures, while ensuring a safer, more comfortable ride. A few smart-car features are already available on higher-priced vehicles, and Detroit intends to raise the IQ of many models even further in the next few years.

Industry executives who not long ago stubbornly fought the federal imposition of such now widely accepted technical items as seat belts, air bags and emission controls are taking the lead in pushing high-tech innovation. The auto industry and its suppliers are spending $24 billion a year between them in advanced engineering and electronic research-more than a quarter of the nation's entire annual $90 billion research-and-development expenditures.

"The automotive industry is finally moving from the Iron Age to the Silicon Age," says Timothy Leuliette, president of ITT Automotive, which produces electronic and structural components for the Big Three. "No one should think of Detroit anymore in terms of steel stampings and iron castings. It's the largest consumer-electronics industry in the world. The vehicles are going to become smarter in how they stop smart, how they handle smart, and how they keep you from getting into trouble."

But Brock Yates, the curmudgeonly columnist for Car and Driver, questions the demand for this technological gimcrackery by suggesting that consumers can be dumb about smart devices. "For a nation that can't program its vcrs," he says, "I wouldn't want to imagine a future where people will be expected to operate a 4,000-lb. smart car propelling them down the highway at 65 m.p.h." Besides, says Yates, "the auto is the last bastion of personal freedom in the U.S. It promises enormous flexibility. This smacks of Big Brotherism. I don't want 'HAL' inside my dashboard telling me where to go."

With more benign visions in mind, Detroit's Big Three have assembled some 50,000 engineers and scientists, and they are hiring more almost daily. Many of them are clustered at General Motors' huge, $2.5 billion technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, a facility that Sean McAlinden, an automotive-research economist at the University of Michigan, calls "a national treasure, absolutely awe inspiring. There is nothing like it at any national university or anywhere in the defense industry." Chrysler spent $1 billion for its new technical center in suburban Auburn Hills, Michigan, and three months ago, Ford opened a spanking-new scientific-research laboratory in its campus-like engineering-and-design center in Dearborn, Michigan. Says David Cole, director of the University of Michigan's office for the study of automotive transportation: "There's some wild stuff going on, really wild stuff."

That description seemed most apt last week at Ford's new research lab, where a car of the future was being brought to life. At this stage it was not corporeal, only a ghostly, glowing, laser-generated hologram that looked like a solid, three-dimensional auto but offered no resistance to a hand or other objects passing through it. But for Neil Ressler, Ford's vice president of advanced vehicle technology, the intangible model was as good as there. "We can predict quite accurately how the vehicle is going to sound, from the engine's accelerating onto an interstate right down to the doors' and trunk latches' closing," he said. "We can turn on the wipers and switch on the headlamps. It's now possible to crash test this car before we even build it."

This kind of high-tech research in the labs of the Big Three and their suppliers is speeding the development of the onboard sensors and diagnostic systems that will constitute the central nervous systems of the brainy new cars. For example, the blind spot that was not visible in Larry's side-view mirror will be monitored by a tiny infrared sidelight on the driver's door. A passing vehicle will cause a reflection of that light back to a receptor, triggering the dashboard warning light and buzzer.

A forward-looking, infrared, radar-like device will perform a similar function, bouncing light waves off objects in front of the vehicle, then timing the arrival of the reflected waves and signaling when it senses danger. That signal will set in motion actions that disengage cruise control, throttle the engine and, in the case of another car's cutting too close in front, even apply the brakes.

More sensors, placed strategically within the power train, will diagnose any system failings. If a faulty connection disables an electrically controlled coolant system, for instance, these sensors will detect the problem and signal a computer to connect the system elsewhere-all this while the car is under way-thus preventing a breakdown.

Still other sensors will track and record the wear on parts and systems, alerting the driver to potential trouble, and will even flash a warning when pressure in the tires is too low. "We're putting on every vehicle what used to be a $1 million diagnostic system," says Tim Hoen, Ford's manager of diagnostic-services planning. "It's a cradle-to-grave mechanical system."

Self-diagnosis becomes easier for an auto that has multiplex central wiring, just introduced on the 1995 Continental. Instead of the bunches of brightly colored wires visible under the hoods of most contemporary cars, the Continental has what Ford's Ressler describes as a "central nervous system, one continuous-wire system making a complete circle with a separate address for every function. It means fewer wires, fewer connecting points and fewer things that can go wrong."

With this kind of wiring, Ressler says, it was easier to incorporate Continental's "personalizing" features. With a turn of the ignition key, 24 different features-from seat and steering-wheel positions to interior temperature to choice of CDs-automatically adjust themselves to a motorist's preferences. The driver can even adjust ride suspension (firm, normal, plush) and steering effort (low, normal, high).

One of the more remarkable developments in sensor technology is the Automotive Stability Management System under development by ITT and already proved on frozen test tracks in Sweden and on the upper peninsula of Michigan. Using a coordinating system of seven sensors that detect the sideways momentum, steering-wheel position and cornering rate of the car along with the rotation of each of its wheels, the asms overcomes any driver error and makes skidding virtually impossible even on ice covered lightly by snow. "With this system," says ITT's Tom Mathues, "you can floor the throttle and still get around a cone obstacle course. It's a no-brainer."

And so are the auto-navigation systems being developed by Rockwell, among others. To use the Rockwell system, which is already available on some Oldsmobiles, the motorist types the address of his destination on a dash-mounted keypad and reads his instructions on an adjoining screen. Using a small computer in the trunk to process signals from the military's satellite global positioning system, the navigator will track the vehicle's progress and regularly update instructions, including the name of the street where the next turn should be made. As the motorist nears the intersection, a computer voice directs him to "turn left" or "turn right."

Of course, getting smart costs money, as do the growing number of federally mandated improvements, and Detroit is passing on a good part of that cost to consumers. In recent months, average spending on a new car has exceeded $20,000 for the first time ever, and Ford economists predict this cost will rise to $30,000 by 2002. Indeed, the average family now spends more than half its annual income for a new car, compared with only a third in 1974. And the 4.7% average price rise for the new model year is running ahead of the current 2.7% annual increase in the cost of living. "We are in the middle of a value crisis in the industry," says the University of Michigan's Cole. "The industry has been feeding its customers so many things that they believe they couldn't live without but that they can't afford. We are really pushing the customer very hard here."

For that reason and others, Detroit is exercising caution in introducing smart features; the industry is testing and retesting them to ensure that they live up to their promise and is carefully anticipating the degree of consumer demand for each item. It remembers only too well such failures as the talking dashboard ("Your door is ajar"), the tiny electrical wipers on side-view mirrors, the early fuel-injection systems that repeatedly stalled.

One smart feature has already gained widespread acceptance: antilock brakes. And though there is no statistical evidence that cars with these brakes have fewer accidents, many insurance companies seem convinced of their merit; they offer discounts on premiums for vehicles equipped with antilock brakes.

Another intelligent but pricey option, the rear-view, self-adjusting, electrochromatic mirror that protects the driver from the glare and intensity of headlights behind him, has already been installed on 5 million cars. Working on an extension of the same technology, Gentex, which developed the mirror, is testing auto glass that will dim at the flip of a switch to protect against sun glare and become completely opaque-to thwart prying eyes-when the ignition is off and the car is unoccupied.

Detroit's drive for smart cars is getting a boost from Washington, which has joined it in a $1 billion Supercar program. The goal: development of a joint prototype vehicle that will achieve fuel economies of 80 m.p.g. by 2004 "while maintaining performance and cost of owning today's cars." Since internal-combustion engines, no matter how efficient and sensor studded, are unlikely to attain so high a gas mileage, the Supercar partnership is looking elsewhere. Aided by scientists at the U.S. National Laboratories, it is exploring such power sources as fuel cells and gas turbines, along with such energy-storage devices as flywheels, ultracapacitors and innovative, lightweight batteries.

The Federal Government is also lending a generous hand with the Intelligent Transportation System program, which by the end of 1994 had spent $600 million on research, testing and installation in selected cities and towns. The aim of its is to develop not only smart cars but also smart highways that would regulate traffic electronically and reduce the possibility of accidents.

While proponents of its predict that its various technologies could reduce highway fatalities as much as 8% by 2011 in addition to expediting traffic and cutting down on pollution, the program is not without its critics. They are concerned about not only its cost, which could total $209 billion by 2011, but other consequences as well. Some fear that making more efficient use of highways and producing cars that are more attractive to drive, for example, will encourage more car owners to take to the roads, thereby negating any drop in pollution resulting from better gas mileage.

Even among enthusiasts in Detroit, concerns about the basic premise of a smart car abound. "There is a potential problem with the customer if the car knows more than he does,'' says Ford's Hoen. "Do you want the car to stop you? What if a semi trailer is right behind you? Maybe you'd just want to pull off into the weeds instead."

While reservations are almost always expressed-as they should be-about the introduction of new technologies, only experience can provide the answer. It was just a few years ago, for example, that a columnist described air bags as, essentially, explosives aimed at the driver's face. Yet time has proved that the bags can be lifesavers under some circumstances and are therefore well worth the extra cost. Detroit is betting that smart cars will be similarly judged.

-Reported by William McWhirter and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit and Sribala Subramanian/New York

With reporting by WILLIAM MCWHIRTER AND JOSEPH R. SZCZESNY/DETROIT AND SRIBALA SUBRAMANIAN/NEW YORK