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7 of the best in-car systems from the Geneva Motor Show 2017


The Geneva International Motor Show is one of the biggest events in the motoring calendar. But it’s not just a draw for petrolheads, it’s a must for audiophiles too.
This year’s show saw some of the best in-car systems money can buy, from the likes of B&W, Harman Kardon and Bose. Fasten your seatbelt while we take you on a tour of what caught our eye (and ear).

Peugeot 3008 & 5008/Focal

Focal might be best known for making high-end hi-fi for the home, but it’s also a leading supplier of aftermarket car audio systems. Now these two Peugeot SUVs are the first to come with its systems pre-installed.

In terms of bang for buck, it’s unrivalled. With 10 drivers, inverted tweeter domes, polyglass membranes for midrange drivers and woofers, and a triple-coil sub under the front seat, the results are spectacular. And costing just ?590 as an optional extra, it’s a must for anyone even vaguely interested in listening to music while driving. No wonder the 3008 was awarded Car of the Year at the show.

BMW 5-series/B&W

For the new BMW 5 Series, B&W has taken the drivers from its awesome Diamond range of hi-fi speakers, along with its signature tweeters shielded by metallic grilles. No fewer than 16 speakers are arranged into a network of 10 channels that, along with some clever DSP, produce the most awesome 5.1 soundscape you’ll hear in a car.

Two subwoofers in the front footwells give it some extra oomph, and a DAC is on hand to convert digital signals to analogue sound. Both driver and passenger will even be bathed in atmospheric light, thanks to BMW’s interior lighting system. One listen, and you’ll quite literally light up.

Alfa Romeo Giulia/Harman Kardon

Alfa Romeo has made a triumphant comeback this century, so it’s good to see it’s finally started taking in-car audio seriously. The Giulia packs 14 loudspeakers, 12 channels, and 900W of Class D amplification. The bass can be bettered elsewhere at the show, but it’s still a solid effort from Harman Kardon.

Porsche Panamera/Burmester

With support for hi-res audio codecs like FLAC, and both stereo and 5.1 surround sound modes, the Panamera’s system is certainly one to be reckoned with. It even has its own format made especially for it, a ridiculous 11.1 encoding – though Porsche didn’t have any files in this format to hand during its demo, so to say they’re rare would be an understatement. And the price? A mere ?4,000 extra. Which is nothing when the car costs at least ?68,000.

Cadillac CT6/Bose

The CT6 has a ridiculous 34 drivers in its cockpit, spread over 19 separate locations. So as you can imagine, there’s no escaping the sound no matter where you sit.

However, according to US sources, the system downsamples hi-res tracks to CD or even MP3 quality. Which seems a bit masochistic to us, what with all those drivers to play with.

Seat Ibiza/BeatsAudio
Beats has previously kitted out Fiats and Volkswagens, but the Ibiza is its best in-car outing yet. The sound is more lively, younger and more involving, which is a better match for the Ibiza’s target market. It may be small, but it definitely packs plenty of punch.


Lexus LC 500h & LS 500/Mark Levinson

When it comes to audio performance, these Lexuses (Lexi?) offer unfettered aggression, enormous power and astonishingly detailed, ultra-sharp rendering of transients. Sadly, nothing as gauche as specifications are available, but from our listen it definitely impresses.

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Tesla has a problem with racism in its factory—so do many of its rivals
NYT report is the latest example of black autoworkers enduring racist acts and language.

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At least six black former Tesla employees have told The New York Times that they suffered from racial harassment while working at the company. Three racial discrimination lawsuits have been filed against Tesla since early last year.

One man, DeWitt Lambert, shared a video in which an unidentified man walks around Tesla's factory floor and—addressing Lambert—threatens to "cut you up … so everybody can have a piece of you, n*****."

In a lengthy statement to Ars Technica, Tesla faulted the Times for extrapolating from "a very small number of claims" to paint Tesla in an unflattering light.
"Tesla opposes all forms of discrimination, harassment, and unfair treatment, and we strive to provide a respectful work environment for all employees and do our best to prevent bad conduct," a Tesla spokeswoman said. "Tesla is aware of only two of these six individuals making a formal complaint while employed at the factory—both of which were investigated by the company and resulted in disciplinary action."

Lambert was offered a $100,000 settlement in March 2017—but Tesla's general counsel said the settlement was available "only if we are to resolve this matter before there is media attention." Lambert declined the settlement offer.

Ars covered Lambert's case early last year, as well as a late 2017 lawsuit from two of the other men featured in the Times story—Owen Diaz and his son Demetric.
Another man, DeWayne Jones, said he "heard a supervisor say of black employees that 'there’s too many of them in there, they are not Tesla material,' and that he had been at a meeting where a supervisor, gesturing toward African-American workers, remarked that 'monkeys work outside.'"

Jones says he reported these incidents to Tesla management, but Tesla says it has no record of a formal complaint from Jones.

Many carmakers struggle with racism on the factory floor
"Common sense dictates that in a company the size of a small city, there will at times be claims of bad behavior," Tesla told us.

While Tesla appears to have a problem with workplace harassment, the company is also far from the only one in the auto industry to face these kinds of accusations. Similar reports have surfaced concerning many of Tesla's competitors recently:

On Thursday, the Detroit Free Press reported on a similar situation at a GM factory in Ohio, where eight black workers are suing GM over racial slurs, racist drawings, and other forms of harassment they endured.
In June, Fiat Chrysler fired a worker who hung a noose inside a Toledo Jeep plant.
Last year, Ford agreed to pay $10 million to settle charges of racial harassment at two of its factories.
Last year, a Portland jury awarded a black man a $750,000 judgment against Daimler for harassment he suffered at a truck manufacturing plant.
In 2014, a black worker sued Honda over what he described as an atmosphere of pervasive racism at an Indianapolis plant.
For now, Tesla told Ars it has extensive policies in place to deal with workplace racism.

"Each employee at Tesla is required to complete an anti-discrimination and sexual harassment training course within 30 days of being hired," Tesla wrote. "When a complaint is made, Tesla’s Employee Relations team investigates immediately and if warranted, takes disciplinary action."

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Waymo’s ambitious plans for high-speed taxis could be holding it back
Why retirement communities are on the bleeding edge of driverless technology.

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In November 2017, Waymo announced that it would start taking drivers out of the driver's seat of its prototype self-driving vehicles. A year later, Waymo still seems to be far away from completing that process.

In fact, last week the Information's Amir Efrati reported that Waymo may actually have moved backward recently.
"Within the past month or so, due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet company put so-called safety drivers back behind the wheel of its most advanced prototypes, ending a year-long period in which those people generally sat in the passenger or back seat," Efrati wrote.
We asked Waymo about this, and a spokesperson dismissed the report as nothing new, saying that the company regularly changes the mix of cars with and without safety drivers.

A recent Bloomberg story reported that when Waymo officially launches its driverless taxi service later this month, "there will be backup drivers in some cars." The Washington Post reported on Friday that Waymo is still using safety drivers "for most rides."

Obviously, no one should fault Waymo for keeping drivers behind the wheel of its cars as long as necessary to ensure safety. Still, the transition to a fully driverless operation is going more slowly than I expected a year ago—and that makes me wonder if Waymo has bitten off more than it can chew.

A chicken-and-egg problem

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When most people first think about self-driving cars, they envision walking into a dealership and buying a car capable of driving itself anywhere at the touch of a button. But this isn't how self-driving technology will work—at least for the next few years.

Instead, leading self-driving companies—including Waymo, GM's Cruise, Ford's Argo, and well-funded startups like Aurora and Zoox—are working on self-driving taxi services that will operate in limited geographic areas. This makes the self-driving problem easier because it limits the number of scenarios their cars have to handle at the time of initial launch.

For example, the fact that Waymo is initially launching a taxi service in the Phoenix area means that Waymo doesn't have to worry about mastering snowy conditions. Waymo is working on its snow driving capabilities, but the company can start operating in Phoenix before it has completed that work.

For the last couple of years, I've thought that this incremental approach made a lot of sense. But in recent months I've started to wonder if Waymo's approach isn't incremental enough.

Developers of self-driving cars face a basic chicken-and-egg problem: to launch fully driverless cars, they need reams of data demonstrating that the software is safe. But getting that data is very expensive, because you have to test cars on public roads with a highly trained safety driver in each car—and in some cases, a second person in the passenger seat.
Waymo has been plugging away at this problem for 10 million miles and apparently still isn't confident enough in its technology to operate most of its cars in fully driverless mode. To do that, it needs to make sure its cars can master every situation they might encounter on roads around Chandler, Arizona, the Phoenix suburb where its commercial operations will begin.

Once a company is confident enough to dispense with the safety driver, then collecting data becomes much easier and more affordable, because it can be done while ferrying around paying customers. So what if there was a way to get fully driverless cars on the road more quickly?