With the auto industry’s slow product development cycle, the conversion from the old USB-A to the modern USB-C has seen automakers follow different strategies to try to move into the future.
Reporter covering Toyota and Volkswagen for Automotive News
It wasn’t all that long ago that big-box retailers had to devote dozens of feet of shelf space to stock the proprietary power cords that every electronics maker required to recharge their individual devices. It was an inefficient mess of a system in what was then a wild, fledgling industry. But on the other end of most of that myriad of early cords was the same small, innocuous rectangle: The Universal Serial Bus A, or USB-A.
First developed in 1995, the USB-A helped impose some small bit of order on that chord chaos, and over the next 15 years, its functionality and capacities expanded to deliver at least five — and up to ten — times its original 1.5 watts of power and exponentially more data, up to 15 gigabites per second.
But now 25 years on, the USB-A’s original flaws — its tricky, one-way-or-nothing connection; its data and power limitations; its oversized form in a world of downsized electronics — have made it obsolete. And it’s being replaced across electronics everywhere by the more powerful, more versatile and more forgiving round-edged USB-C, which, by way of comparison, can deliver up to 240 watts of power and 80 gigabites of data per second.
With the auto industry’s much slower product development cycle compared with the tech world, the conversion from the old USB-A to the modern USB-C has seen automakers follow different strategies to try to move into the future while keeping their consumers happy — and connected.
Some, including Toyota and Volkswagen, are all-in on USB-C, rapidly changing over their vehicles to the new standard USB-C connector and consigning those old USB-A connectors to history’s obsolescence dustbin, right next to all those the 8-track, cassette tape and CD players from vehicle generations past.
Other automakers, including the Detroit 3, have adopted a more measured approach, taking advantage of the USB-C’s greater charging and data transfer capabilities, while still offering a USB-A port or two in their vehicles to keep technologically recalcitrant customers from completely losing their cool.
For a device that looks like just a little hole on an instrument panel, center console or rear passenger area, the difference in how automakers have come to deal with USB ports is a fascinating look at how they must view their own customers— one you can learn about on the pages of this week’s Automotive News.
