Who’s Idea Was The iPhone Dashboard?

Neal Saiki Ponders A Google Phone Dashboard

MotoCzysz captured the attention of motorcycle and gadget geeks a few weeks ago when they displayed pictures of their E1pc Digital Superbike sporting an iPhone dashboard. Who could help linking to something so cool and practical and showing all your friends? The picture received a lot of attention.

I finally sat down this morning to watch a May 26, 2009 Google Tech Talk episode where Zero Motorcycles CEO Neal Saiki explains the engineering behind the Zero S and Zero X electric motorcycles. Neal’s a laid back  guy who speaks very calmly until he starts talking about his desire to incorporate a Google Phone or iPhone into Zero bikes. Suddenly he looked like a kid opening a Wii on Christmas morning. He explained…

Maybe you could make a phone call, get your maps, where your going and also have your speed readout, trip distance, things like that…

Did MotoCzysz watch this video and think hey, that’s a good idea or did they think of it themselves? It makes little difference but the exciting thing is eventually we might see an iPhone or Google Phone used as the default interface for motorcycles and other vehicles.  The potential for integration of electronics into electric motorcycles is high on the minds of electric motorcycle manufacturers. The Brammo Enertia will have an API, wifi and GPS integration when it goes on sale at Best Buy this month.  They have also talked about adding periferals such as a video camera to the bike. Mission plans to have real time data acquisition and use a USB key to allow the user to tune engine braking and other performance characteristics of the Mission One.  It truly is an exciting time for geeks that ride.

MotoCzysz E1pc iPhone Dashboard

Here is a chop of the video:

Source: YouTube