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Passengers sitting on the back seats of cars while talking on their mobiles can easily experience the invasion of their speech privacy by the driver. Protecting speech privacy can be done by utilizing masking sounds - masking sound may be so loud that it annoys both drivers and speakers. In this research, the feasibility of utilizing active noise control (ANC) which aims to reduce the level of speech at the driver’s seat and, hence, is able to lower the needed level of masking sounds while still protecting the speech privacy is investigated. Speech reception threshold (SRT), which is a subjective measurement method for speech intelligibility, is proceeded for seeing the effect of ANC on speech intelligibility when the masking sound is in use. The SRT measurement result implied that utilizing ANC to reduce the speech level of the back-seat passenger at the driver’s seat is able to lower the needed level of masking sound for keeping the speech privacy.

Conventional steering system has a mechanical connection between the driver and the front tires of the vehicle, but in steer-by-wire system, there is no such a connection. Instead, actuators, positioned in the vehicle's front corners receive input from the control module and turn the front wheels accordingly. In steer-by-wire system, steering wheel is an important part that not only transfers driver's steering input to the controller but also provides a road feedback feeling to the driver's hand. Thus the reactive torque actuator, providing road feedback, plays an important role in steer-by-wire system. In conventional steer-by-wire-system, a motor was used as a reactive torque actuator. But using motor has some disadvantages such as an oscillatory feeling, and improper and potentially dangerous acceleration of the steering wheel by the motor when driver's hands are released from steering wheel abruptly.