Sight 'n' sound: Cars come fully loaded now
The deep bass sound vibrates your breastbone as you meander through a corner of the massive International Consumer Electronics Show.
By Agencies |
LAS VEGAS: The deep bass sound vibrates your breastbone as you meander through a corner of the massive International Consumer Electronics Show. Someone is simply showing off car audio systems, but it feels like the vehicles themselves are announcing their beefy presence.
And why not? Cars and automotive technologies from start-ups and established after-market makers are abundant at this gadget show. They’re coming in such variety that they encapsulate many of the advances seen elsewhere at CES in cellphones, TVs, video games and wireless internet networking.
For example, one theme at CES is the development of touch-screen and voice-activated controls for portable devices. Cars are showing that off, too, with systems that let people make phone calls, navigate, choose music and have emails read to them without dangerously fumbling for manual controls.
Or look how CES overall is highlighting the widening availability of internet content. Autonet Mobile offers a small box for car trunks that takes a cellular broadband signal and uses Wi-Fi to relay it to portable computers in the car, so people can browse the Internet in the vehicle. And while the car is parked near a home wireless network, people can beam music and video content to it for enjoyment on upcoming road trips.
“The car is a lifestyle product,” said Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz. “It’s not just a car anymore.”
The goal of all this stuff is to keep drivers better informed and their passengers entertained. But no one seems to have a great answer to the question of whether adding more technological choices to moving vehicles will increase the dangerous problem of driver distraction.
Automobiles have had technological accouterments ever since the advent of the car radio. In-vehicle technologies are already a $10 billion market, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
But the auto and the electronics industries have not been closely linked. Attempts in the 90s at connecting cars to the Internet flopped.
One complicating factor has been that car makers design for a much longer future than gadget makers, which expect buyers to dig back into their pockets virtually every year. So automakers that select particular electronics might get locked into formats or functions that are obsolete when the car is still young, or even by the time it finally makes it to showroom floors.
Aftermarket vendors have often filled the gap. Now, though, factory-installed technologies are getting more powerful. One example is the way Ford Motor Co has teamed with Microsoft Corp. on Sync, a voice-activated communication and entertainment system.
One reason for automakers’ increasing comfort is that powerful computers now found in cars can get software updates fired in by wireless networks, letting vendors fix bugs and keep features up to date, said Erik Goldman, president of Hughes Telematics . His company is expected to begin outfitting Chrysler and Mercedes cars with a navigation, entertainment and diagnostics service in 2009.
Another change is that car makers have often sought to differentiate themselves with proprietary electronic systems, like GM’s OnStar, that operate independently from gadgets people regularly use outside the car.
And why not? Cars and automotive technologies from start-ups and established after-market makers are abundant at this gadget show. They’re coming in such variety that they encapsulate many of the advances seen elsewhere at CES in cellphones, TVs, video games and wireless internet networking.
For example, one theme at CES is the development of touch-screen and voice-activated controls for portable devices. Cars are showing that off, too, with systems that let people make phone calls, navigate, choose music and have emails read to them without dangerously fumbling for manual controls.
Or look how CES overall is highlighting the widening availability of internet content. Autonet Mobile offers a small box for car trunks that takes a cellular broadband signal and uses Wi-Fi to relay it to portable computers in the car, so people can browse the Internet in the vehicle. And while the car is parked near a home wireless network, people can beam music and video content to it for enjoyment on upcoming road trips.
“The car is a lifestyle product,” said Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz. “It’s not just a car anymore.”
The goal of all this stuff is to keep drivers better informed and their passengers entertained. But no one seems to have a great answer to the question of whether adding more technological choices to moving vehicles will increase the dangerous problem of driver distraction.
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Automobiles have had technological accouterments ever since the advent of the car radio. In-vehicle technologies are already a $10 billion market, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
But the auto and the electronics industries have not been closely linked. Attempts in the 90s at connecting cars to the Internet flopped.
One complicating factor has been that car makers design for a much longer future than gadget makers, which expect buyers to dig back into their pockets virtually every year. So automakers that select particular electronics might get locked into formats or functions that are obsolete when the car is still young, or even by the time it finally makes it to showroom floors.
Aftermarket vendors have often filled the gap. Now, though, factory-installed technologies are getting more powerful. One example is the way Ford Motor Co has teamed with Microsoft Corp. on Sync, a voice-activated communication and entertainment system.
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One reason for automakers’ increasing comfort is that powerful computers now found in cars can get software updates fired in by wireless networks, letting vendors fix bugs and keep features up to date, said Erik Goldman, president of Hughes Telematics . His company is expected to begin outfitting Chrysler and Mercedes cars with a navigation, entertainment and diagnostics service in 2009.
Another change is that car makers have often sought to differentiate themselves with proprietary electronic systems, like GM’s OnStar, that operate independently from gadgets people regularly use outside the car.
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