Baby you can find my park
and play my favourite song
From The Australia
IT Today (Pg. 37)
November 15, 2005
SOON, your new
car will be more entertaining and informative than your best friend.
In addition to playing your
favourite songs, it will find parking spaces, identify approaching
traffic jams and tell you how to drive around them, and pay tolls,
eliminating the need for tollbooths.
That day is closer than you
think. Japan already has cars that identify parking spots and United
Arab Emirates is getting vehicles equipped with Global Positioning
System that report speed and location to the government.
While carmakers are working
hard to bring the info part of in-car infotainment into US showrooms,
the entertainment is slower coming because of copyright concerns,
such as how artists will be paid for content and the prospect of in-car
illegal downloads.
“Automakers are looking
at what other industries are doing to about this issue,” ABI
Research analyst Frank Viquez says.
“I don’t see automakers
in North America selling songs for download the way Apple odes through
iTunes. A third party would have to do it, but a lot of agreements
need to be made.”
So, while Japan’s drivers
can buy tunes from an in-car jukebox, US drivers have to be content
with satellite radio and iPod connectors in new cars.
But who’s complaining?
There was a time when only the
rich had cars with phones, televisions and drivers to whisk them to
their destinations.
Now, that kind of luxury is
within reach for many more people, who can let a global positioning
system with voice readout do the driving.
More cars are coming off assembly
lines with cool stuff built in.
For instance, American Honda
Motor announced recently that more than 550,000 of its 2006 cars and
four-wheel drive vehicles would have XM Satellite Radio.
General Motors will make its
OnStar road-safety service standard on all cars by 2007, and more
new cars are being built with an eye towards optional equipment, such
as dashboard panels ready to be outfitted with optional GPS.
If car buyers aren’t ordering
optional equipment from the factory, they’re buying it from
third parties and having it installed, creating a boom in the after-market
business.
Here are some ways to turn your vehicle into the car of tomorrow.
