Are we missing the next revolution in automotive technology in India? And no, I’m not talking about hybrids and EVs, but something much more mainstream and current – in-car technology.
People can’t seem to go anywhere these days without their iPhone or Blackberry, which they use not only to constantly check e-mail, but also to chat, SMS, tweet, update their profile, surf the web, download music, and play games – in many cases, all at the same time. It appears that the need to stay connected has become so pervasive that it exists while driving as well. And this has led to the advent of the connected car.
In the US, Ford offers in-car tech, developed with Microsoft, which allows the driver – using voice activation – to SMS and tweet while driving. There are now dozens of iPhone apps specifically for use in the car. And, while I’m certainly not an advocate for SMSing while behind the wheel, the connected car is the next frontier – one that we don’t appear to be a part of. And I’m not talking simply of technology that takes your attention off the road, but advanced versions of plain vanilla in-car tech that we’ve now grown accustomed to. For instance, most mid-sized cars in the US have the option of satellite radio and HD radio. This not only offers hundreds of channels of high quality audio and news, but also live traffic, which updates traffic information in real time to tell you the most effective route, and weather – not that you need satellite information relayed to you to let you know that its 46-degrees outside, as is currently the case in the Capital all day, every day (I digress). In the US, you can even get in-car access to Pandora, which is an Internet radio station that actually customizes playlists for you.
Here, in India, you can get high-end audio with iPod connectivity, an aux-jack, and perhaps even a built-in hard drive to rip music to, but you certainly can’t opt for satellite or Internet radio. And now you can also get basic navigation devices, but in most cases the maps aren’t quite there yet. Moreover, you certainly can’t get live traffic and weather, which most off-the-shelf nav devices now offer in the West. Not to mention the fact that many built-in, high-end navigation systems now also come with 3D rendering, which is light years away from the map resolution that we have available.
The next step is micro-navigation, which not only directs you to a particular location, but also tells you where to park, and even how to get to the main entrance. And it doesn’t stop there – it can then relay information to your phone to help you find the ticket counter if you’re going to a movie theatre for instance. And, very much in keeping with the Internet age, the beauty of all this technology is that it’s largely available for everyone to use – as opposed to in the past where you had to wait for innovations that appeared on high-end luxury cars to filter down over the course of a decade or more to vehicles that most people could afford to buy. Today, though, at least as far as tech is concerned, the transition is almost instantaneous. Automakers now are announcing new pieces of hardware and software all the time in the race to keep you better connected and informed behind the wheel. Ford recently unveiled some revolutionary in-car tech titled ‘MyFord Touch’ that provides Wi-Fi capability to make your car a mobile hotspot. It can also sync with any phone or media player, and can communicate with your computer as well. The best part is that the entire system can be operated by touch-screen or voice-command, and everything is designed to be upgradeable – so you wouldn’t need to change the hardware for every new application.
