The quickest way to cooking through just about any half-baked tech: Bring on the geeks!
Case in point: Auto infotainment systems. Good intentions aside, even the most advanced (some might say: especially the most advanced) touch-screen car consoles can be unnecessarily difficult and distracting.
So I gotta give GM and Ford credit for realizing that basement hackers are probably their best hope at cracking this code. Earlier this year at CES, both auto giants announced that they were opening up their in-car infotainment systems to outside developers, who will be free to make apps and interfaces that can hopefully expand our cars' functionality, without sacrificing safety.
This is a big deal — and great news for just about everybody. Until now, in-car apps have typically been limited to a walled garden of hand-picked programs that offer unsurprising services such as music streaming and restaurant reservations. Yawn. For a development ecosystem to thrive, it needs fresh blood and ideas. Just imagine if the iPhone only had six apps, and three of them were music streaming.
The best part: The car companies actually seem serious about encouraging outside developers to come on board.
The best part: The car companies actually seem serious about encouraging outside developers to come on board. When I spoke to a GM rep about the project, he pointed out that the company will offer developers access to basically all of the diagnostic info our increasingly smart cars are collecting — things like gas mileage, tire pressure, and speed.
This opens up a whole realm of possibilities for apps that can actually improve auto efficiency and safety. For example, if you're pulling in unusually low MPGs, an app could help you adjust your driving to get more miles out of your fill-up. An app could even keep tabs on a teenage dependent's driving habits — how fast and where they are driving — and then allow you to reward them with increased driving privileges for following the rules.
This is all a huge upgrade from the current cutting-edge infotainment systems. On a recent test drive of the 2013 Cadillac ATS, which comes with the CUE infotainment system, I was struck by how much of a tease the whole thing was. The car's interior is dominated by a bright, beautiful (though occasionally frustrating) capacitive touch-screen display.
Yeah, the CUE has some cool tricks up its sleeve. In particular, I appreciated its use of a smaller second screen directly behind the steering wheel that allows you to see important info without totally turning your head. It also claims to be the first infotainment system to use a capacitive touch screen, feature a proximity sensor that brings up UI controls when your hand approaches the screen, and to rumble back a light haptic vibration when you make a selection.
This is all cool stuff, but without a bunch of surprising apps to take advantage of the massive 8-inch screen, you can't shake the feeling that it's all teched up with nowhere to go. Once systems like Cadillac's get some outside app blood, their pretty faces could finally get a brain to match.
BONUS: 2013 Cadillac XTS With CUE, Review
Image courtesy of Ford
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