Gadgetory

the first connected cars most of us encountered had OnStar famous for crash notification stolen vehicle slowed down and unlocking your car when the keys are in it made driving seem kind of scary but today connected car tech OnStar included does much happier things to remember them just spell CNET c is for communication that used to mean just hands-free calling now you can get text messages displayed or even read to you where are you send back a reply with a push of a button I'm running a little bit late I better let them know there's Twitter in the dash Facebook and Yelp reviews clearly your car isn't the quiet refuge it once was n is for navigation GPS powered turn-by-turn maps those are almost a given now but add in live internet search to find your destination satellite view of the map itself and when you find the destination on your computer no need to jot it down just send it to your connected car e is for entertainment streaming audio from Pandora MOG Spotify tune in and others either replace broadcast radio or just do it one better built into the dash or streamed wirelessly from your phone and streaming video in the backseat seems a lot more promising than those dumb DVD systems and t is for telematics remotely locate start block charge your car even set boundaries for where and how fast it should be driven by your kid all from a phone app in many cases now at this point you may be thinking so many ways to die distraction is where one more piece of connected car tech will come into play that's autonomy self-driving cars that can communicate with each other pavement sensors smart traffic lights and data centers to do all the tedious driving that is probably 90% of all your time behind the wheel that's why cars get connected how they do it comes in a couple flavors first tethered very common this is where your smartphone and its 3G connection are the bridge between your car and the Internet Toyota's Entune system is just one example but there's also integrated much less common but growing out E and BMW we're the pioneers in actually building 3G connectivity into the car no phone needed and GM just announced it will build 4G into most of its 2015 cars to provide a fast connection for the services in the dash as well as create a Wi-Fi hotspot in the car