Entertainment in the car has come a long way
Canadian new car buyers in the market for the first time in six to seven years may not be aware of what’s available in body styles, features or technologies. This series aims to educate new vehicle buyers on the new trends.
Car owners have long wanted to be entertained and informed while driving. So-called “automotive infotainment” started with the first in-car broadcast radio receivers in the 1930s — proving immensely popular. But it wasn’t until the mid-1950s, when America’s Motorola offered a form of vinyl record player in some Chryslers, when automotive infotainment offerings started to expand beyond the basic AM-band (and eventually FM) radios.
With the explosion of pop music in the 1960s, car buyers started to demand the type of audio technologies in their cars they were used to at home. First came onboard cassette and eighttrack tape decks in the late1960s. Compact disc (CD) players in the 1980s, with high quality audio output prompted serious upgrades to in-car speaker systems and powerful amplifiers.
It’s now quite common to see high-end, home audio brands such as Harman Kardon as standard equipment in some makes.
Even then, car (and now truck, minivan and crossover owners) weren’t happy simply getting their music, news and sports while driving. The advent of in-car DVD players allowed movie watching while on the go, and new GPS (Global Positioning Systems) navigation is making paper maps obsolete.
The introduction of Apple’s iPod portable music player in 2001 — and subsequently, the iPhone smartphone in 2007 — has forced more changes in the automotive infotainment field in the past decade than over the past 80 years combined.
iPod owners were now able to access thousands of songs and customized playlists and play them through their vehicles’ sound systems. The change happened almost overnight, with automakers quickly adding iPod-compatible audio inputs and Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports to their vehicles.
Today, automobiles are being designed from the start to allow smartphones to plug in or connect wirelessly to vehicles in a safe manner. USB ports and Bluetooth are becoming standard features, even in low-end vehicles.
Ironically, the next big wave of innovation is coming from outside the car. Following the lead in the growth of portable consumer electric devices such as tablets, the future of automotive infotainment will be the ability to connect these devices to the outside world while in your car.
In the U.S., Germany’s Audi offers a pay-for-use 4G LTE (Fourth Generation/Long Term Evolution) broadband wireless service turning its new 2015 A3 sedan into a rolling Internet hub. Later this year, GM will offer 4G LTE wireless services across all its brands. Passengers will be able connect as many as seven devices to surf the web or stream live video via GM’s existing On Star system.