IN-CAR ENTERTAINMENT HAS COME A LONG WAY.
In an industry where rapidly changing demographics, shifting global economies and tightening environmental regulations are forcing the automobile to change faster than ever, a Canadian new car buyer 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.
Infotainment
It seems almost as soon as the automobile became a way of everyday life in North America, car owners wanted to be entertained and informed while driving. Socalled “automotive infotainment” essentially started with the first in-car over-theair broadcast radio receivers in the 1930s. 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 basic AM-band radios.
While the AM (and eventually FM) radio receivers were still the automotive infotainment standard, 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 on-board cassette and eight-track tape decks in the late-1960s, followed by compact disc (CD) players in the 1980s.
The introduction of the automotive CD player also prompted the demand for serious upgrades to in-car speaker systems.
It’s now quite common to see high-end, home audio brands as standard equipment in some makes.
The advent of in-car DVD players allowed movie watching while on the go, and new GPS navigation is making paper maps obsolete. Once the sole domain of high-end luxury vehicles, these technologies have now trickled down to vehicles at the low end of the market.
Of course, 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.
Instead of relying on the tastes of a radio programming director, or the tapes and CDs you were able to bring along in your vehicle, iPod owners were 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.
The proliferation of smartphones has only accelerated the revolution in automotive infotainment. Today, automobiles are being designed from the start to allow these hand-held devices to connect to vehicles in a safe manner. USB ports and Bluetooth are becoming standard features, even at the lowest end of the newvehicle market.
Automaker infotainment systems, such as Ford’s Sync, Kia’s UVO and General Motors’ MyLink, allow smartphone users to connect to their vehicle either wirelessly through Bluetooth or via USB connections. This allows drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and interact with their car’s systems either through voice-recognition, dashboard digital displays, steering wheel controls or textto-speech feedback. As well, drivers can now connect to music streaming services, such as Pandora or Spotify, via their smartphones or through their car’s infotainment hardware.
If you haven’t been in the market for a new car in a few years, these recent automotive infotainment advances may seem overwhelming. But 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 the Apple iPad tablet, the future of automotive infotainment will be the ability to connect these devices to the outside world while in your car. In fact it’s starting much sooner than later.
Many car buyers can’t wait years between vehicles to upgrade their automotive infotainment experience, but they can afford faster and more powerful handheld devices, which is why the future is making your tablet your car’s infotainment centre.
For example, in the U.S., Germany’s Audi offers a pay-for-use 4G LTE broadband wireless service with its new 2015 A3 sedan. This effectively turns the A3 into a rolling Internet hub. And starting later this year, GM will be the first automaker to offer 4G LTE wireless services across all its brands. Passengers will be able to connect as many as seven devices to the Chevy to surf the web or stream live video via GM’s existing OnStar system.