Artificial Intelligence in your Car – Where are Smart Cars Headed?

Today’s cars are getting smarter by the year. With internet connectivity coming standard on most new vehicles, several automakers and technology companies are entering this niche market to provide on-board infotainment, mapping and other applications. The hardware is already built into many cars, but it’s the integration with smartphones that makes this an extremely useful tool.

On September 1, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) announced that the 2017 models of the Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 will get smartphone integration on UConnect, their onboard digital interface system.

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Apple users will be able to integrate the on-board system with Apple CarPlay and access everything from messages to maps to music to their phone contacts using either Siri voice control or UConnect’s touch interface.

Android users will be able to access Google Play, Google Maps, Google Voice Search and many more apps using the 8.4-inch touch display or steering wheel controls.

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Tesla Missed the Boat on This One

Tesla’s cars are known for their connectivity benefits, and many Tesla owners even say that their decision to buy a Model S or Model X was based on the digital console that sits squarely in the car’s center stack. The fact that it was an electric vehicle was a secondary consideration in many cases.

Tesla is well known for the superior technology it integrates into its cars.

A member of the media test drives a Tesla Motors Inc. Model S car equipped with Autopilot in Palo Alto, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. Tesla Motors Inc. will begin rolling out the first version of its highly anticipated "autopilot" features to owners of its all-electric Model S sedan Thursday. Autopilot is a step toward the vision of autonomous or self-driving cars, and includes features like automatic lane changing and the ability of the Model S to parallel park for you. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A member of the media test drives a Tesla Motors Inc. Model S car equipped with Autopilot in Palo Alto, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. Tesla Motors Inc. will begin rolling out the first version of its highly anticipated “autopilot” features to owners of its all-electric Model S sedan Thursday. Autopilot is a step toward the vision of autonomous or self-driving cars, and includes features like automatic lane changing and the ability of the Model S to parallel park for you. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But Tesla Motors hasn’t announced any kind of integration with Apple or Google on this front, making it one of the few carmakers left that have yet to sign up with the tech giants.

Here’s a brief list of carmakers that have tied up with both Google and Apple for on-board infotainment integration:

  • Audi
  • Porsche
  • Mercedes
  • Volvo
  • GM
  • Ford
  • Volkswagen
  • Honda
  • Nissan
  • Hyundai
  • Kia
  • Mitsubishi

So if you’re a tech-lover with an urge to integrate your car with everything you love about your smartphone, these are the cars you should be shopping for. Tesla hasn’t said anything about it yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before user demand prevails over company preferences.

The Future of Smart Cars

What we’ve spoken about is merely the beginning of technology being integrated into our automobiles. The real future of smart cars, however, lies in artificial intelligence. True AI will mimic humans, and keep learning on the job. We do have access to some of it at a low level with advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) and on-board infotainment, but the power of artificial intelligence will only be seen clearly when cars are able to drive themselves, find a parking spot on their own, understand your voice and your gestures, read your face for cues and someday even communicate with each other digitally to avoid accidents on busy intersections.

According to research firm Gartner, by 2020, 250 million cars will be connected to each other and the surrounding infrastructure, and they will communicate with each other through WiFi. Experts also agree that on-board infotainment and ADAS will form the core pieces of artificial intelligence in cars.

On-board infotainment will eventually include driver monitoring, eye tracking, voice and gesture control and natural language interfaces. Essentially, you’ll be able to interact with your car just as if it were another human being. It’ll be smart and it’ll keep learning your driving habits and preferences so it can help make each trip better over time.

ADAS, on the other hand, will be your car’s eyes to the outside world, monitoring your environment, optimizing your car’s performance on the go and even continually evaluating the driver’s condition.

Right now we have bits and pieces of this technology in most of our cars, but not in a coherent and fully interoperable way. One day soon, however, that will become a reality. From that day on, driving will take on a new dimension, and our cars will suddenly cross over the already-thin line between inanimate objects and thinking, reasoning beings.

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