Your car is already an extension of your smartphone. Many vehicles let you make phone calls, play mp3s and access GPS info using voice commands, buttons or a touch screen on your car’s console or steering wheel.
But pretty soon you’ll be using your handset to control your car. In addition to being able to unlock your doors and start your engine from your iPhone or Android, new apps will even let you command your car to park itself. These advances and dozens more were on display at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
What we really need, though, are more ways to control our cars without creating more distractions. BMW and Mercedes have the right idea: they’re working on ways to let drivers interact with their cars using hand gestures and eye movement in addition to voice controls and touch screens.
Gesture control should be useful, especially because most drivers already get lots of practice. Then again, the arm and leg it costs you to afford one of these vehicles might render some gesture controls moot.
—Larry Greenemeier
