Move over, smartphone — the car is getting smarter

In 1930, Motorola delivered one of the first mobile apps: the car stereo. The device put the young electronics company on the map, and it defined the car as more than a transporation device. But not much has changed since then — car stereos are still basically about playing music — even as people have turned the car into a workspace through the use of Bluetooth earbuds for making calls and smartphones for navigation and other information. No, you shouldn’t use a smartphone while driving, but nearly all of us do because we have no other conduit.

Today, the car is on the verge of becoming that new conduit, as the classical car stereo finally gives way to a smart car control center. This year, two pieces of gear herald that shift. One is the Pioneer AppRadio 3, and the other is the Automatic Link. They’re first steps to your car becoming part of your work and communications environment. We should be glad Google is trying to create a car that drives itself, given all the other things we’ll be able to do in a car!

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Integrating the smartphone into your car’s console is one of those “duh” moves that for whatever reason the automobile and tech industries have been slow to execute. Granted, “slow” is a relative term — the iPhone is just six years old, the iPad is three, and capable Android devices are two. Carmakers have always been slow to adopt new technologies, such as CD players and digital radio, out of fear of adopting a faddish tech that ends up in a vehicle people keep for a decade. Additionally, there are legitimate concerns over creating information consoles in cars that would lead to more accidents and deaths due to greater distraction while driving. When the carmakers have adopted information-hub tech, the resulting products have been poor.

A step toward merging your smartphone and car stereo But we all know the car will become an information hub. So far it’s been informal, with people mounting smartphones and even tablets on their dashboards or simply propping them up in cup holders and consoles. When devices like Google Glass get real, the distraction genie will be permanently out of the bottle.

Most carmakers have agreed to incorporate Apple’s Siri Eyes Free technology, which basically uses the speakers and microphone in cars as the conduit for Siri on your iPhone to make calls, read and compose messages, navigate, and yes, play music. Few carmakers have followed up so far, but it’s obvious that this approach will become normal in cars soon, whether using Siri or Google’s Voice Search, as the latter evolves to be more than a search tool.

Pioneer’s $500 AppRadio 3 uses Siri Eyes Free, and it supports Google’s Voice Search, creating the integration between stereo and smartphone that has been so clearly missing. The AppRadio 3 is a replacement stereo (a double-DIN model, due to its 7-inch touchscreen), so it will bring older cars into the new mobile era.

Its two previous versions were not so great, with basic music playback, a handful of fairly weak custom apps, and the solid Waze navigation app. You really couldn’t use an earlier AppRadio instead of your smartphone. From early accounts (the device won’t ship till summer), the AppRadio 3 still can’t replace your iPhone, but it bridges the stereo/smartphone divide much better. (Android support beyond music playback and making calls remains very limited.)

On its touchscreen, the AppRadio 3 is largely limited to those Pioneer-specific apps — you can’t pass through the screen of car-safe apps on your smartphone, which needs to happen for broad adoption. This means Apple and Google need to figure out a way to certify apps as car-safe so that devices like the AppRadio 3 will mirror them. You can mirror a small number of native iOS apps like Calendar and Photos if you connect your iPhone 4 or later via a special USB cable. But you can control your iPhone using Siri through the App Radio, letting you ditch the Bluetooth headset and reducing the physical switching between the AppRadio and your iPhone while driving. Overall, it’s a good step forward.

The new digital assistant in your car There’s more to smart cars than merging a smartphone into the stereo. Cars are computers on wheels, with sensors tracking all sorts of data, from engine temperature to speed. With GPS available via smartphones, navigation devices, and embedded services like OnStar, an item in your car is likely also tracking your location.

But that data is locked away from you. If you could access it, you could get feedback on how and where you drive, alerts on pending repair issues, and other data-based intelligence. Already, mechanics can download the car computer data to help diagnose a problem; for more than a decade, cars have come with a standard interface port to enable such downloads to diagnostic computers.

For a couple years, Progressive Insurance has been touting its Snapshot device that plugs into that diagnostic port to track your driving. Allstate now offers a similar monitoring device. The pitch is to reward good drivers with lower insurance rates by proving they are in fact good drivers, but the flip side the insurers conveniently keep quiet about is that the same spy systems also tell them whose rates to raise because of how they drive or perhaps even what neighborhoods they visit, in a form of digital redlining. The kind of abuse we’ve seen in health insurance based on using patient data against them (noncoverage of pre-existing conditions, cancellation of insurance for those who get sick, and so on) could easily enter the car insurance world if people adopt these monitoring systems.

That’s where the $70 Automatic Link comes in. It’s a device you connect to that diagnostic port to track how you drive. (Your car needs to be a 1996 or later model, and the device should be available this summer.) But the data doesn’t go to your insurance company — it goes to you. Your iPhone 4S or later accesses the data via Bluetooth as you drive, feeding into an app that provides you advice on how to drive better (such as to reduce wear and tear or improve gas mileage), alerts you to warnings based on engine codes, tracks your trips and timelines to help you optimize your regular routes, remembers where you parked so you can find your car after a night out, and calls 911 if it detects a crash. That’s smart!

We’re just getting on the road to the smart car future. But the onramps are now appearing.

This article, “Move over, smartphone — the car is getting smarter,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.