CES 2012: Car Tech

LAS VEGAS--Remember when Aha Radio's claim to fame was robotic text-to-speech reading of Facebook status updates? You've come a long way, baby.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, Aha by Harman announced a handful of new content and hardware partners, the ranks of which include Subaru, Honda, and Kenwood.

The two automotive partners, Subaru and Honda, will be building Aha Radio connectivity into their vehicle's infotainment systems for the 2013 model year--which means we should start seeing the fruits of this union as early as this fall. After pairing a smartphone running the Aha Radio app, drivers … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you've ever wanted to tell the Car Talk guys to shut it, now's your chance because a Sync AppLink-enabled version of the NPR app for Android and iPhone will give select Ford drivers voice control over their NPR programming.

By saying "Hourly News," users can call up a 4- to 5-minute audio stream of the latest news of the hour. After saying "Stations," the driver will be able to select a live stream of his or her favorite local NPR affiliate. Likewise, the "Programs" command allows for quick access to … Read more

LAS VEGAS--In a joint CES press conference today, Ford Motor and NPR announced that streaming news is coming "straight to the dashboard."

NPR's new app will work with Ford's in-car control system, Sync AppLink, even those without a touch-screen interface, and is intended to be less distracting to the driver as it's based on voice command. Users can set favorite stations and programs in the app to be browsed later using the car's steering wheel controls. Apps are available immediately in the Android Market and iTunes App Store.

NPR played up the ability to … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You'd think that Ford's own Sync Destinations app would be among the select few that offer connectivity with the automaker's voice-controlled Sync AppLink technology, but oddly it wasn't...until now.

Ford has announced an updated version of the Sync Destinations app for iPhone that gives drivers voice control over the app when connected to an AppLink-enabled vehicle. Like the original app, users will be able to save favorite destinations and access driving directions and traffic reports to them utilizing their cloud-based Sync Services account. However, now users can simply speak the commands "Mobile Apps,&… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Available as an iOS app in the iTunes App Store, accessible online at Scout.me, and coming soon to Ford Sync AppLink, TeleNav's new Scout service aims to help users discover and navigate to destinations whether on foot, at home, or in the car.

On the iPhone, Scout presents users with a dashboard that gives an overview of personalized, real-time commute times to work or home and shortcuts to local search and saved favorite locations. Digging deeper, the app also offers a search-and-discovery engine for finding, for example, a local bar or restaurant. User reviews are aggregated from … Read more

So you decided not to spring for the in-dash DVD player and flip-down screens. No problem: your passengers can still watch movies on the road, using your iDevice as the source.

Launching at CES, as reported by Ubergizmo, the Philips PV7002i and PV9002i come with a pair of LCD screens designed to be mounted behind car-seat headrests. Meanwhile, your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad sits up front in a specially designed cupholder dock, which also charges the device.

The PV7002i will come with two 7-inch screens, two sets of mounting straps, the aforementioned dock, and the single cable that connects them all. The screens have built-in stereo speakers.

The PV9002i is identical, but with 9-inch screens. The kits will be priced at $169.99 and $199.99, respectively, and are due to ship in April.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's the classic show formula: put your product in the hands of an attractive model and people will look twice. In the case of QNX's new mobile app platform, the attractive model is the Porsche Carrera sports car.

As the cars of tomorrow gain Internet connections and applications, they'll need infotainment software that allows them to be as flexible and easily updated as your average smartphone. RIM subsidiary QNX Software Systems Limited thinks that the solution to that problem lies in the HTML5 framework and is showcasing its new HTML5-based QNX CAR 2 application platform at … Read more

OnStar is giving the green light to third-party app developers.

The General Motors in-vehicle concierge announced this evening at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it's making its proprietary application program interface open for third-party app developers, giving them access to the OnStar ATOMS cloud server. (See CNET's live blog of the OnStar event.)

The first third-party app will be RelayRides, a peer-to-peer service in which users rent out their personal cars to other drivers in the area. A demo of the app showed it helping users find, reserve, and unlock OnStar enabled cars using the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Now that OnStar is courting app developers, it's going to be needing a bigger data pipe to feed the new mobile apps it's expecting for the next generation of OnStar-equipped vehicles.

This is where Verizon comes in with its broadband wireless network. OnStar and Big Red have jointly unveiled what they call a "second-generation connected research vehicle" at CES 2012. Based on a Chevrolet Volt, the research vehicle is connected to the cloud via Verizon's 4G LTE network and will be used to help test and develop new capabilities for OnStar's Advanced Telematics … Read more