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Chrysler's connected car plan

Chrysler announces its wireless plan for cars.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
Wayne Cunningham

Chrysler's MyGig system
Chrysler's MyGig system could get Wi-Fi. CNET Networks

At the recent Detroit auto show, Chrysler announced a road map for connecting cars to the Internet. In the near term, the company is looking at using cellular and Wi-Fi for data connections into cars. Chrysler is also looking into WiMax as a future solution. In its press release, Chrysler mentioned it would use an Internet connection into the car for the following services:

  • Turn-by-turn navigation combined with satellite imagery to provide more realistic maps
  • Automatic wireless map updates, to ensure that drivers will always have the most up-to-date map information. Real-time weather and hazard information will also be available.
  • Electronic service reminders, delivered directly to the vehicle
  • Internet search
  • E-mail access, to include access to e-mail accounts, read-out of messages using text-to-text speech, and sending messages via voice command
  • The ability to make online purchases, view streaming movies, and download music
  • Remote vehicle computer updating; wirelessly download software updates for any electronic module.
  • Wireless audio and video file transfer from home computer to car
At CES, we stumbled across a demonstration unit by Harman International using the MyGig system the company builds for Chrysler. A Harman spokesperson wouldn't tell us what the demonstration was about, but gave us a clue that it had to do with a wireless connection into the car and lossless audio. It seems likely that Harman is behind Chrysler's Detroit announcement.