Smart Drive iPhone app and car cradle

At the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, Smart unveiled the Smart Drive iPhone app and an iPhone car cradle for its diminutive ForTwo city car.

Smart built this giant-size iPhone to show off the app. It's fully functional and allows show goers to use pinch gestures to zoom in and out. It demonstrates the navigation function, music, including the web radio application, the phone system and Smart assistance.

Smart's iPhone app is designed for use inside its ForTwo hatch. Smart Drive's main menu includes buttons for navigation, phone, music and assistance. The phone function duplicates the iPhone's own phone application, but the buttons are bigger and designed to be used while driving; phone calls and audio play through the Smart's stereo.

You'll not only be able to listen to music stored on an iPhone via the car's speakers, the app also has access to streaming web radio.

When you unplug the iPhone from the Smart car cradle, the app will remember your location. It will then helpfully guide you back there should you be unsure about whether you parked in the Itchy lot or the Scratchy lot.

The factory-installed Smart iPhone cradle costs €249 (AU$370). The basic app will cost €10 (AU$15), with turn-by-turn navigation priced at €50 (AU$75) annually.

The basic app includes on-board points-of-interest data and online maps supplied by Bing. Maps for the turn-by-turn navigation upgrade (Europe and US only, at this stage) are stored on the iPhone. The turn-by-turn nav upgrade features text-to-speech for spoken street names, as well as traffic warnings.

Smart is developing a Wi-Fi camera that can communicate with the iPhone, enabling the app to keep tabs on the speed limit and warn you when you're going over.

In addition to the app and cradle, Smart showed off a new trim level at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show called Grey Style.

The Grey Style trim can be applied to both the turbo and hybrid versions of the Smart ForTwo in Europe. It includes a matte grey paint job with yellow accents, fog lights and six-spoke alloy wheels.

No word yet on whether the app, cradle or Grey Style trim will be making their way to Australia.

Via CNET US