What's next: cars that pimp and tweet

OPINION: Google saved me from having to buy a new (second-hand) car this year, and I have good reason to think I'm not alone.

My ageing Nissan Sentra began occasionally stalling when idling and taking corners.

A couple of hours trawling online forums suggested connections on the mass airflow intake sensor might be to blame.

It would be a difficult intermittent fault to diagnose, given the multitude of problems that can prevent either fuel or air getting to an engine. But it turns out it is common enough for a chap in Lower Hutt to make a living swapping out the sensor boxes from Nissans after rewiring them.

A mechanic at my local garage admitted he too sometimes turned to Google for help diagnosing faults. But according to an article in United States magazine Information Week, the still nascent relationship between the information technology and automotive industries is about to get a lot deeper.

Author Curtis Franklin notes many mechanical components in cars, such as the throttle and brakes, are now computer-controlled, in the same way as modern "fly by wire" aircraft. He even quotes General Motors' global director of electronic controls and software development, Eric Gassenfeit, as claiming that embedded systems are about to hit half the value of a car.

Ford has a system that integrates on-board vehicle computers with a cellphone receiver, so it can read aloud your text messages – no need for a hands-free kit – and upload vehicle health reports to a website. GM is able to notify some car-owners by email if their vehicle's tyre pressure is low or the oil needs changing.

The future, according to Mr Franklin, may be one where software developers can build third-party applications for cars in the same way that they do now for iPhones.

Ng Connect, an industry consortium backed by businesses including Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung and Toyota Motor Sales, this month created a Toyota Prius concept car to promote the potential 4G cellular technology LTE could provide to stream videos, games and music to cars. Cars could be turned into "sensors" with details of weather and traffic conditions uploaded and shared with other drivers.

Mr Franklin forecasts that owning and driving a software-centric, networked vehicle will be very different "with software updates included as part of regularly scheduled maintenance, vehicles that tweet when it's time for an oil change, and auto-magazines with links to open source code to pimp your dashboard display".

Great if it all works. If not, we can all expect to spend a lot more time online sorting out car faults.

- © Fairfax NZ News