Car.NET Announced

After several false starts, the race to computerize cars has gotten the green light as IBM, Microsoft, Palm, and Sun all recently made announcements related to telematics—the integration of vehicle control and monitoring systems with location tracking, cellular voice, and wireless Internet access to information.

The intense competition to computerize the automobile is driven by both the large number of cars, and the large amount of time that people spend in their cars, which creates a captive market for communication and telematic services.

Telematic services include emergency response, roadside assistance, navigation assistance, customer relationship management (such as suggesting when the car needs servicing), in-car entertainment systems, and other applications. Drivers and passengers gain from the access to the services and information when they are in a car. Companies will make money through both the sale of telematic-enabled devices and subscriptions to ongoing telematic services.