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Over the next five years the number of connected cars on the road will rise significantly, making them a major player in the internet of things according to Gartner.

The research and advisory company has forecasted that one in five vehicles across the world will have a wireless network connection by the year 2020, which will equate to 250 million connected cars.

Connected cars are no longer available for the wealthy, with James F. Hines, research director at Gartner, commenting on...

Palo Alto’s Silicon Valley will be the location of a new Ford research centre, which the company hopes will drive innovation, connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles.

By the end of the year, Ford wants its new project to be one of the largest automotive manufacturer research centres in Silicon Valley with 125 researchers, engineers and scientists.

Ex-Apple man Dragos Maciuca, who has a background in consumer electronics, semiconductor manufacturing, aerospace and automotive, will take up the...

Software management firm Red Bend Software has been acquired by audio and visual infotainment group Harman International for a fee of $170 million.

The deal seems like a good fit for Harman, which was perhaps missing a connectivity string to its bow and Dinesh C. Paliwal, chairman, president, and CEO of Harman confirmed it was a strategic purchase.

“This acquisition of Red Bend, a true pioneer in OTA and virtualisation technologies for cyber security, adds a critical component to our automotive systems...

Driverless vehicles are the talk of the automotive industry after busy CES and Detroit motor shows, but testing them in a safe environment, that can accurately replicate the challenges of road navigation, has been a challenge until now.

US education establishment, the University of Michigan, has released more information surrounding M-City, its ambitious project to create a detailed urban test area for driverless...

Back-seat drivers can be a real annoyance to drivers and Jaguar Land Rover appears to be drawing on this bothersome trait for its latest bicycle safety system.

Jaguar Land Rover has launched an array of new features to help reduce the 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads every year, with one solution likely to prove divisive among drivers.

Bike Sense, Jaguar’s new system for cyclist detection, can detect when a bike is coming up the road behind the car. Depending on whether the cyclist...

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Connected car company Mojio has announced that its open platform for vehicles is now available to the world beyond Canada’s borders thanks to a partnership with AT&T.

Mojio has made a name for itself by breathing new life into the cars that manufacturers forgot when releasing new models and their shiny connectivity gadgets, giving them features such as parking...

As the doors closed at the Las Vegas Convention Centre and its countless exhibitors tidied away their wares, it is clear that the connected car is at the forefront of the most compelling developments in the technology industry.

Technology firms have earmarked automotive as a sizable growth area and are investing heavily in developing products for car manufacturers to implement in one or all of their models.

Nuance, a company best known for its voice-transcribing software for desktop PCs, is a prime example of this strategy...

Infotainment manufacturer Harman has designed a new system for cars that is capable of giving each person their own audio without it interrupting their fellow passengers.

Harman’s Individual Sound Zones build on a vehicle’s regular audio system by adding a number of other speakers to the inside of a car, each aimed at giving passengers their own virtual pod for listening.

The idea is to avoid circumstances in the car that might be distracting for passengers, for example navigation and phone calls...

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Personalisation is set to be the next significant hurdle for car manufacturers and Nuance thinks it has the perfect solution with a fresh new update to its Dragon Drive product.

In today’s economical era of car use, there is a high chance that one vehicle will have more than a single driver. In these cases, each specific driver will have their own preference for configuring different aspects of the car.

Rather than having to tweak a whole host of settings before a driver...

Semiconductor designer Qualcomm has let loose the 602A on the vehicle world, its latest Snapdragon silicon aimed at the connected car.

Qualcomm’s automotive-grade infotainment chipset seems to have been built with an emphasis on modern car technology having to perform a number of different processing tasks for its drivers and passengers.

The 602A supports multiple operating systems, complex user applications, enhanced 3D navigation, high-resolution, sophisticated graphics and human-machine interfaces,...

Graphics chipset designer Nvidia has launched the Drive PX and Drive CX products, its first foray into the world of production road vehicles.

Based on architecture that can also be found in modern supercomputers, each of Nvidia’s new products houses all the hardware that a vehicle manufacturer might need to get its in-car software running.

While there are many companies already developing hardware for cars, Nvidia is trying to stand out from the crowd by drawing on its background in personal computing...

Google has unveiled a new version of its self-driving vehicle prototype, six months after its original mockup materialised.

The car is still in its early stages of development as Google continues to run tests on its private track. However, the search firm does plan to trial the vehicle on the streets of Northern California in the new year.

Safety drivers currently oversee the vehicle, using manual controls to ensure all the car’s features are given Google’s stamp of approval before it considers...

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Cyclists’ helmets may soon be able to communicate with cars if Volvo’s collaboration with sports gear manufacturer POC and Ericsson goes on general sale.

Working with the two companies, Volvo has developed a helmet prototype that is capable of communicating with a connected car to provide proximity alerts to driver and cyclists in a bid to prevent accidents from occurring.

Collisions between cars and cyclists is a global concern. In Europe, 50% of all cyclists...

Picture credit: BMW

Smartwatches have only started hitting the mainstream consumer market this year, but German car manufacturer BMW is already coupling the technology with its vehicles.

BMW is dreaming of a world where people can get out of their car on the ground floor of a multi-story car park, tap their smartwatch and let the car drive through the levels to an available space on its own.

This technology currently only exists in the company’s BMW i3 research vehicle, equipped with the fully automated...

Picture credit: Jaguar Land Rover

Augmented reality has been seen in cars for the first time as part of Jaguar Land Rover’s new 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen research.

The car manufacturer has developed a new concept that completely reinvents traditional GPS navigation by projecting a ghost car in front of the driver to follow. The idea is to keep a driver’s eyes on the road and avoid the distractions that come with dash-mounted hardware.

Jaguar Land Rover has made the whole solution even more...

Picture credit: Audi

German manufacturer Audi has announced Audi unite, a way for friends colleagues or neighbours to share the use of their car using an interactive app.

With the help of digital design house Kram/Weisshaar, Audi is hoping to give people a more economical way to use its cars. An app lets up to four drivers make car reservations, while a personalised beacon makes it possible for the vehicle to recognise each driver.

The app also communicates with the vehicle to show drivers the location of the...

US Car manufacturer Ford has announced Sync 3, the latest edition of its communications and entertainment system.

Ford’s new system signals a switch in allegiance too, with the company dispensing with Microsoft Auto and opting for BlackBerry’s QNX platform instead. Early signs suggest that it has been a good move for the car manufacturer.

Prior to Sync 3, Ford’s earlier attempts at touch-screen infotainment left a little to be desired. Problems ranged from minor bugs to sporadic hard resets...

Picture credit: RealVNC

Infotainment communications system MirrorLink has announced the successful integration of its technology with the Intel-based Tizen in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) reference platform.

Remote access technology provider RealVNC was behind the port of its VNC Automotive SDK to Tizen IVI, the automotive profile of the Tizen open source platform, which means Intel’s Tizen OS will now be able to communicate with Mirrorlink-enabled devices including Samsung, Nokia and HTC.

VNC...

Picture credit: Catapult

Starting 1 January, driverless cars will become a common sight in four English cities as government quango Innovate UK announces £9 million of extra funding for the technology’s development.

The news came as part of the government’s autumn financial statement, with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne green lighting the funding himself.

Formal trials are expected to occur in Greenwich, Milton Keynes, Coventry and Bristol for the duration of 18 to 35 months....

Insurance telematics concerns could simply be sensationalised hyperbole if new research by LexisNexis rings true for the wider population.

The company’s 2014 Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) white paper revealed how consumers’ comfort levels surrounding the sharing of UBI driving data were on a similar level to other internet-related tasks such as online banking and social media.

In fact, both online search data and social media personal rated higher on the study’s concern scale than UBI driving...