Adam Tuss, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Your phone stores music. It can connect to radio stations like WTOP, and it can give you directions. So what’s the point of having a car dashboard anymore?
That’s the thinking of some automakers, including General Motors. They are now focused on taking what’s on your phone and putting it on a screen on the dashboard.
There are a number of payoffs for the car owner. You get the convenience and familiarity of your phone on your dashboard, and you don’t have to pay more for a fancy in-car entertainment system.
“There is a race to see who can integrate it as seamlessly and as intuitively as possible,” Dave Lyon, an executive design director at GM, tells The New York Times.
The downside is that using more data in the car almost certainly means signing up for a bigger data plan with your cellphone company. The challenge also is making these new dashboards feature-filled, yet not distracting.
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