Alarm Phone Dialer

Automakers trail in the great gizmo race

A customer at Rockland Toyota in suburban New York recently asked why he couldn't recharge his cell phone through the USB port built into the otherwise sophisticated Toyota Venza crossover.

Evan Kuperman, the dealership's assistant general manager, took a deep breath. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"Customers want everything to work with everything," Kuperman says of the proliferation of personal electronics. "How are you ever going to make that happen?"

Indeed, how to make that happen is a key challenge for the U.S. auto industry today. Smartphones, iPads, antenna-equipped laptops, MP3 players, and the wide world of Internet connectivity have become so core to American society that automakers are struggling to keep up with the challenge.

And they are not entirely succeeding.

The electronics and telecom industries are advancing at a 21st-century pace of product development. Meanwhile, automakers plod along on three- and four-year model cycles. That discrepancy means that automaker-installed features are becoming outmoded well before a consumer is done with a vehicle.

To compound automakers' challenge, portable store-bought devices are becoming more popular.

Vehicle engineers work on traffic-alert technologies and introduce them into onboard navigation systems, which can add $2,000 to a car 's sticker price. But an ordinary smartphone already can zoom in on local traffic conditions via the Internet at no extra charge. Smartphone navigation can be downloaded for around $50.

Even car radios, around since the days of Al Jolson, could soon be supplanted by outside technologies.

Consumers want connectivity J.D. Power and Associates' 2011 U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies Study, released late last month, finds that 86 percent of smartphone owners now use their devices in their vehicles. Just one year ago, half of the consumers in Power's survey said they wanted their vehicle to have Internet connectivity. This year, two-thirds of consumers say they want it.

But typical of the broad industry trend, drivers wonder why they should pay a premium for in-car features that no longer cost very much outside the car. Power's 2011 survey found that 71 percent of consumers want navigation technology in their vehicles. But once they learned the price tag for it, only 47 percent of them were still interested.

"Luxury vehicle owners think differently about this than lower-end buyers and younger consumers," says Mike VanNieuwkuyk, Power's executive director of global vehicle research. "But what's happening is that those nonluxury consumers are going to go out and find their own less expensive solutions. And it's going to influence what the industry does.

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