What's so great about telematics?

Drivers are already bringing more and more gadgets into their cars -- in-dash music players, as well as GPS gadgets, mobile phones and iPods. Telematics promises to coordinate all this and add additional functionality.

ABI Research predicts that some 30 million cars will be sold with telematics within the next five years, which represents nearly half of all new cars.

This is an exciting sector for car and gadget freaks. There is so much potential here. Future telematics systems, for example, could securely (and with privacy) broadcast the location of cars to a central server for processing in order to provide everyone with real-time and very accurate traffic reports. Systems could also direct you to known parking availability, babysit and monitor your teenage driver and provide basic "black box" functionality in the case of an accident.

I believe that telematics systems will become so useful, fun and desirable that the quality of these in-dash wireless computer systems will become a major factor for new-car buyers. The next 10 years promise giant improvements in the whole car driving experience.

Now if only gas were cheaper.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.