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The connected car is the focus of a lot of speculation about uses for contextual data feeds. The visions are exciting, whether of helmet-mounted cyclist beacons or biometric apps to stop drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

But they derive from car makers without a long track record in the kind of human-centred thinking that constitutes best practice in interaction design. Or they come from technology companies whose over-riding ambition is to transplant their operating...

Visa, Pizza Hut and Accenture are to collaborate on a proof-of-concept connected car that will be used to test commerce possibilities when drivers are out and about.

The concept will bring together several technologies, including Visa Checkout, mobile connectivity, Bluetooth and iBeacon, so that staff will be alerted when a customer has arrived to collect their pizza.

Takeaway food might be the initial focus of the tests, but the trio of companies have visions of their technology being adopted for everyday...

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The Hella group has released details of a new system called the Intelligent Damage Detection System that is capable of detecting scratches and dents as they happen.

Depending on the specification, anything from two to 12 sensors are positioned through a car’s body panels. A central control panel is able to detect a pressure being applied to the panel and then decide whether it is rain or something far less innocuous like a scratch.

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There is widespread discussion that driverless cars, and more broadly autonomous vehicles, will monumentally change the landscape of the automotive industry, arguably creating the biggest transformation of society’s view of the vehicle in the last 150 years.

Public acceptance of the vehicle began following the ‘Red Flag Act’ of 1865 when, by the 1890s, it became the ‘norm’ to see motor vehicles mingling, albeit uncomfortably, with the horse and...

Ford has put the finishing touches on an agreement that will see it supply driverless vehicles to the UK government-backed Autodrive initiative.

During 2015 Ford will hand over two prototype cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communication features to Autodrive that will help the organisations study the contribution driverless and connected cars can make to society.

Since the turn of the year Ford has come out all guns’ blazing with its investment in upcoming technologies. Just last month it unveiled a new...

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London has fallen victim to a new wave of tech-savvy criminals that have been breaking into cars through their keyless entry features.

To paint a picture of how commonplace this is, the Metropolitan Police Office reports that more than 6,000 cars and vans across the UK’s capital were stolen without the owners’ keys, which is an average of 17 vehicles each day. These figures represent 42% of all car and van thefts.

Thieves are said to be using a device that can...

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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Looking at the recent news from some of the world’s biggest auto manufacturers, it is clear to see just how much progress has been made and how the connected car is revolutionising the in-car experience. At CES in January 2015, GM announced AtYourService, a suite of new OnStar services aimed at allowing retailers and other merchants to promote deals directly to drivers. These promotions include hotel...

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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...