(Image Credit: BMW)

German automobile maker BMW has unveiled several new connected car features which it hopes will help their vehicles differentiate from competitors. 

The company's flagship vehicles, the BMW i3 and BMW i8, both feature integrated SIM cards through which the vehicle can interact with the internet and the increasing amount of "things" being connected to it as part of the IoT. 

BMW has put a focus on harnessing the latest technologies outside of the company's...

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Verizon Telematics has announced the commercial availability of Hum, which promises to be a “smart, connected driving experience for more than 150 million vehicles.”

Hum’s staying power, like a lot of software this publication has assessed in recent weeks, is that it can be connected to practically any car. It can be installed through an onboard diagnostic reader (OBD), with a Bluetooth-enabled device on the visor, which updates drivers with real-time data...

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Mojio and its closest rival, Automatic, saw the gap in the market for transforming drivers' current vehicles into connected cars and stepped-in to offer their own adapters in the $100 - $149 region which feeds data from the OBD port available in most cars since 1996. 

Of course ecosystems only thrive with a...

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Automatic Labs has announced $24 million in series B funding to “continue its mission to transform the car ownership experience with a host of connected car apps built on the Automatic platform.”

The company recently launched App Gallery, ostensibly an app store for connected cars, and its own developer platform, which is available to build apps for “just about any car since 1996”. It aims to use the cash injection to accelerate growth and continue expanding its...

(Image Credit: TomTom)

We might be entering the era of driverless cars, but for the time being the majority of us will remain in control which means the only errors we can blame are our own. This is where TomTom wants to step-in and help prevent our human mistakes from occuring with an innovative connected car application.

TomTom's system allows for a more-detailed look at driving performance

Dubbed TomTom CURFER, the new technology provides real-time feedback on the...

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If you wanted a connected car, you would have to put down a considerable sum of money for a car technologically-savvy enough. Yet one Dallas-based firm is aiming to turn all that on its head.

Meet Vinli. The startup, which debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September, has the simple mission statement of “turning your car into a smart connected car”, by installing a $99 device into your vehicle and utilising Vinli’s apps, app store and 4G LTE connection. And the startup...

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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...

Aspects of in-car communication are still causing headaches for drivers, with a study from market research firm J.D. Power placing Bluetooth connectivity and voice interpretation at the top of a list of woes.

Of those that experience Bluetooth pairing or connectivity issues, 55% complained that the vehicle did not recognise their phone and 31% admitted their device would not automatically connect when entering the car.

Failing communications are playing a part with drivers’ decisions to repurchase with...

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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.