Being a total gadget addict, I’m pretty opinionated on how in-car electronics/gadgetry needs to be improved. It’s no secret that car makers are VERY far behind when it comes to the latest connectivity and electronic options that are available in the market. I don’t blame them, because they can’t immediately adopt the cutting edge due to several reasons:

1. the fad dies out

2. bugs

3. cost of initial implementation

4. support costs

However, there are several pieces of technology that should definitely be embraced by the industry as a whole, in order to create standards are scaling in-car entertainment more easily and cheaply for customers. Admittedly, I would only expect to see these intiatives in the $25k+ price category of cars, but as technology prevails and standards are established, costs will fall making it more realistic for sub-$25k car category to adopt.

My ideas:

1. Add a USB bus to the car to connect various electronics. USB has been around for awhile, prevalent on all modern PCs and well understood by consumers. Required for my other ideas that follow. You can even see that Volkswagen is doing this. I picture USB ports all over the car (in armrest, near cigarette lighter, in trunk, etc) to power and connect devices.

2. Navigation systems: Get rid of DVD and CDROM data drivers — this should all be driven by removable flash media. Given there are like 10 different card formats (CF, Smartmedia, Transflash, etc), have a multi-format card reader somewhere in the car. Not only are multi-format card readers cheap, but they are also easily replaceable if a new format arises.

3. Power system: While cigarette lighters are in every single car, it’s pretty annoying to have a different car charger for cell phone, camera, ipod, etc. By powering from a common set of USB ports (see #1), you have a standard set of plugs in the car that use 2 cables (either Type A or Type B USB cables). Next time you buy a cell phone, you don’t need to buy a new power cord. This obviously assumes that phone manufacturers all start to use mini-USB connectors (note: will be signfiicant resistence against this since companies make HUGE dollars from accessories).

4. Music: By having a memory card reader and USB bus (see #1 and #2), you can get rid of the need for expensive music solutions for in-car entertainment. You just plug in a 1GB CF card or USB Key and the car will be able to read the music and begin playing. This requires that the stereo know how to read the fileformat on the media as well as integration into the USB bus. By standardizing around MP3 and shunning DRM (at least for now), they avoid a whole host of support issues from customers. Customers are getting more and more savvy about media cards due to the proliferation of digital cameras and portable music players, so copying music files to a removable media card and plugging it into the car shouldn’t be rocket science. However, again, this requires the music system to be agnostic to file organization on the media.

A monetization point for manufacturers might be to enable the aftermarket sale of software extensions that allow users to play DRM protected files. You can imagine Apple partnering with a car maker to include the ability to play their Fairplay protected files along with gift certificates for song purchases.

Okay, enough random thoughts.