An Abridged History of Infotainment, as Hyundai Rebels – Automotive Blog

Manufacturers seem split on one aspect of driving, the place of connectivity in modern vehicles, and whether cars need to be “smart” like phones and household fridges and lightbulbs.

Hyundai recently announced plans to ditch touchscreens because they “went too far” with their inclusion. Tesla continues to add modules to a system that now includes music and video streaming, the Tesla Arcade, and “Caraoke”. This lack of a middle ground finds an industry moving in two directions – but when did it start?

Humble yet Spectacular

Car-based touchscreens arguably have their origins fairly recently. Apple and Android devices have long championed short-form news and entertainment, including social media sites, productivity apps, and casino games. In the latter case, the Age of the Gods slots from Playtech have rounds lasting a handful of seconds. The relatively small screen of a smartphone is ample for the short guide on how to play the game and what its bonus rounds entail. When it comes to playing the game itself, they fit neatly into the landscape view of a smartphone screen. Phones are GPS-enabled too, with support for Google Maps – which many of us use whether for long journeys to new places or to find the shortest and least traffic-ridden route to work.

Makers have taken all this connectivity and made it suitable for driving. For example, the Tesla Arcade is unavailable while the vehicle is in motion (including for passengers), restricting the owner to essential controls like climate, volume, and driver assistance.

Such space-age technology has humble yet spectacular beginnings. German manufacturer BMW integrated a computer into its F1 racing cars back in 1980, introducing connectivity to the industry. This device told the driver about their vehicle and environment. At the time, most home computers were in the 8-bit era.

“Stressed or Annoyed”

Other manufacturers were slow to discover the benefits of computing. Automatic emergency calling or “E-calling”, which became part of EU law in 2019, wouldn’t appear until sixteen years after BMW’s experiment with smart racecars, marking a belated second step on the road to modern sensors and infotainment.

The world wasn’t set up for large-scale connectivity in 1996. GPS signals wouldn’t be accurate until ten years later, when President Clinton ordered the military to stop scrambling them, decreasing their margin of error from approx. 90m to 9m overnight (or 100 yards to ten).

Of course, none of this is quite on the same level as the systems Hyundai recently got overexcited about, which might have been a good thing. Company director Ha Hak-soo claims that drivers felt “stressed or annoyed” with settings buried in menus in newer vehicles. Smartphones and desktop computers suffer from the same flaw so it’s debatable whether the concept will ever be car-ready.

Incremental

Returning to smartphones, British rescue company RAC claims that SIM cards were introduced to vehicles in 1996, becoming the technology behind E-calls. BMW expanded on this idea in 2004 with messaging, traffic alerts, weather, and some productivity features.

It’s easy to think of the above as the “prehistory” of connected cars. This era arguably ended in 2007, with the release of the first iPhone. Development in “smart” cars has been incremental rather than seismic ever since, something that might sound familiar to fans of smartphones. Self-driving vehicles may yet energise creators to take infotainment to new places.

Which attitude will win overall – Tesla’s or Hyundai’s – still seems impossible to judge.