Connected and personalized in-car features

Enabling a vehicle’s interface to connect with outside devices and customize the experience for the passenger is already a key topic being researched by many automakers that are preparing for one of the biggest shifts the industry has ever seen. While there is organic evolution of HMI within the vehicle, the most significant developments occur in line with the emerging new trends in areas, such as infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), software, and security.

The rise of autonomous and driver-assistance features, from high-end luxury cars to base-volume vehicles, has been closely tied to developments in automotive HMI from the onset and is the most important integration of these functional topics. Haptics, gesture, and audible cues have also become an important safety tool, tied with collision warning or driver-centric monitoring systems.

This report seeks to review some of the many emerging vehicle interface and experience technologies that are increasingly being seen in vehicle cockpits worldwide, including AI-based voice assistants and chatbots, gaming and other entertainment features, augmented reality and 3D navigation, driver/occupant monitoring systems and in-vehicle personalization trends, among others.

The systems and technologies reviewed in this report were selected based on below factors:

− An increased importance at conferences and trade shows

− A potentially transformative feature that could affect existing established technologies

− Direct interest from automakers and suppliers for S&P Global research

− Trends outside the vehicle industry that are likely to spread into automotive.