Future Audis to support apps?
With the iPhone dominating the smart phone segment and with more and more cars having full integration for the device, it's no surprise that Audi has announced that its future models will able to run downloadable "apps" by the end of the decade.
This doesn't mean you can download Monopoly on your car and play at red lights (although, if an Audi engineer is reading, that would be pretty cool). It also has very little to do with Apple. Instead it means software onboard an Audi can be upgraded and new functions added just as you would with a software update on your phone or computer.
There is an interesting concept to this plan though, it means Audi can equip all its vehicles with heated seats even if the option is not ticked (to save costs on production) and then allow owners to "enable" the heated seats by paying for the "heated seat" application.
A rather clever idea, but as with jail-broken iPhones, we suspect computer hackers will be able to enable all the features with a few lines of code.
Additionally the computer will be able to learn the driver's behaviour. For example if you always drive from your house to the ocean on Sundays at 10am, it will notice the pattern and automatically turn on the sat nav to your destination when you get in the next Sunday.
We have to wonder if it will reprogram a trip to McDonalds towards Subway once you've enabled the "healthy food" app?
Source: AutoCar
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