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CES: Toyota Entune and BMW ConnectedDrive telematics systems

By Tiffany Hsu
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Toyota drivers could soon buy movie tickets and make restaurant reservations from their in-car navigation system, the automaker said Tuesday at CES.

The Entune multimedia telematics system will show up this year in several Toyota models and will also feature sophisticated software that can recognize voices speaking naturally instead of just simple commands.

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Users will have to download the Entune mobile application and then link up the Bluetooth on their phones with their cars, Toyota said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Then, drivers will be able to access music through Pandora and Clear Channel’s iheartradio app. They’ll also be able to check out MovieTickets.com, Microsoft’s Bing search engine and OpenTable’s reservation service.

And that’s on top of real-time and crowd-sourced traffic updates from INRIX as well as fuel prices, weather, stocks and sports. Ford, which updated its Sync in-car technology at last year’s CES, will make its presentation at this year’s show on Friday.

But that’s not all from the telematics front at this week’s show. QNX, which contributed software to Entune, also said Tuesday that it was pairing with BMW on its ConnectedDrive system.

Featured on the showroom floor in a zippy BMW Z4 Roadster sports car, ConnectedDrive will show calendar entries and contact lists on a display.

QNX, a subsidiary of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, will also power a function that allows BMW drivers to listen to e-mails and text messages while driving instead of handling their phones.

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‘The driver will be able to seamlessly receive information and respond without taking their eyes off the road,’ said Derek Kuhn, vice president of sales and marketing for QNX, in an interview. ‘Whatever you can imagine is possible with smart phones, we can now deliver a lot of that integration in cars.’

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-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo (bottom): BMW Z4 Roadster. Credit: Karen Tapia-Andersen/Los Angeles Times

Technology Blog
Tiffany Hsu

Tiffany Hsu is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she wrote about the California economy, fast food, restaurants, retail and alternative energy for the Business section. A Bay Area native, UC Berkeley graduate and eternal Nor-Cal fan, she once worked for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She also did a stint at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where she developed a passion for sweet tea. She still has faith that someday she’ll find two economists who agree.

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