The Best and Most Advanced Car Features You Will Want

By Russ Heaps 05/02/2023 4:00pm

Quick Facts About Advanced Car Features

Many of today’s advanced safety technologies continue evolving, widening their role and increasing their impact.
Modern cars are communication hubs that help keep passengers connected to the outside world.
Ultimately, the goal of advanced car features is fully autonomous vehicles that drive themselves.

Every generation and era can point to technological advances, no doubt believing theirs was the time of greatest enlightenment. Today, technological advances are like falling rain, coming from a broad swath of disciplines. One reason for the relentless escalation in new car prices is the ever-advancing technology — much of which is driven by the race to self-driving cars. Read on for a look at today’s crop of best and most advanced car features, as well as a few cutting-edge technologies just gaining a foothold.

What Are Advanced Car Features?

For our purposes here, advanced car features are those born of technological developments enhancing the safety, convenience, or connectivity of motor vehicles. Yes, this covers a lot of ground; however, we aim to paint an overall picture of advanced car tech now and coming soon.

Evolving Automotive Technologies

So much is happening on so many automotive tech fronts that keeping up with it all is virtually impossible. Not all that long ago, we judged a car by its styling, mechanicals, fuel economy, comfort, and safety. In other words, we shopped for a vehicle in a way very similar to shopping for a washing machine, lawn mower, or bowling ball. However, in the last 20 years, the ascendency of software as the overriding component in modern motor vehicles has totally changed the industry. Moreover, it has rearranged our priorities when shopping for a car.

In short, we’ve come to expect much more from a car than simply transporting us from point A to point B. Cars must now function as rolling communication hubs. In fact, in a March 2022 update, Smartcar, a company with a platform to help integrate mobility apps, reported that in 2020, 91% of all new cars sold provided internet connectivity. By today’s expectations, though, car connectivity involves much more than internet access.

What Is Automotive Connectivity?

We will break down car connectivity into three distinct areas: infotainment, telematics, and V2X. We won’t delve too deeply into them; however, we will provide an overview of what they are. You will see some overlap as we define the elements of connectivity.

What Are Infotainment Systems?

A car’s infotainment system is a confluence of information about the vehicle’s inner workings, control of some of its systems, and entertainment from outside the car’s systems. For example, radio programming, music streaming, a DVD entertainment system, and built-in Wi-Fi are all elements of an infotainment system. Your smartphone interface is a function of this system, as well.

Usually, some of your car’s other systems, like climate control, navigation, onboard cameras, and so forth, are also functions of the infotainment system. Most infotainment systems include a touchscreen to control and monitor all the system’s functions.

Not often lumped into the infotainment system because it has its own display separate from the touchscreen, a digital driver information system provides the car’s performance updates. They can include tire pressure, car speed, outside temperature, a compass, battery drain, and so on.

Augmented Reality Head-Up Display

Worthy of separate mention is augmented reality (AR) head-up display (HUD) or ARHUD. Many drivers are familiar with static HUD information in a fairly small image projected on the windshield at roughly the front edge of the hood. Most projected images are called secondary information because they contain information available elsewhere. For example, vehicle speed, navigational directions, speed limit, and other static data are also located on different displays and screens.

The advantages of ARHUD include a much larger field of view and the capability of overlaying critical information onto the roadway and other real-world objects in front of the car. It can put street names on the actual streets as you approach them. It can provide actual distances between you and objects ahead. Moreover, it can recognize and mark threats well before reaching them.

MORE: Night Vision in a Vehicle: Is It Worth It?

What Is Vehicle Telematics?

Telematics in a car includes GPS-based and cloud-based functions. This includes Wi-Fi, navigation, and any interaction in which data is sent to the cloud, processed, and then returned as an action. For example, Hyundai’s Bluelink app allows you to use your smartphone to unlock your car. It does this by sending a signal into the cloud, which, seconds later, sends it back as a command to unlock the vehicle.

Over-the-Air Updates

Among the more exciting and cost-saving aspects of cloud-based telematics are over-the-air (OTA) updates. Many of today’s electric vehicles (EVs) provide this capacity. It allows carmakers to remotely enhance or fix a vehicle’s software via the cloud.

What Is V2X?

Your vehicle’s ability to communicate with anything around it is V2X. A core requirement for fully self-driving cars is their capability to communicate with surrounding traffic and infrastructure. In other words, V2X includes communication between your vehicle and those vehicles around it (V2V), your home (V2H), and infrastructure (V2I), such as road construction sites. A self-driving car must know its place in the world at all times. We may be decades away from vehicles without steering wheels zipping around our streets, but automakers are already putting the foundation for V2X in today’s cars by way of sensors, cameras, LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and cloud connectivity.

For example, a few years ago, Audi introduced the press to its work on some of its V2I technology. Working with the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, it established a downtown route in which the traffic lights could communicate with appropriately equipped Audi models. As you approached a traffic light, the head-up display would display a countdown to green if it was red, or to red if it was green. The idea is to reduce driver stress and conserve fuel as drivers time their arrival at an intersection based on the countdown to green or to red.

Wireless EV Charging

As a driving culture, we’ve barely become accustomed to EVs and the inconvenience of charging them. Well, recharging batteries will be much more hassle-free with the development of plugless charging. Using airborne electricity generated by a magnetic field allows an EV battery to be charged by a pad on the ground. An EV must have the proper equipment to take advantage of a charging pad. Consequently, we won’t see a massive influx of charging pads overnight, but carmakers are working on it.

Solar-Powered Electric Car

A solar-only EV simply isn’t feasible until solar technology takes several significant strides forward. However, in the meantime, a few carmakers are already incorporating solar into their charging schemes. For example, the Dutch-built Lightyear 0 is in production now with promises of up to 44 miles of range from solar panel charging alone. Sadly, it isn’t coming to the U.S. However, the Lightyear 2 apparently will be produced in much greater numbers and could make its way to this market. Meanwhile, Hyundai and Toyota are working on solar panels for select electrified models that will be available in the U.S. In fact, Hyundai already offers a solar-panel roof on Ioniq 5 models in South Korea.

Biometrics

Biometric applications for cars will span everything from unlocking the doors to engaging the ignition and initiating driver presets (seat, audio preferences, and so forth) to monitoring driver awareness. In other words, in vehicles, biometrics will add convenience and another layer of security through fingerprint and face-recognition technologies. Tesla already employs face recognition to monitor driver awareness in Model 3 and Model Y versions.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Often referred to as “advanced safety” systems or advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), these technologies take some of the stress off the driver while proactively helping prevent or minimize accidents. Some ADAS are fundamental building blocks for the semi-autonomous driver assistance systems available on many cars described below.

Among the ADAS features are lane-centering assist (LCA), automatic emergency braking (AEB), and rear cross-traffic alert (RCTW). Check out Kelley Blue Book’s Car Safety Features 101: Everything You Need to Know for a list of ADAS features.

Semi-Autonomous Driving Assistance

Rolling several ADAS technologies, like LCA, AEB, and adaptive cruise control (ACC), into one cohesive system allows a car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically. This Level 2 Partial Automation still requires the driver to pay attention and remain in control with hands on the steering wheel. In other words, the driver still monitors the driving environment.

This level is where today’s semi-autonomous driving systems are because government regulations restrict the degree of semi-autonomy. The next step is Level 3 Conditional Automation, in which the system monitors the environment and controls the vehicle. However, the driver must still pay attention and be ready to take over. A driver’s hands on the steering wheel is optional unless assuming control. You can learn more about the six levels of driving autonomy at Kelley Blue Book’s Self-Driving Cars: Everything You Need to Know.