From USA TODAY

AKRON, OHIO — Personal technology is becoming a significant part of our driving experience.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, carmakers and automotive suppliers had plenty of visibility.

Ford Motor showed off a shiny gray Ford F-250 Super Duty truck that had been turned into a mobile office — a partnership between Ford and Microsoft’s automotive unit.

“This is just a logical move,” says Ford’s Steve Weiner, who gave a demonstration of the technology. “There are a lot of people who work out of their vehicle, and putting a computer in there for them to stay connected is long overdue.”

The computer — from Stargate Mobile — is a rugged tablet model running Windows XP and loaded with the Microsoft Office suite of software tools, as well as a mapping program. A wireless broadband card from Sprint brings in the Internet, and Weiner even had this unit tricked out with a connection to Slingbox, a hot new technology that uses the Internet to bring in live television programming from the owner’s cable TV box back home.

A Global Positioning System provides real-time directions, and a small printer turns the truck into a moving office.

The computer is wrapped in a black rubberized case and mounted on a sturdy, swiveling floor mount. It can easily be undocked and carried around like a laptop.

Ford sees this used primarily by contractors, real estate professionals, sales people and the like. But Weiner says it is conceivable that regular users will want such an option, too.

Initial pricing for the system, which will be dealer installed, is about $3,000. It won’t be available until late spring or early summer. Inside the sprawling convention hall, Delphi Automotive and Visteon both had large floor displays.

Delphi used the show to tout its market-leading role in providing satellite radio receivers for the car, as well as systems that can integrate with home entertainment centers and even pocket-size personal handheld devices.

To date, the company announced at the show, it has sold more than 8.5 million satellite radio receivers.

So successful has satellite radio been to Delphi that it used CES to announce that it has made an unspecified cash equity investment in a new venture to bring satellite radio programming to Europe.

Delphi will also provide technology to Ondas Media, which expects to launch a full subscription-based satellite radio service by 2009 with 150 channels of music, sports, news and entertainment, as well as digital data services across Europe.

“Satellite radio in the U.S. has been one of the fastest-growing technologies we’ve seen,” says Robert Schumacher, Delphi’s director of advanced product development and business strategy. “The experts say there will be 35 million subscribers by 2010. We think the European market for this service will be just as big or bigger.”

Delphi also showed off several technology applications for vehicle safety that it has been working on.

One of the most interesting was a collision-avoidance system that includes things such as automatic braking. Delphi calls the platform the Forewarn Smart Cruise Control with Stop-and-Go, and it’s being developed now for Europe. But its potential for all vehicles is pretty obvious.

The system measures the distance and relative speed of a vehicle ahead using a radar sensor located in the front of the vehicle. It can be engaged to set a time gap between itself and the vehicle in front, reducing the need to manually accelerate or decelerate with changes in traffic flow. It has the capability to bring the vehicle to a complete stop.

Another very slick Delphi feature is a lane-departure warning that alerts the driver with a loud alarm as the vehicle starts to drift out of its lane, helping to eliminate one of the most common causes of traffic accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 40 percent of all U.S. traffic accidents are caused by unintentional road or lane intrusions when sleepy or distracted drivers drift across the line.

Delphi rival Visteon also exhibited at CES. It introduced new in-vehicle entertainment products, including a Dockable Family Entertainment System with a DVD player that has a large 10.2-inch wide-screen display. It comes with a Nintendo Game Boy Advance system and will be available in the spring. Pricing hasn’t been set.

Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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