Last week, a good friend of mine that works for one of the Big 3 Automakers told me that as part of a company-wide innovation initiative, employees are being asked to submit ideas on what new technologies they would like to see in upcoming vehicles. When he pinged me for any ideas that I might have, after a few seconds of thought, I said I wanted a computer with Internet access.

Technically speaking, this is really not that much of a stretch. In fact, custom solutions are already available in the aftermarket. Take the same ~6″ lcd screens that you’d find in a typical navi-equipped car and instead of hooking it up to a dedicated navigation unit, hook it up to a PC in a compact enclosure. Input can be via touch-screen, joystick and/or voice. Internet access method would be EV-DO cellular which can already be found in vehicles, such as the Google commuter shuttles for employees.

Of course, a computer would offer navigation functionality that current systems offer except that it would be orders of magnitude more sophisticated. Instead of calculating routes based on static map data like current systems do, given network access the vehicle’s navigation client could utilize a central server to more intelligently calculate routes, incorporating dynamic information such as real-time traffic, road changes, weather, etc. According to this news item yesterday, Honda will be joining Volvo in integrating Google Earth satellite-imagery into future navigation systems. Uh, who wants that? Do you have the desire, much less the opportunity, to browse satellite imagery while your driving? I doubt it. And if we’re talking about satellite imagery as an aid for navigation, why can’t I just look out the window? Sure, having Google Earth would be nifty, but I would drop this in the innovation-because-we-can-do-it-not-because-anyone-wants-it bucket.

What the driver wants is access to information that is of value to him or her at the moment. And the real benefit to having a computer with Internet access lies, of course, in precisely this access to software and data that a computer provides. Don’t just blindly find any local gas station to fill up at. Find the cheapest Chevron or Unocal76. Not just any Italian restaurant to eat at. Find a highly-recommended one that’s open right now. The computer opens doors for in-cra communication as well. For example, voice-input-driven IM conversations would be a lot safer than chatting on a cell phone while driving because of the asynchronous nature of IM conversations. Music possiblities are limitless. Who needs an iPod adaptor when they can access their own personal music collections or subscription-based services. (Who needs satellite radio either?) A whole new genre of social applications based on route context will emerge. Stuck in a traffic jam? Rant about it with other drivers. See a hottie in the car next to you? Send her a message. And, for passengers, the Internet obviously gives new meaning to in-car entertainment.

The goal here is to have a computer which runs an industry standard OS such that anyone can develop software for it. That idea is probably a difficult thing for an automaker to swallow, and justifiably so. The last thing automakers want is a customer bringing their car in for warranty service because the computer crashed due to a mis-behaved third-party software package. However, I think it is possible to build a system that’s open to third-party developers yet retains an appliance like level of simplicity and reliability.

The last point to make which gets back to the title of this post is, do people actually want this? It seems like everytime automakers try to add computing-like devices, it is received negatively from consumers. iDrive from BMW is probably the most prominent example of this. iDrive allows the driver to customize a variety of settings across many components of the vehicle. The level of personalization that systems like iDrive offer to the driver is unprecedented yet many buyers would rather not have it. I don’t have scientific evidence on this, but from what I can piece together, it does seem that older buyers are much more likely to hate such systems than younger buyers. It makes sense and I expect the trend to continue until one day, not too many years in the distance, computing will be an integral part of modern motoring life.