WHEN auto companies showed up in Las Vegas this month for the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a traditional parade ground for what’s new in information technology, they certainly didn’t seem like misfits.

Their presence merely underscored the trend of convergence between automaking and new digital technologies.

Smartphone platform providers like Apple and Android are turning vehicle dashboards into an extended interface of smartphones, and Silicon Valley-born Tesla is enhancing the futuristic experience of electric cars by equipping them with huge command touchscreens. Inspired and empowered by Tesla’s success story, Letv, which mainly operates video portals and makes TVs in China, is venturing into the carmaking business. Its aim is in-vehicle infotainment systems as a new portal for video content.

Despite the auto industry’s traditional barriers against newcomers, IT companies may have got one thing right: Cars need to keep up with the times, to find a place in the new ecosystem of consumer electronics and to become part of the emerging Internet of Things, which is about to redefine our way of living.

Amid worsening traffic and growing population, vehicle ownership may begin to lose its appeal in the pure sense of personal mobility. On the other hand, its ability to offer private space and quality time — delivering “the single most important luxury goods of the 21st century,” as Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler AG, said in his keynote speech at CES — is timed almost perfectly to unfold.

It is all about transforming the car into a place to enjoy life, beyond the workplace and home. Presentations made by auto companies at CES were focused on connected vehicle solutions that create a new link for daily digital life and on driver-assistance technologies that pave the way for more autonomous driving. Both would give motorists more opportunities to relax and play along the way.

Yes, questions persist. How big a deal sealer can high-tech cars be? How big is the risk that they are being overdesigned? How will it all play in China, the world’s largest car market, where value-added features are often removed from localized models to keep costs down?

But for carmakers, it’s better to stay ahead of the game, even if it means being a little ahead of the times. One never knows when consumers will start looking beyond a car’s traditional role as a tool of transport or a statement of status to ponder what a vehicle can truly mean in their lives.

Daily digital life moves into the driver’s seat

Fighting for the spotlight with IT companies at CES, developers of vehicle infotainment systems are all borrowing a page or two from their very competitors.

Big touch screens in place of buttons and gauges make up the drive-command system envisioned by various carmakers, as if full-size iPads were to dominate the cabin, as Tesla Model S suggests.

It is not that the auto industry lacks imagination or that the IT industry, with its dazzling speed of innovation, has to decide what’s cool for the future. Whether it’s to integrate daily digital life with motoring life or simply to make the big machines more “playful,” carmakers need to reference already familiar user interface designs to minimize driver distraction.

Even a simple task like swiping on a screen will take drivers’ eyes off the road momentarily. That’s why traditional carmakers are very concerned about giving touch control full authority over the dashboard.

At CES, Ford demonstrated its SYNC 3 system that combines enhanced voice recognition with touchscreen operation. BMW showed off an in-development gesture control that it is expected to integrate with its first ever touchscreen for the iDrive system.

An ideal behavioral pattern will be based on a combination of various commands, from gaze, physical controls, voice command and touch to non-contact gestures, according to Delphi’s vision of the future. The right setting for their use is the key to making human-vehicle interaction effortless and intuitive.

While Apple and Android are focusing on public addiction to smartphones by developing technology integration solutions like CarPlay and Android Auto, auto companies are turning the digital attachment to their own ends.

For example, Ford’s SYNC 3, with the help of a technology called Applink, provides a huge variety of in-vehicle infotainment services through uploading mobile apps from vehicle-connected phones, which makes custom-built content now a key differentiator in its after-sales services.

In addition to bringing daily digital life inside the vehicle cabin, smartphones with vehicle function-enabled apps are also extending the human-vehicle interaction outside it. It can carry a virtual key for you to lock and unlock the car by swiping the phone close to the door, a feature that many carmakers now integrate into their passive entry systems.

Through deeper data connection, smarphones can help you check the fuel level, tire pressure and location of the car no matter how far you are away from it. Near-future functions include the automated valet demonstrated in BMW i3 at CES, which can park itself and later return to the driver via orders on a smartphone.

Behind the love affair between smartphones and cars is the integration of “new uses and behavior related to the Internet of Things,” according to auto-parts and tech provider Valeo.

At CES, the company unveiled an InBlue virtual key that supports car-sharing, an emerging business model that allows people to rent cars for short periods of time, often just hours, to take the pressure of surging vehicle ownership.

To back up easy and secure car-sharing, inBlue enables car owners to transmit a virtual key with time limits to another person via a dedicated smartphone app through encrypted cellular communications.

This secure platform also enables remote vehicle access control and vehicle condition monitoring, not only via a smartphone but also with smartwatches, which join the Internet of Things via Bluetooth communications.

At CES, smartwatch apps stole the thunder from smartphone apps in the show areas of carmakers like BMW, Audi and Hyundai, even though they are still very dependent on smartphone programs to realize functions beyond health monitoring.

But a smartphone, as a wearable devise, does have a natural advantage in making it easier for users to give instructions. The widely voiced opinion is that smartwatches will have SIM cards, giving them the potential of replacing smartphones. Eventually, a watch-like mobile phone will become an object that you always have with you.

Based on that, deep data integration between smartwatches and vehicles might help Hyundai realize its vision of autonomous emergency systems that can seamlessly maneuver a car to a safe road shoulder and stop the vehicle if the driver’s health condition worsens, as monitored by a smartwatch he is wearing.

Look, ma, no hands! Drivers become passengers

Letting a car take over functions like emergency braking and parking is just part of big ambitions to make vehicles fully automated. But not in the way of Google, which is developing a self-piloted car, which, at a maximum speed of 40 kilometers an hour, strikes carmakers more as a robot.

For carmakers, the point of exploring autonomous driving is not simply to prove what a car is capable of. The idea behind the Mercedes-Benz F015 concept car unveiled at CES is about designing the entire car around the advantages of autonomous driving.

Under a carriage concept, the car has its big wheels pushed to the very edges of the body, giving people more space to sit back and relax, even facing each other, while the vehicle takes over driving duties.

This makes human interaction inside the vehicle more intimate. And a free-floating control unit, which every passenger can take turns accessing while the car is in autonomous mode, adds to the democratic atmosphere.

Imagination goes beyond the cabin. If the F015 knows its way around its surroundings well enough to be pilot-less, why not make the most of its sharp “senses” to inform road users of the traffic ahead, such as a giving heads-up to the elderly, projecting a crosswalk on the street, to let the outside world see it as a friendly “robot?”

While carmakers like Mercedes-Benz choose to let their imagination about autonomous driving run wild for the moment as part of their ambitious brand narrative, related auto parts and technology providers made more down-to-earth presentations at CES because their businesses are based on feasible solutions.

The prototypes of highly automated vehicles they brought to CES feature advanced driver assistance technologies that are on their way to the market.

A case in point is the Cruise4U technology unveiled by Valeo in a prototype car.

As a much more sophisticated version of adaptive cruise control seen in cars today, it can control acceleration and braking to help a car match the speed of the car ahead at a safe distance, to the extent of managing a full stop and then a restart.

It can also control steering to stay within lanes, follow curves and even engineer evasive maneuvers with the help of laser scanners that detect moving and stationary obstacles around.

Of course, drivers still have a final say as to if and when to switch to manual mode. That’s a principle that currently guides every highly automated vehicle design to make drivers comfortable handing over controls in the first place.

There are reasons for concern. The Cruise4U, for example, is designed to be capable of pulling off lane changes and passing. But when it comes to poorly painted lane lines that are beyond its recognition, it still needs human assistance.

That is the point in the narrative when pessimists enter. They argue that cars just cannot be smart enough to take full control of themselves, much less drivers.

Autonomous driving entails human-like perceptions and reactions. Cars like Cruise4U are given strong human-like faculties with sensors, cameras, lasers, and data processing and integration units.

But even with such sharp eyes, ears, and brains, a car’s ability to make sense of the world and react accordingly needs to be developed gradually through experience.

Just like people mature with age.

Valeo: let a car control ‘the boring part of driving’

What kind of learning curve are we facing? After a guest ride in the Cruise4U car, Shanghai Daily had a quick chat with Jean-François Tarabbia, senior vice president of research and development at Valeo.

Q: Carmakers have to weigh the costs of value-added features before putting them into mass production. Do you think the autonomous driving technologies we have today are ready in a commercial sense?

A: Providing affordable solutions is our priority. As costs come down, the market scales up. We have sold more than 10 million automatic parking systems as a pioneer of this technology. Cruise4U is also a solution for the mass-market. There is demand for such a function to help people relax in urban traffic jams with automated “stop and start,” which current highway pilots are not capable of.

Q: How far do you think we are from realizing full autonomous driving?

A: We cannot leap to full autonomous driving yet without more validation and improvements.

Taking one step at a time, we start with low speeds and increase them. We explore simple scenarios and then make them more complex.

For example, in the development of parking assistance, we learn how to make a car detect a free space and then calculate trajectory to maneuver it into that slot. That experience is helpful in teaching a car to move slowly in heavy traffic situations.

As technologies mature every year, regulations also need to be adapted. In fact, the most difficult part of bringing autonomous driving into reality is to get regulation clearance. It doesn’t make much sense if a self-driving car can operate in only one country, or in Europe where frequent inter-country travel is common. Big carmakers need to develop solutions that will work everywhere in the world.

Q: How can consumers be made confident about autonomous driving technologies?

A: We still need to improve the human-vehicle interface, like how it gives drivers the sense of control. There will be a lot for drivers to relearn. What is the car’s working principle? What would be the conditions that make the self-driving mode efficient or less efficient? Why does the system give back the control to them, and how should they react?

Q: Do you think people will really be willing to buy a car that drives itself? Doesn’t that somehow take away part of the fun of owning a car?

A: If we can let a car take over the boring part of driving, leaving only the interesting part to drivers, they will rediscover the charm of car ownership. Nobody likes to drive in traffic jam, but there are a lot of people who enjoy driving in the mountains, along coastlines and on open highways where they can bring out the best performance of their cars.

That’s why even the owners of supercars are interested in autonomous driving solutions for inner city driving.

We are currently working with a carmaker on a sporty car. I believe full autonomous driving and semi-autonomous driving both will have markets.