High-tech cars may drive some round bend

The era of cars with controls no more complicated than those on a cooker - turn a knob to make it warmer - is rapidly drawing to an end. People still struggling to programme their video recorder are unlikely to relish what will be a technological revolution in cars.

Information technology is racing through car systems. BMW caused a stir some years ago with the announcement that its flagship 750 limousine had more computing power than the entire Apollo 11 spacecraft. Now such a notion is no big deal. According to Mr Gordon Moore, founder and now chairman emeritus of the Intel Corporation, the world's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors, our ability to process information multiplies fivefold every 18 months.

But it's only now, with companies such as Intel regarding carmakers as among their best prospects for new business, that the true potential of microprocessors is beginning to be realised in the car.

Driving in any top-of-the-range vehicles from Mercedes-Benz or BMW or even Lexus provides first-hand experience of the in-car IT revolution. Buttons and knobs have been replaced by miniature, multi-channel television screens.

The choice of viewing on screen is extensive. Click and up comes the menu, the air conditioning and heating controls. Click - there's the radio, or the CD player, the phone, the satellite navigation, the traffic information - all there on screen. There are even five channels of regular television in some models.

Like all in-car technology, what starts out in the Mercedes S-class will end up some years on in economy-class cars. Within a generation, it can be safely predicted, all new cars will have built-in information monitors.

Almost inevitably Microsoft, the world's biggest manufacturer of computer software, is out to grab a thick slice of this new market. Systems are already available that read e-mail or let a driver browse the Internet while in the car.

But it is not all bad news for those who are technically-challenged. Microsoft is aware that the IT revolution in cars is limited by how drivers interact with it.

Neither a remote control of the kind used with a video recorder nor a keyboard would be practicable for a driver. So Microsoft is one of the main movers behind the voice-control system on the new Jaguar S-type.

If, without using keyboard and screen, drivers can shout at cars, and they will patiently read back whatever information drivers require, even technophobes could become enthusiastic users.

Microsoft and Visteon, a Ford subsidiary, are working on another technology that will allow all the information in cars to be configured the way the driver wants it. So, instead of having dials for speed, temperatures and fuel, a blank screen will appear in the car allowing the driver to choose what information is provided. A driver may want just speed and distance travelled on a long motorway trip or route guidance and traffic information on a shorter in-town excursion. This technology will be seen very soon.

The other digital revolution is already going on in the bits of cars drivers don't see. Ford last week launched its electronic stability programme (ESP), a device that it insists is a performance-enhancing technology but seems more accurately to be a safety system.

The ESP concept came to public notice two years ago when Mercedes-Benz ran into trouble with its A-class car. ESP was added to the baby Benz when the original cars were recalled and the rest redesigned after the car failed to maintain stability in a Scandinavian "elk-avoidance test". Ford's engineers could not resist a dig at Mercedes' misfortune (which, by the way, had done nothing to slow the sales of the Aclass) at the launch of its own ESP.

ESP was not, it insisted, a "patch" covering up a bad chassis. And indeed it will first see the light of day on the Focus, a car built on one of the best chassis around.

ESP will be standard on the new two-litre Ford Zetec range which goes on sale in October.

Activated ESP can almost guarantee that drivers will not be caught out on a bend that unexpectedly tightens or suddenly becomes a lot more slippery. It cannot beat the laws of physics, as ESP engineers constantly insist, but by reducing engine power and applying the appropriate brakes will help the car to keep following the direction the driver wants.

Ford has opted to tune ESP to operate in a most unobtrusive way, so much so that you can almost believe an ESP-equipped Focus's mind-boggling control and stability are solely the result of the car's excellent chassis.

And that is the real pay-off for manufacturers such as Ford intent on saving money by building more models around a smaller number of major components - electronic chassis tuning.

Systems like ESP can be reprogrammed to make two cars with the same suspension handle differently, just as cars with electronically controlled shock absorbers can be returned to ride differently. Recently, Nissan, Fiat and MG launched cars with gearboxes that can synthesise the feeling of six or seven different gear ratios, when the ratios exist only in the mind of the transmission's computer.

These then are the back bones of the digital car; electronic systems that can be reprogrammed to synthesise an infinite number of different feels, sensations that would have once required entirely different mechanical components.

And the best news? It is the carmakers, not the drivers, who will do the programming.