Chrysler Teams Up With Hughes For Telematics SystemsChrysler Teams Up With Hughes For Telematics Systems

Chrysler vehicles could soon offer telematics that combine infotainment, security, and remote diagnostics.

Chrysler Group and Hughes Telematics announced Friday that the companies are teaming up to provide new technology systems as standard car features. The announcement comes just days after Ford announced that it would offer Bluetooth and Microsoft technology in its vehicles, while Autonet Mobile announced technology that will bring Internet access to vehicles.

Hughes is building an end-to-end system and is developing mobile data centers that are designed to add value for manufacturers, dealers, consumers, navigation service providers, and content originators. The company said its land and satellite-based technology would offer communications services for safety, security, infotainment, remote diagnostics, maintenance notification, and multicasting, and it could eventually allow remote upgrades of vehicle systems.

"Because we operate in a relentless environment of change, our vision for the vehicles of tomorrow needs to be far-reaching," Chrysler Group Senior VP George Murphy said in a statement. "In Hughes Telematics, we have a partner whose vision of how technology can and should shape the role of future vehicles matches our own."

The companies did not says when the technology will be available to car buyers.

Hughes Telematics CEO Jeff Leddy said that Chrysler, by working with his company, has "signaled that the time to start acting on the potential of vehicle telematics has come."

The 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week will feature more than 240 exhibitors and 40 conference sessions on mobile and in-vehicle electronics. The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that U.S. factory-to-dealer sales of in-vehicle technologies will reach $8.5 billion in 2006 and $9.6 billion in 2007 "The mobile technology market is an extremely important one to CES and to the global attendees who flock to our chow to see the latest and greatest in-car technologies, Karen Chupka, senior VP of events and conferences at CEA, said in a statement.