A Brief History of Automobile Technology

Technology and automobiles, it seems like the perfect marriage. The more high-tech cars and trucks become, the more they tend to serve as home away from home. The role of technology in the auto industry is easy to understate. Even beyond the driving experience, innovations in technology have made huge impacts in the auto industry as a whole. For example, it is trivial to visit a website to make a replacement engine request for a car or truck in need of repair. Many after-market sites provide users with fully integrated access to just about any part or accessory they desire. But what is so interesting about the vehicles people drive today is that they are a hybrid of numerous technological stages of advancement. In many ways, a lot of the technology being used in modern cars and trucks has been around for quite some time. Yet, the importance of low-tech aspects of automobiles are often just as significant as their modern high-tech counterparts.

Low-tech Features That Truly Matter

One might think of a car or truck as a modern marvel, but vehicles borrow technology from way back in human history. Starting with the idea of the wheel, humans have carried the use of wheels from ancient applications to become a central pillar of modern motion. Headlights are adaptations of the advent of electric lighting, which though more recent than the wheel helps us to see the value of older scientific discoveries living on in our modern vehicles. A slightly more sophisticated piece of technology in modern cars came with the advent of the radio. AM and FM stations have been around for a while, but long trips would be difficult to take without our favorite tunes. Some people can even remember when four-wheel-drive was all the rage long ago, providing automobiles with a more sophisticated way to push occupants around.

The High Tech Features

Moving into the modern age, car and truck radios now have CD-players and audio connections to support the use of iPod and other portable devices. Plugging tiny computerized devices into a vehicle can produce a report detailing what is wrong with a car or truck before it goes to the mechanic”s shop. According to www.informationweek.com, it is even possible to outfit your car or truck with WiFi. This not only allows a person to get online in their car, but it also allows them to stream movies and turn their automobile into their mobile office. Even when a person is away from their car or truck, new mobile apps provides them with the ability to turn their car on by remote. This is very useful on those cold winter nights, when a person wants to walk out to a warm vehicle that is ready to drive. If a person needs to navigate an unfamiliar place in the dead of night, many automobiles have all the GPS capabilities necessary to make that possible. Not to mention that useful camera feature that allows a driver to back out of a parking space without causing an accident. Modern automobiles are so entrenched in technology, it is difficult to imagine how people ever got by without all the features available today.