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What Will The Next Generation Of Company Cars Look Like?

What Will The Next Generation Of Company Cars Look Like?

A car is no longer solely a vehicle for getting from A to B.

This can be a shock for many people who are still driving around in cars built in the ‘90s. Cruise control, touch screen technology, satellite navigation; waking up to the reality of car technology in 2016 can be a real eye-opener.

But with the exponential growth of technology and the recent breakthroughs in automation, fuel, and safety, the company cars of tomorrow are going to be ever more surprising. Let’s find out why by taking a closer look at what the next generation of company cars could look like.

Gesture Control

While there are a few cars on the market which allow you to control certain entertainment functions with the movement of your hands, gesture control in the future will be much more impressive.

However, the secret to effective gesture control systems could be in employing them for only certain functions. After all, you wouldn't want to change the radio station every time you sneezed.

But systems like BMW’s AirTouch which integrate with a large screen are proving to allow us much more flexibility in controlling our vehicles. Their concept model “vision car” showcased the technology earlier this year at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, yet it’s going to be a little longer before we see it in the mainstream.

Voice Recognition

In the next generation of company cars, gesture control definitely has its place. But with statistics like these which show more than a quarter of all crashes in America involve cell phone use, it’s clear that the less distraction there is in the vehicle the better.

BMW are once again leading the way with their in-car voice-activated system which has been said to even be better than Siri.

In BMW’s Dragon Voice, the user no longer has to wait until the automated voice has finished speaking. They can instead interrupt or speak over it, cancelling the command and getting to where they need to quicker and with less frustration.

The system cannot only be used to call people in your address book and dictate text messages (even distinguishing between addressees with the same name), but to also answer questions on the health status or repair of the car.

Communicate With Other Vehicles and Devices

You may be thinking this technology has been around for a long time, picturing the old CB radio communication systems used by truckers. But when we talk about the communication between company cars of the future, we’re talking about something much more than the transmission of sound waves.

V2V or vehicle to vehicle communication allows cars to track each other on the road and share information about their location and movement. The technology is currently at work in some parking sensors and safety systems which stop cars when they get too close, but once vehicles become connected to the cloud, V2V communication will expand to sharing data on collisions, weather warnings, traffic updates, and rerouting alerts.

Health Monitoring

The capabilities mentioned above may seem somewhat trivial when you compare them to the life saving potential of in-car health monitoring.

But the capabilities of this technology are not only useful to alert the hospital after you’ve had an accident. Systems are being developed all round the world with a range of capabilities such as monitoring a diabetic’s blood sugar level and alerting them if it drops too low, tracking eye movements and ensuring you’re paying adequate attention to the road, and even spotting imminent signs of a heart attack.

Check out the current technology on the market by using our company car selector. Or, if you’d like to find out more about our fleet management service or our other leasing options, leave us a comment or call us on 01480 414541.

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Marshall Leasing is a trading division of N.I.I.B. Group Ltd a company registered in Northern Ireland under company NI3721, whose registered office is situated at 1 Donegal Square South, BELFAST, BT1 5LR. N.I.I.B. Group Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority