The automotive industry has produced some of the most advanced and user-friendly technologies publicly marketed in recent years.

Telematics is deeply embedded hardware, software and telecommunications systems that provide an increasingly wide range of applications that serve our vehicles.

A report about HMI technologies stated the importance for designers to understand that HMI determines an operator's perception about a machine. Designers are of vital importance, it went on to say, because operators need to be able to trust the apparatus - and trust their interactions with it - in order to make the technology successful.

A driver is desperately trying to make a business appointment and fiddles with the phone to call ahead that she is running late. Another flips through a portfolio of CDs trying to find just the right music selection. Both overestimate their abilities and swerve momentarily into the next lane.

When you pull your car or truck into a gas station these days, "going green" takes on several meanings, depending on your point of view. For one thing, as the cost of gasoline continues to inch higher, the larger amounts of green stuff leaving your wallet has an immediate impact. But that's not the "green" impression that environmentalists, marketers and manufacturers are focused on.

According to one study, even those who have already purchased hybrids usually don't know how they work. The most common buyers seem to be of the "green" variety or those who made their purchase for environmental reasons.

If your fingers itch for a touch screen even during the morning commute, there may be a solution -- particularly when you're carpooling in the passenger seat and have a minute to play. Vehicles are now being released with "carputers" or "carPCs" as an option, not just as a retrofit. A familiar type of "carPC" to most folks is a Global Positioning System (GPS).

In 2007, sales of new hybrid cars rose by nearly 40%, despite a drop in overall automotive purchases. According to an American news agency, approximately 350,000 additional hybrid vehicles were purchased over the prior year - and by the end of 2007, nearly one million hybrid vehicles were on the road.

More than 100 Americans die every day in automobile accidents. In fact, over the last century, more have perished due to car crashes in the United States than in all the wars the country has fought.

Recent innovations in automotive engineering have produced active safety systems ranging from side alert, often called blind spot warning, to adaptive cruise control, to collision detection and warning.