At the New York Auto Show, Ford announced that their updated Sync system and new MyFord Touch user interface will be available this summer in the 2011 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX. Ford’s new Sync system will include support for smartphone apps like Pandora, allowing users to control music playback through their car’s dashboard and voice commands.

The MyFord Touch interface coming in the Edge and MKX includes “an 8-inch color touchscreen in the dash, dual 4.2-inch color LCD displays flanking the speedometer, and two five-way rocker switches on the steering wheel, all to control entertainment, navigation and climatecontrol systems,” according to Twice.com (here). The system also offers navigation, hands-free calling and HD radio features, along with the ability to share a cellular data connection through Wi-Fi.

A simpler Sync interface can already be found in the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, which CNet tried out at the Detroit 2010 Auto Show (see video). Editor-at-Large Brian Cooley shows off the Pandora integration, switching stations through voice commands and dashboard controls as you would with AM/FM radio.

Users can even rate songs (thumbs up or down) and bookmark tracks from the dash. “Mark my words, this is history being made,” Cooley says. “I can now go through a variety of streaming functions that you’d normally fiddle with the smartphone and drive off the road doing, instead, they’re now brought up into the vehicle’s interface.”

Again, this system works by utilizing a smartphone’s data connection. The car dashboard plays streaming radio and controls the phone application through Bluetooth. “This is really an interface extension technology,” explains Cooley. That’s great for people who already own a Motroloa Droid for instance (as Cooley does), but rules out non-smartphone users from enjoying Net radio.



Sources: RAIN, CNET