Car Makers Eager to Offer Apps in Cars

As revolutions go, this one started fitfully with just a handful of apps. Drivers can activate the car's controls to make dinner reservations through Toyota's Entune system or use the car's voice-command system to select music over Ford Sync. But the number of available apps is expected to multiply to dozens or perhaps hundreds over the next few years, just as they proliferated for Apple's iPhone or Google's Android smartphones.

"If we don't have more than 50 to 75 apps, I will be disappointed," says Doug VanDagens, global director of Ford Connected Services. To find new ones, Ford held a contest at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon last year in San Francisco, where about 100 teams labored 24 hours to try to come up with realistic apps for cars, then made a presentation about them.

Now, as the company looks to its next choices, it sees myriad options. "There is no one winner right now," says Rob Passaro, head of the BMW AppCenter, also in Silicon Valley. "You are going to see a lot more experimentation."