Though Pixar’s animated film Cars might not become a reality anytime soon nevertheless judging by the amounts invested in R and D by top tech firms in the world on what can rightfully be termed as e-travelling; it’s only a matter of time before smart cars become a reality.

The world’s biggest chipmaker Intel, for instance, has established a $100m (£62.9m) fund, dedicated to investing in firms developing connectivity for cars.

The company says that by 2020, automobiles will be among the top three fastest-growing areas for connected devices.

One example of “car intelligence” is a US carmaker Ford’s voice-activated technology called Sync .With Bluetooth, a Wi-Fi channel and a cloud service, it turns your automobile into a giant smartphone on wheels.

“Things like traffic directions and information are all in the cloud – if you don’t have a navigation system in your car, or you don’t want to use your phone while driving, you can just connect to the cloud using voice control to get directions,” says Venkatesh Prasad of Ford’s new division

Other companies too are aiming to make cars smarter by supplying automobiles with driving preferences of a particular driver via radio frequency identification (RFID) tags – non-powered smart labels that can be read by a nearby radio receiver.

As the driver approaches the car, it would connect to, for example, car keys with such a tag in the driver’s pocket, start the ignition, tune in to the preferred radio station, and adjust the seat and the temperature. In fact Google has already been testing its driverless Toyota Prius Cars in US.

The biggest beneficiaries of this brilliant new technology would be the drivers themselves for inter connectivity between cars would ensure lesser collisions (fewer car accidents), lesser need of traffic lights and of course no need of going through the hassle of driving everyday.

And those who cherish the thrill of driving, well they can practice manual driving too of course!