Will Silicon Valley influence mean a new car culture for U.S. automakers?

Reuters takes a balanced look under the hood of the automakers' adoption of new communications technologies in cars.

Excerpt:

"Detroit automakers General Motors Co (GM.N) and  Ford  Motor Co (F.N), trying to shake off decades of insularity, are looking to California's Silicon Valley and beyond for innovative ideas and technology that could disrupt and even transform the car  business.

Yet neither company appears to know what such a transformation would look like, nor are they close to commercializing a new product or process that longtime Valley venture capitalists would consider game-changing...

Several broad trends are compelling the outreach from southeast Michigan to northern California, a somewhat surprising move for an industry that historically has eschewed ideas from outside. One is the ongoing integration of smartphones and apps into automobiles, known colloquially as the "connected car." Another is the realization that both consumer tastes and cutting-edge technologies are evolving at a rapid pace — typically over months, compared with the auto industry's traditional five-year design and  engineering  cycle."


More here.