Baby, you can network my car

SAN FRANCISCO--Fasten your seatbelts--the next stop for the MP3 revolution is your car.

That was the consensus of a group of mobile electronics executives at the Consumer Electronics Association's Industry Forum, with panelists agreeing that makers of car stereos and other automotive gadgets are running out of time to get on board with the switch to digital media.

"If we are going to connect with the consumer today, we have to be focused on Generation Y," said Stephen Witt, vice president of marketing for Alpine Electronics. "This is a wireless generation; they live connected at all times. We are dealing with a download culture today, and that's changing the rules...as far as what is the value proposition of a mobile product."

One of the biggest problems remains getting media from devices that have already joined the digital realm--portable MP3 players, PCs, etc.--into your car. Once upon a time, that was as simple as remembering to throw a cassette tape into your briefcase, but now the car stereo crowd has to confront the same miasma of competing standards that's stalling the rest of entertainment world.

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