Smart technology takes a back seat at Detroit Motor Show

A heavy-duty pick-up truck, a sleek compact saloon and an unadulterated sports car headlined the Detroit Motor Show this week, as technological advances and futuristic vehicles that have stolen the limelight at previous car shows took a back seat.
The automotive industry is spending more than ever before on research and innovation in an attempt to harness rapidly-changing technology and fight off looming competition for control of their dashboards from the electronics and telecommunications industry.
Last week, carmakers such as Audi, Ford and BMW created a lot of buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the technology industry's annual exposition, with demonstrations of self-driving cars, solar-powered vehicles and cars with as many applications as a smartphone, confirming the automotive industry's position as a boiling pot of new ideas and heavy R&D investments.
But that technology buzz dissipated markedly in Detroit, the first and traditionally most important of the car industry's annual shows, as manufacturers took stock of the impact of breathless innovation, including fears over how secure a car connected to the internet would be, and the future of driving pleasure in a world where cars can drive themselves.
"This year's show is all about featuring real products," said Xavier Mosquet, partner at the Boston Consulting Group. "The technology is there, but this show is focused on cars and driving experience as opposed to how smart and how connected can you appear."
Under pressure from technology giants such as Google, IBM and Microsoft for a slice of a growing automotive electronics market, traditional carmakers have almost trebled their combined R&D spending since 2008.
The resulting innovation has been both groundbreaking and rapid as rivals strain to make sure they are not left behind.
So-called "connected cars" - vehicles that use high-speed wireless internet and GPS to help navigation, entertainment and communication - and autonomous cars, which can navigate and drive themselves, are two of the hottest trends in the car industry. Few doubt that they will become increasingly more mainstream over the coming decade.
But many manufacturers are still working out how best to implement them in their cars, sensitive to consumers wary of rapid technological change or juggling how to blend them with their brand image.
"We don't want people to be moved in our cars from one point to another," said Herbert Diess, head of development at BMW, the world's biggest-selling luxury car brand. "We are for driving pleasure. We have to protect the fun of driving."
Nissan has promised to start sales of a car that can drive itself by the end of the decade, and IHS Automotive, a consultancy, has predicted that almost all new cars will be autonomous by 2050.
BMW brands its cars as the "Ultimate Driving Machine" and, like many of its luxury rivals, heavily promotes their speed, acceleration and power - all features that will become less important in cars programmed to drive as efficiently as possible.
Separately, the market for connected cars is expected to almost quadruple between 2015 and 2020 to $113bn, according to research by Booz & Co, a consultancy, suggesting carmakers cannot ignore the emerging sector.
The transition to fully-connected cars is proving to be less than smooth as carmakers get to grips with the implications.
Ford sparked controversy at CES when one of its executives said that the carmaker knew every time someone in a Ford car broke the law thanks to GPS and other data collection technologies in its models. The company later said the claim was hypothetical, but the comment flared up worries over the possible ramifications of greater communication technology in cars.
In Detroit US transport secretary Anthony Foxx said that the government was monitoring whether privacy would be compromised by information collected by cars, and Fiat-Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne admitted that his company was "very, very wary" of the balance between collecting data to improve the driving experience and drivers' right to privacy.
"When you really add value, and you enrich someone's life, then [connected cars] work," Jochen Goller, head of BMW's Mini brand, told the Financial Times. "But if it is something we do just because of research, or if there is no added value, why would you do it?"
"Any industry that is dealing with this huge amount of data are going to be under scrutiny," Mr Goller added.
Mini, like the overwhelming majority of carmakers, is pushing to make its cars as integrated as possible with drivers' smartphones and other electronic devices for communication and entertainment purposes while driving.

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