Automakers may want to keep the car sealed up. But once the first maker provides an interface that lets you redirect the output of a $450 portable navigation device onto the car's center-console display, others must follow or lose sales. Why shouldn't your next car have a hard drive in the dashboard, along with USB jacks, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and access to the in-dash LCD? In 2007 we may see the tipping point for the open-standards dashboard.

The barn door is already halfway open. Automakers haven't been able to keep up with the pace of change in cell phones and provided Bluetooth connections. Dealers loved profit margins on trunk CD changers, but buyers demanded—and got—line-in jacks and iPod adapters. That was just the beginning of open standards.

In 2007, we'll see even more in-dash hard disks that let you rip several hundred CDs and (should you have an integrated navigation system) store your navigation data, killing the in-dash CD changer option and eliminating the need for a navigation-only optical drive.

The dashboard's Holy Grail, though, is access to the LCD. Your cell phone has access via Bluetooth, so why not your portable navigation device or the navigation applet on your cell phone? If your car costs $500 extra with an LCD, that still beats an $1,800 surcharge for the automaker's dedicated navigation system and an LCD. Lexus won't do it if Mercedes and Infiniti don't, but what if a feisty upstart—say, Hyundai, the Koreans being late to the game with integrated navigation—publishes a dashboard-access spec that Garmin and Magellan quickly support?

There's no danger that Microsoft, Cisco, or TomTom will tell Audi or Ford how to build its suspensions and engines, or sculpt the bodywork. That remains the automakers' domain. But the dashboard needs to be open, and 2007 may be the year when the tide shifts. If automakers acquiesce this year, you might see the open dashboard before the end of the decade.

To read about the future of car controllers, click here.