It’s May 2025, and you are headed to a business meeting on a blue-sky morning. The windshield’s electronic smart tint has kicked in to shield the sun’s glare so you can scan messages and the news stream on your heads-up display. Traffic is light—half the cars on the road are fully autonomous, keeping everything moving along at a comfortable clip. The phone rings and the news stream pauses. It’s your first-grade daughter’s smiling face on the HUD, wishing you—again!—happy birthday.

It hasn’t been lost on automakers that the driving experience is currently going through a rapid overhaul. Today, you’ll find an intense focus on how we stay connected with the world outside when we’re behind the wheel—that is, while we still need steering wheels. Our vehicles were once our cocoons, insulating us from the world outside, but now we demand vehicles that include a host of new experiences and connectivity features—and we’re all along for the ride.

“We’re moving from being just a hardware provider to being a hardware, software, and experiences provider,” says Don Butler, head of Connected Vehicle and Services for Ford Motor Company. “The future is going to be different, and we are embracing that difference, and we’ll continue to be a part of people’s lives.”