Welcome to the future. It’s not enough these days that we can carry technology around in our pockets – it has to translate to every aspect of our lives, including our cars. New advancements are helping to make your drive the most innovative and future-forward. Just take a look at what’s cooking up at your Holland new car dealer…First, there’s emergency steer assist, designed to compliment emergency braking systems. It works with your electric steering rack to vary the torque by direction, thus very convincingly “suggesting” the proper steering wheel motion for when it’s too late to brake but not too late to swerve to avoid collision. Suppose you need to swerve left—the torque in the clockwise motion is greatly increased (resistance), but it’s ridiculously easy to turn the wheel counterclockwise. Similarly, during the maneuver recovery phase, the inverse is true, the steering working in tandem with ESC (electronic stability control, mandatory on all cars in 2011) to control the aftereffects of the swerve.

Also new is an active force feedback pedal, which varies the foot pressure from super-stiff to feather-light and can pulse back on your foot. This could be used to remind you when you’re driving a bit too fast, when there’s an upshift or a downshift, and could even assess traffic conditions ahead to discourage unnecessary acceleration. In the near future, your car will pick up an emergency stop warning from the car ahead—miles ahead—and could easily alert you with the pedal.

Then there’s AutoLinQ, which brings the perks of your smartphone to your car with partners such as Navteq, Navigon, Shazam, and Pandora. The system is also able to read things such as email and rss feeds aloud, and the company is working on text-dictation software, so your eyes never have to leave the road. And since Continental’s system is Android-based, that means developers are free to create whatever applications they want.

And don’t forget about the intelligent tire system will fill assist, a new type of tire sensor mounted on the inner tire tread (as opposed to the wheel), which measures tire pressure, temperature, g-force and load. When a heavy load is detected, the system can notify the driver that more air pressure is needed to optimize gas mileage, handling and safety. In addition, the sensors are programmed for the tire in which they reside, so they can tell you things like when you’re going too fast for snow tires, when the tires are getting bald, or when to switch to summer tires. The new sensors also allow for a new level of precision in pressure management.

All of these innovations are designed to make your drive the easiest one yet. Stop by your Holland MI new Jeep dealer to see what the future has in store for you.