Mickey Mouse beams into your car

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 23 Jul 2001 16:06 BST

OnStar, a division of US automobile company General Motors, said last week it has signed a deal to bring Internet content from Walt Disney Internet Group to cars with Net access. The move is aimed at beefing up OnStar's automobile data service, which leads the market but faces competition from Wingcast, a joint venture of Ford Motor and Qualcomm.

OnStar will provide information from ESPN, Disney.com, ABCNews.com and other sites via a text-to-speech feature of Virtual Adviser, OnStar's telematics service, which was introduced last year.

Another alliance aimed at bringing the Net to the road collapsed on Monday, as Vivendi and Peugeot abandoned Egery, their joint venture, due to infighting. Peugeot is said to be seeking a new partnership with Ford. Database giant Oracle recently formed a strategic alliance with Ford's Wingcast.

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