Soon cars will be telling you not only where traffic snarls are, but how to turn off the sprinkler at home, Andrew Heasley writes.

IT’S the morning from hell. Stuck in a jam in rush hour, miles of cars, can’t see what the hold-up is. The radio’s not being helpful and the best you can do is phone ahead to say you’ll be late.

As you sit there, you think about the morning’s routine. Did I turn off the lights? Did I set the house alarm? Oh no, forgot to buy a birthday present for the better half . . .

It doesn’t have to be like this.

If you’re driving the car of the future, the morning could go like this:

Turn the key, your car reminds you of that important birthday. An alert flashes up on your car’s in-dash video touch-screen, warning that your normal route is heavily congested, but alternative roads are moving. You check up-to-the-minute photos from Sydney’s traffic cameras for the best alternatives.

Left home in a rush? Call up your house on the touch-screen and, with a couple of taps, remotely turn off the lights and set the alarm. Check the weather bureau’s rain radar - is rain forecast? Tap the screen to turn off the garden sprinklers - can’t be wasting water. Another few taps to check there are still some spots left in the early-bird car park; presto, you arrive on time, calm, in control.

Such is life behind the wheel of the “AT Signature” car: a locally modified Holden Calais that’s a rolling laboratory designed to showcase the future of motoring.

Set into its dash is the equivalent of a wireless laptop computer that connects your car to global positioning satellites (GPS), telephone networks and the internet.

It’s the science of telematics - connecting your car wirelessly with the outside world of information and communication services relevant to where you’re driving.

Make no mistake, telematics will revolutionise motoring to the same extent the internet changed how we work and play.

“Telematics is inevitable, really, and very pervasive. It’s making its way into everything,” says Mike Hammer, Holden Innovation’s information and crash avoidance technologies manager, who was intimately involved in the project.

The AT Signature car began as a regular V6 Calais, earmarked for duty as the executive chariot of Holden’s chief of innovation, Dr Laurie Sparke. But plans were being hatched by local and national IT companies, with some seed funding from state and federal governments, to find a way to demonstrate this next technological wave.