Toyota and Salesforce on Monday teamed up on a social network for cars. Nicknamed Toyota Friend, it would put out micro updates similar to Twitter either between fellow drivers or even updates from a car. An electric or plug-in hybrid car could automatically post when it’s low on battery, Toyota gave as one example.
The service will go live sometime in 2012 and will start off in Japan with electrics and plug-ins. Other countries and other engine types would come later.
In sync with the social component, Toyota has given a 16-minute demo of its new Entune in-car system. The run-through by Robert Scoble showed off the core Bing searching, including maps, as well as iheartradio streaming and booking movie tickets or a restaurant through MovieTickets.com and OpenTable.
Similar to Google Maps, drivers can push destinations to and from an official smartphone app that links to all of the core services.
The feature will initially be available on the Prius V hybrid and will focus primarily on Android and iPhone at first, though BlackBerry and basic feature phones are coming as well. Windows Phone 7 is a “high priority” but is waiting on certain feature support, likely in the Mango update, before it can happen.
