Network World -- What with the fervor over autonomous cars, and predictions of the arrival of the machines being anywhere from 20 years to 2 years, as is Tesla CEO Elon Musk's latest projection, many might be forgetting a major development that will become prevalent before any of this self-driving stuff.

That is over-the air (OTA) networked updating of cars. And it will probably end up in the majority of cars within the next 5 to 10 years, pundits say.

One solution: a connected car that can update its software.

Amazingly, only 2% to 7% of current U.S. vehicles “have some capacity for OTA updates,” says Connected Car, a publication that was distributed at the Connected Car Expo in November.

That will change rapidly.

“We are not necessarily changing cars for horsepower anymore, but changing to keep up with technology,” Mahbubul Alam, CTO of Movimento Group, told Connected Car.

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