Ford Motor, the perennial runner-up to General Motors in domestic automobile sales, is making a late arrival to the technology table. While GM has spent the last four model years developing a 375,000-strong subscriber base for its OnStar service, Ford finally has announced the rollout of its rival service, Wingcast, to appear in its 2002 models.

Wingcast is the new "telematics" venture between Ford and wireless communications provider Qualcomm. Telematics combines telecommunications and computers to control electronic and mechanical functions in cars; common applications include safety and navigation features and access to the Web. Says Harel Kodesh, Wingcast CEO and president and former Microsoft executive: "Our charter is to put the car on the Internet."

But challenges -- including wireless connectivity issues -- block Ford's road to the Web. "There are big chunks of the country that aren't served fully," says Jeremy Schwartz, senior analyst at the IT consultancy Forrester Research. The poor coverage is due to the shoddy wireless infrastructure in the United States, not Qualcomm's wireless technology. But those limitations could prove inconvenient to drivers and increase consumer indifference toward telematics.

"We have hard consumer-survey data that says that three-quarters of North American households are not really interested in wireless data services," says Mr. Schwartz. "If you put them inside a vehicle, there's no reason to assume they'd be any more attractive."

But there's yet another bump on the telematics cash path, perhaps the toughest to overcome. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data indicates that about 30 percent of crashes are caused by driver distraction, including the use of cell phones and digital technologies. A number of states are currently drafting measures to restrict phone use while driving.

Mr. Kodesh says Wingcast will enhance, not reduce, safety by using a voice-driven interface, but the final product design has not been unveiled. What is clear is that automakers in a decades-long battle to be top gun would love to translate their traditionally loyal customers into perpetual, mobile generators of profit.

Advertising revenue is at stake, because telematics services are predicted to become more sophisticated, eventually including customized content like targeted ads. The creation of a stable, new mobile-commerce platform is an attractive prospect to automakers, wireless service providers, and content creators, each of which would get a cut of the profits.

And those profits could be substantial. Despite the roadblocks, the Strategis Group, a research and consulting firm, predicts that by 2004 there will be more than 11 million telematics subscribers, generating revenue of $1.7 billion.