DETROIT, MI, October 17, 2000 - Buyers of Ford Motor Company vehicles could soon be able to "plug and play" their favorite electronic devices into any car, minivan or sport utility.

Ford Motor Company's Lincoln Navigator on display at Convergence 2000 provides a preview of how having a standardized multimedia network interface for electronics opens a new door for automakers to deliver up-to-date built-in audio and video content in any vehicle.

The Lincoln Navigator, for example, features a Sony Playstation 2, a device that will be showing up soon on U.S. store shelves. The game interfaces with two in-vehicle 1394 video displays. In the past, portable consumer electronic multimedia devices could not interface with vehicles without major electronic modifications, slowing the time it took to bring such features to market. The ability to interface consumer electronic devices along with the quick installation is made possible because of a standard global interface that Ford Motor Company and nearly a dozen of the world's automakers are developing through the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C), an industry group working to establish a standard way to deliver multimedia content in new vehicles. The network on display in the Lincoln Navigator is known in the industry as the IEEE 1394 serial bus, a high-speed network for transporting digital audio/video. The automotive supplement is dubbed IDB-1394 and is being developed by the 1394 Joint Automotive Working Group. This group was formed January 2000 by the 1394 Trade Association (in cooperation with the IDB-Forum) to expressly develop the 1394 automotive supplement.