Outside of the recent resurgence of record players and vinyl albums, our cars’ sound systems are probably the best audio system most people use in their daily lives. Aside from the quality of some car stereo systems, there is something special about listening to great music in your car. It really doesn’t need explaining. You know what I mean. Adding to that specialness, a new patent recently filed by Ford can now allow multiple cars to sync their stereos together to make one giant sound system. This will make parking your parking truck next to the river and playing country music a whole new thing. 

What is Ford’s “Multi-Vehicle Audio System?”

While the patent name isn’t the most creative thing in the world, the idea is good, nonetheless. The patent would allow multiple vehicles to sync to turn individual cars into one giant sound system. 

Imagine you’re having a party somewhere outside. Instead of hauling speakers, an amplifier, and power outside, you could park two cars, one on each side of the party, and now you have a split stereo system with left and right speakers. Sure, you can also use BlueTooth speakers, but small speakers can’t carry a party. 

How many cars can be linked together? 

The patent paperwork shows a few diagrams of up to four cars, all used to play music simultaneously. The diagrams even show multiple ways to set up the cars to give listeners the best sound quality and experience. 

Not only does Ford show you how to set up this four-car system, it explains that the Multi-Vehicle Audio System is really meant for autonomous EVs and that Ford EVs will be able to not only sync to each but, once connected, the moving speaker systems will arrange themselves with the push of a button autonomously. You could even command the cars to open doors and windows. 

Of course, the cars don’t have to be autonomous for the feature to work. Drivers will have to arrange the cars themselves (wow, we have to drive our own cars, ugh). 

It’s not just multiple cars playing the same song together

The Drive reports that the patent also notes that vehicles with this new patented feature would use GPS and communicate wirelessly to determine their own position in the audio system and play the right channel content accordingly. This is particularly interesting because this suggests that the system will behave like a real system. Instead of all the cars just playing the same song in stereo on their own system, the cars will actually work together in stereo, meaning one car will play the left speaker mix. In contrast, the other will play the right speaker’s mix, the way the recording artist originally mixed it. 

It’s not often that a new feature is something that would really change the way we interact with our cars. This is a good idea, Ford. Here’s to hoping that it actually is put into production.