(FORTUNE Magazine) – If James Bond ever retires and moves to the suburbs, he'll probably drive a vehicle a lot like Delco Electronics' experimental SSC car. It doesn't have a passenger-side ejection seat or .30 caliber machine guns fixed behind the headlamps, but the SSC is loaded with the latest electronic dashboard gadgetry, from anticollision radar to night vision to a satellite navigation system. The Delco engineers who produced this customized Chevy Blazer say it offers a look at a future when cars will simply be computers that also happen to go 60 miles per hour and carry your kids to soccer practice. The technology, after all, is already here, though it resides in the cockpit of an F-18 jetfighter, not in your Taurus.

That will soon change. Competition for space on your dashboard is looming, as TRW, Texas Instruments, and Eaton, among others, race to recast their battlefield products for the U.S. car market. German electronics giants Siemens and Bosch are in the hunt too, as are Japanese companies. Some consumers may be skeptical about the usefulness of so much high-tech gadgetry on the road. But engineers are also looking ahead to when kids raised on videogames and Schwarzenegger movies become drivers. They're likely to regard radar and night vision as naturally as their parents do power steering and automatic door locks. Eventually, the winners of the dashboard battle will manufacture entire cockpits for the mainstream car market. Until then, they'll focus on specific smart-car products. Here's a look at what's available now and what's coming soon.

SATELLITE NAVIGATION AND MAYDAY SYSTEMS. First out of the chute are navigation devices, and they're all over the map, so to speak. Some show maps on liquid-crystal displays, while others look like oversize pagers that feature a word or two of text and an arrow pointing toward your destination. A device made by Amerigon of Monrovia, California, uses a compact disk to tell you in a computer monotone how to get from here to there. Other systems link your car with a cellular telephone and a global positioning system (GPS) satellite to help you find your way, leaving you with the feeling that you're driving not so much a car as a shuttle craft straying from the mother ship.

General Motors plans to introduce a GPS product this fall in its 1997 Cadillacs. Called OnStar, it uses satellites to fix your location, a geographic database to find your destination, and a computer to plot your route. But instead of relying on an electronic map in your car, OnStar provides directions by way of a hands-free cellular telephone. Intriguingly, it connects you to real people hunkered down behind PCs at a control center in Michigan. When you ask the system for directions, you're simply calling the control center, where an "adviser" locates you on a map and tells you how to reach your destination.

OnStar (price: about $1,000) won't live or die by its navigation skills. It's also a mayday system. If your car breaks down, push the OnStar button on your cell phone, and an adviser, using satellite data, can tell roadside help where to find you even if you have no idea where you are. In February, Ford unveiled a similar product called Rescu, which connects you to its own human-staffed control center in Irving, Texas. Ford pairs Rescu with a tire-pressure detection system and offers the package in Lincolns for $1,995. But OnStar one-ups Rescu by automatically signaling the control center for help if a collision occurs and your airbags deploy. It also has some anti-bonehead features. If you lock your keys in the car, you can call the people in the center, and they will electronically reach into the car and unlock the doors. Or if you forget where you parked, they can remotely honk the car's horn and flash its lights.

Japanese companies have taken the lead on the map-based products, selling more than half a million in Japan last year. Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and other Japanese carmakers would like to offer these products in the U.S. market, but first they have to do something about the $2,000 pricetag. In the meantime, American rental-car companies have stocked premium cars with map-based systems designed by Japan's Zexel, an auto-electronics supplier. They have screens the size of a compact-disk case mounted on the dashboard. As with OnStar, a computer pinpoints your location with data fed by satellite and sets a route. For example, if you want to drive from the airport to your hotel, the device will show you a route, using an arrow that points in the direction you want to go. As you approach turns, it will remind you by audio-voice to go left or right, or to exit a highway. It's also smart enough to quickly compute a new route if you make a wrong turn.

But this device is not as nimble as one would like. To select a destination, you have to use an arrow key to scroll through a list of choices. And because the data are organized by region, you may have to sift through three states' worth of Holiday Inns, Best Westerns, and Radissons before you find the one you want. That's not advisable when driving through unknown territory at night. Eyes-off-the-road distraction is a definite drawback of these particular gadgets, though no more so than with an ordinary map. But pulling over to consult the machine may leave you wondering why you needed a $2,000 device to replace a $2.95 map.

RADAR AND INTELLIGENT CRUISE CONTROL. Back in the lab, engineers have turned the corner on the next smart product--intelligent cruise control. A radar sensor installed in the front bumper reads the road ahead as you drive, and if it detects a slow-moving vehicle it actually slows your car down. Intelligent cruise-control systems under development by Delco, TRW, Eaton, and Leica, the Swiss optics company, are expected to become widely available starting in 1999, for about $500. They'll likely be forerunners of a whole line of radar-detection products that will reach the mainstream car market in the next decade, including a device that will warn drivers when another vehicle moves into their blind spot. On the Delco SSC, for example, an orange triangle lights up in the side mirrors if the radar detects, say, a Ferrari moving into your blind spot. Should you miss the triangle and flip on your turn signal, a red stop-sign flashes in the mirror and a loud buzzer goes off warning you to stay put. After that you're on your own.

Radar has a lot of potential because it can see through fog, rain, and snow, detecting objects around your car that might otherwise be extremely difficult to see. Greyhound bus drivers used a blind-spot radar system made by Vorad, now a subsidiary of Eaton, from 1991 to 1993. They reported that it was helpful in bad weather. But some drivers also complained that the system sounded a steady stream of false signals, especially in traffic, says Floyd Holland, Greyhound's senior vice president of operations. That's because radar has trouble distinguishing one object from another. The Vorad system warned drivers when a vehicle moved alongside the bus, but it also went off when the bus drove by road signs. "It's like the story of the boy who cried wolf," says Holland. Engineers are working to make radar more discriminating. If they can do so--and keep the cost below $1,000--these products could be a hit.

NIGHT VISION. Like radar, night vision promises to help us see what we now cannot. Texas Instruments has developed a thermal-imaging camera for cars that is set in the front grille. The camera sees the world in grades of temperature rather than light, producing a picture that looks like a photographic negative, with highly contrasted blacks and whites. A heads-up display device on top of the dashboard--similar to one used by Air Force pilots to superimpose instrument readings onto their windshields--projects the picture of the road ahead onto the bottom of the windshield. The picture is about the size of a brick, and it eliminates glare from oncoming headlights. Stuart Klapper, TI's night-vision project director, says you could spot a deer behind a bush 500 yards down the road. "You could slow down and see if it was going to jump in front of you," he says.

If night vision sounds expensive, right now it is. The elaborate system in the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs about $20,000. TI is aiming for a $1,500 stripped-down version for cars and a 2000 rollout date. One issue TI will have to tackle is how distracting a night-vision system will be. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to examine all these new products to determine how many lights, alarms, and screens can flash and buzz before a driver loses it. "The concern is, are these products going to cause more accidents than they help you avoid?" says John Ference, an electronics engineer in the Office of Crash Avoidance Research. "We can't expect drivers to become fighter pilots."

Agreed, say the dashboard engineers, but not to worry. Any device that's too distracting or difficult to use will be quickly dispatched by competitors. And if manufacturers can continue to improve the products even as they drop the price, some could become as ubiquitous as antilock brakes. Just imagine: In 2005, your kids might have to tackle questions on a driving test asking how far radar can see through fog or what a thermally imaged deer looks like.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Hillary Margolis