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GM's is cool too because they have an API that allows you to remotely get vehicle data through Onstar. This allows approved apps to get data like fuel level, vehicle alarm alerts, oil life, fuel economy, remote start/stop, location, speed and direction etc. Not sure Ford has anything like that..

Ford's AppLink-enabled apps run on your iOS/Android phone and the vehicle's voice control and buttons are additional interfaces to control the app that's running on your phone. So regular Pandora from Google Play or the App Store has the code to integrate with AppLink vehicles in it already.

This is different from GM's approach, where the apps are built to run on the vehicle's own hardware.

We just entered a GM Connected Car app in the ATT Hackathon in Las Vegas this past weekend. GM provides an Eclipse plugin that has the SDK and emulator. GM's API is Javascript-based and your app is HTML5/CSS and JS code.