The Supercomputer in Your Garage: How Your Car Is the Most Advanced Electronic Device You Own [Infographic]

Our culture is preoccupied with electronics. We buy all manner of silicon-enhanced stuff, from laptops and smartphones to WiFi-enabled refrigerators and robotic Roomba vacuums—some $204 billion worth of it every year. Headlines scream with each new announcement from Apple; Steve Jobs has replaced Henry Ford as the patron saint of American industry. It’s no wonder, then, that mainstream enthusiasm for automobiles has been overtaken by gadgets. Compared with the iPad, cars seem so 20th century. Yet the newest cars actually contain more highly sophisticated computing networks than you can shake a motherboard at.