Connected cars are on the verge. And they are already on our roads. This week, Toyota announced that it will add more connected cars to our roads with some of its 2017 vehicle models which will have “Data Communication Modules” (DCMs) installed to allow for uploading and downloading of information from the vehicles to Toyota’s big data base. No pun intended. This will be a BIG data base. All of the vehicles will be connected to the “Toyota Big Data Center” and the system will “analyze and process data collected by DCMs, and use it to deploy services under high-level information security and privacy controls.” What is high-level exactly? Without any specific regulation of connected cars at this point, data collection from cars will likely become an even more pressing issue in the coming years. Toyota has not yet revealed which models will have this DCM option (or how the cost of their vehicles will change due to the installation of these DCMs), but they have confirmed that the deployment of these vehicles will start with 2017 models. The DCM will allow for standard emergency notification in a crash (which is already offered by other car manufacturers via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections), but Toyota will be bringing the cellular connection to the car to make the transmission of data even easier.