Carmakers may delete CD players

The dash-mounted CD player could quickly go the way of 8-tracks and quadraphonic sound, a vice president from Siemens VDO said Thursday at the Ward's Auto Interiors Show in Detroit.

And it will be a welcome demise, he said, because it will free up valuable real estate on the dash for all the other cool gizmos drivers lug around these days, like the cell phone, personal digital assistant and music player.

Never-ending advances in digital music devices, the take-them-everywhere cell phones and finicky customers who expect to customize their vehicles with portable devices, will push CD players out of most vehicles as early as 2012, said Frank Homann, vice president of Siemens VDO's Interior Electronics Solutions group.

Many manufacturers already are putting new sound technologies in vehicles.