The EU’s transport and internal market committees have adopted a report that says all new cars sold in the EU from 2015 should be able to dial the emergency services automatically when they are involved in a serious accident. This recommendation isn’t legally binding, although the European Commission is expected to announce proposed legislation later this year.

Vehicles with ‘eCall’ mobile technology would automatically call the Europe-wide emergency number 112 when a crash is detected.

New cars will increasingly have the ability to integrate a smartphone with the vehicle, according to a new report from Juniper Research. It forecasts that 92 million vehicles will include technology to integrate the smartphone into the in-car ‘head unit’ by 2016.

The report follows mobile-related announcements from both Ford and Toyota during Mobile World Congress 2012.

Samsung Electronics has announced a partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation that’ll help Samsung’s smartphones connect with Toyota’s in-vehicle entertainment systems.

The project is called Samsung Car Mode Application and it’ll use smartphone-based voice controls for navigation, location-based services and other functions.

Yesterday at Mobile World Congress, Ford revealed that its new B-MAX car would be launched in Europe with the company’s SYNC in-car connectivity system.

Ford SYNC is already available in the USA, although the B-MAX was making its first public appearance. 3.5 million people are expected to be using SYNC in Europe by 2015.

ABI Research says the number of mobile machine-to-machine connections grew by 26.2% in 2011, rising from a cumulative total of 87.7 million connections worldwide in 2010 to 110.6 million connections at the end of 2011.

That figure is expected to reach 364.5 million connections by 2016, which is the equivalent of a 27% increase each year.