It's not considered perverse to desire a vehicle that can go twice the legal speed limit. Do buyers want cars with faster Internet connections as well?

High-speed 4G wireless connections have come to the car. Audi started offering LTE service (shorthand for long-term evolution) in the 2015 A3 last spring. General Motors has included 4G LTE in the 2015 Chevrolet Malibu, and more than 30 other G.M. models are to follow by year-end.

How will 4G benefit a driver or passenger? One conspicuous improvement will be the ability, on G.M. vehicles, to "download directions while OnStar is talking to you," Chris Penrose, AT&T's senior vice president for emerging devices, said in an interview. Also, cars can be roving Wi-Fi hot spots for up to seven devices.

Perhaps more important, faster wireless Internet connections are needed to improve sluggish in-dash services. "Smartphones have changed the landscape of customer expectations," Anupam Malhotra, senior manager for connected vehicles at Audi, said in a phone interview. Customers are used to the "Google moment" of being able to search at will, he said, and they expect the same experience behind the wheel. "So we need LTE to give them access to information that's the same caliber as at home or off a phone," Mr. Malhotra said.

Drivers want answers and refreshed maps in seconds, rather than minutes. And LTE is seven times as fast as previous 3G cellular services, Mr. Malhotra said. Such speeds allow Audi to send pictures of destinations from Google Street View to a dashboard screen, or to use Google Voice to search for a coffee shop without having to remember special spoken commands.

While these wireless features may be convenient, the most important advances enabled by broadband wireless 4G service may be further down the road.

Faster wireless connections in the car mean automakers can update a vehicle's software — a transmission tweak or a new app — over the air. Faster wireless service also means quick access to online services in the cloud to coordinate information. A vehicle could, for example, sense that it is low on gas, check its location and call up gasoline prices nearby, then tell the driver: "You'll need fuel in 20 miles. There's an inexpensive station in five miles. Would you like to stop there?"

Mr. Penrose of AT&T calls this the "car-ifying" of online services, making one feel as if "the car is taking care of you."

Many companies — automakers and high-tech firms — are also taking note of the big data picture.

"Cars are generating a huge amount of data, some billion gigabytes of data every year," said Dirk Wollschläger, general manager of IBM's global automotive operations. He noted that cars' sensors were recording data that could be useful not only in reporting traffic conditions, but also to locate, for example, potholes. Every time a car's suspension reports a sudden impact, that telemetry could be compared with data from other cars traveling the same route to pinpoint a road repair.

Faster connections to the cloud also mean that active safety systems like automatic braking won't be so myopic — just seeing the car ahead of you — in the future. Accidents, thunderstorms and congestion can be quickly reported to cars in advance. "We can extend the horizon far beyond what's available with radar and camera systems today," Mr. Wollschläger said.