You may have read on Pocket-lint on Tuesday how Google is planning on making your residence more automated by incorporating its API into "every device in your home", but the tech giant's API aims aren't confined to your abode - it has eyes on your driveway too.

To be precise, the car sitting on your driveway.

Over in San Francisco at Google I/O, the Big G has showed off, with Ford, its ideas for the future of efficient driving when it demoed a "conceptual case of how the Google Prediction API could alter the performance of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle".

Basically, Ford uses Google's new Prediction API to make journeys more dynamic. The API, combined with Ford's own driver habits research means that your car's on-board computer would harness the cloud, recent events, traffic info and patterns in order to optimise itself and perform in the best manner determined by a predicted route.

"The Google Prediction API allows us to utilize information that an individual driver creates over time and make that information actionable," said Ryan McGee, technical expert, Vehicle Controls Architecture and Algorithm Design, Ford Research and Innovation.

"Between Google Prediction and our own research, we are discovering ways to make information work for the driver and help deliver optimal vehicle performance."

"Once the destination is confirmed, the vehicle would have instant access to a variety of real-time information so it can optimize its performance, even against factors that the driver may not be aware of, such as an EV-only zone."

Clever stuff indeed. We wonder if we can get Google Prediction API built into our 1983 Datsun Sunny?