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Well there is always Navit which gets its data from Open Street Map. It runs on Android and other OSes but is lacking in the search functionality.

Out of curiosity have you tried out Navit? I use it on my phone when I am traveling and I don't even have a data plan. Granted it will eat battery substantially faster than other cell navigation apps as it has to actually compute and render things but that isn't a concern if it is plugged into the 12v adapter. If you download the data set for the entire planet it is about 17GB currently. The data that is used comes from OSM so depending on where you are it can be really good or still better than the base maps that come with most GPS receivers.

Out of curiosity have you tried out Navit? I use it on my phone when I am traveling and I don't even have a data plan. Granted it will eat battery substantially faster than other cell navigation apps as it has to actually compute and render things but that isn't a concern if it is plugged into the 12v adapter. If you download the data set for the entire planet it is about 17GB currently. The data that is used comes from OSM so depending on where you are it can be really good or still better than the base maps that come with most GPS receivers.

You could use Navit and use the extracted data from OSM. There is even a tool provided by Navit to download the map data you want.

You could use Navit and use the extracted data from OSM. There is even a tool provided by Navit to download the map data you want.

Personally I always like my old Nokia 5190 built like a tank, it made phone calls, and with the Li-ion battery instead of the NiMH it would go almost 2 weeks on a charge. That said I gave up on non smart phones recently as the last time I needed to replace my phone the only non smartphones available at the store were the flip phone model that went to shit on me in 8 months that I was replacing and the display model for a candy bar phone that they were otherwise out of stock of. I don't play "angry flappy craft" or tweet about my latest bowl movement from the stall at work but I do like the ability of my current phone to accept a huge SD card filled with my music and that it can run Navit but other than that one program I could do everything I currently do with a simple dumb phone.

What's the current speed limit - it's easy to miss the speed signs, especially when you're turning onto a road from a sideroad where you might not see them! Can we have some sort of display that tells me I'm going too fast (too slow?) without me having to compare two numbers? A red warning symbol for going too fast?

Yup, it's possible. Basically two ways:
- GPS that have databse of speedlimits (also useful when the GPS computes the fastest route). That's both available at some car manufacturer (as a random example, Volvo's nav does it) and available at 3rd parties (As an exemple, the openstreetmaps database has speed limits, and the opensource navit application does display them, along with color-code (green/red) to tell you if your within/beyond the limits).
That would be rather easy to integrate into TFA's HUD. (as it has on-board and can also connect to smartphones over bluetooth. And maybe could also get the information from the infotainment over the ODB2? No idea about that).

- Optical recognition:
Latest generation camera and image recognition capabilities of crash avoidance systems (like mobilEYE which is one of the major manufacturer and 3rd-party solution provider) are able to detect and decode traffic sign like speed limits. This could also be fed into the HUD's onboard apps, or ask the smart-phone to display it to the hud instead of its own screen).

Thundercall alerts. If there's weather enroute that means I need to get off the road coming in the next few minutes, I'd like to be told that in a way that doesn't involve me looking at my phone, and BEFORE I get onto a highway

The radios have a capabilities called RDS on which are broadcast informations like TMC, and its common place nearly everywhere in europe. This information is used by the GPS (either the in-car, or a 3rd party with an integrated FM receiver). Whenever a problem happens, the TMC information about it is digitally broad cast over RDS and your GPS gives a small alert box, telling that you might need to adapt your route to the newest information and giving you the options to read the information (if you haven't heard them over TA/TP) and giving you the option to have the GPS calculate a safe alternate route around the problem.

Again something useful to have on the HUD, and not that complicated to integrate.

at some point, I'll have to try a linux gps map and see if its as good as the commercial ones. would be nice to have a fully open source gps system in my car

There is GpsDrive and navit for navigation engines and UIs. I have played around with navit some on a raspberry pi and you can load maps from Open Street Map into it. I would suggest checking OSM for some locations you are familiar with to get a better feel for the accuracy of open source maps. In my experience it depends on the the users in a given are, if they are like myself they will map out almost everything they can, if there aren't many users or ones who aren't obsessive things might not be as up to date.

Try Navit.

I think the market has lots of room for improvement. It would be nice to have, not just a GPS system, but an in-car computer. Imagine if the computer could hook up to OBD-II, odometer, speedometer, radio, rear-view camera, a cell/wireless network, and other in-car systems. It could track fuel usage on every trip, overlay Wikipedia geographic coordinates, log milage information for tax reasons, record traffic stops (even capturing a few minutes of video prior to the stop), and countless other things.

A good system would boot up in less than two seconds, start playing music where it left off, and instantly switch on a rear-view camera as soon as the car switches to reverse. Most existing systems have only a few of the aforementioned features, they tend to run fairly slow, and they have startup times that leave you wonting for music.

I think a feature-complete system would require a fast processor, a large display (probably requiring custom dashboard work), and a lot of wiring.

My own research turned up Navit which looks pretty good for the navigation piece.

http://www.navit-project.org/ and http://wiki.navit-project.org/index.php/Main_Page are the urls to Navit, a car navigation system with routing engine. Of course it also works when on foot, it can use open street maps and runs on various devices (my own being a PC and an HP Ipaq H2210). It is still in development but is usable.

http://www.navit-project.org/ and http://wiki.navit-project.org/index.php/Main_Page are the urls to Navit, a car navigation system with routing engine. Of course it also works when on foot, it can use open street maps and runs on various devices (my own being a PC and an HP Ipaq H2210). It is still in development but is usable.