They appear to be starting as 'driver aids' on new cars. Today's higher-end cars have adopted technology that alerts you when you drift out of your lane, watches your blind spots, safely follows the car in front of you, performs emergency stops, parallel parks itself, and adjusts vehicle dynamics in a multitude of ways.

My assumption is that this is a first step towards driverless cars, as it provides the manufacturers a way to test critical technologies in a safe environment. If the dealerships aren't downloading data from these systems, and sharing it back to the engineering groups, thats an enormous wasted opportunity.