What electronic feature would you most like from your next car? That's what J.D. Power and Associates asked 18,000 vehicle owners, and 55 percent were interested in a vehicle diagnostics service.

A system that allows your vehicle to send and receive information on car troubles to an engineer was the most popular request, narrowly beating the 52 percent of users who put a premium sound system at the top of their list. Half of those questioned would be interested in wireless technology, which also attracted consumers across a variety of age groups.

Other technologies from the 21 options listed by J.D. Power included rear-vision parking cameras (which have a safety benefit too, as we recently reported) and blind-spot detection, that interested 46 and 45 percent of respondents respectively.

So why the high interest in vehicle diagnostics? If we were being cynical, we might suggest that with the prevalence of other gadgets now found in your car, consumers are becoming less confident of their vehicles' reliability.

After all, much as we love our electronic gadgets and the freedom they offer us, it can be immensely frustrating when they go wrong. With cars becoming more like gadgets all the time, perhaps we're treating them like gadgets now too.

[J.D. Power via The Independent]