My car is pre-USB, but my stereo uses the USB + the phono plug to control my iPod from the dash. As noted above, I can also just plug a thumbdrive in there without using the phono plug/iPod sync cable.
I maintain that I came up with the idea of installing USB ports in cars to play mp3s long before there was any implementation of it.
Alas, being 12 at the time, I didn’t quite have the mental capacity to make it a reality.
Nevertheless…
When I was 12, they were starting to put 8-track players and FM radios in cars. Way cool. FM radio sounded sooooo good, but unfortunately all the FM stations played “easy listening” music.
Lots and lots of people had the idea of putting USB ports in cars before it was a reality - even the designers themselves did. But the auto industry has really stringent quality standards, and devices have to prove they can survive temperature extremes, so adoption of nifty new technologies in cars is always a little slow. Even if the auto industry companies were managed well, which they’re not.
Considering how many cheapo chargers for all kinds of devices are made in China, the government would be effectively mandating the end of a market for many of its taxpayers.
Not necessarily - although my Blackberry will accept the charger from my wife’s Motorola and my Magellan GPS unit, the Magellan will only charge off its own charger, not the Blackberry’s nor the Motorola’s, and the Motorola phone only works with its charger, not the Blackberry’s nor the Magellan’s.
ETA: they all have the mini-USB connector, and it fits, the Magellan and Motorola simply refuse to charge from another brand charger.
What sort of car is Mrs. Floppy’s vehicle? I could be in the market for a car that is tech forward.
Ha! How interesting, that is. With such a huge market in China, all the government has to do is decree that such-and-such is now the standard, and let other countries deal with the R&D cost.
Then they can manufacture their products according to EU/US specs, heh heh.
If I were a Chinese government official, I’d decree that DVDs come in a container like second-generation floppy disks. Nothing’s more satisfying than the “ka-chunk-clik” of a floppy sliding into the bay 
I’d also mandate that the eject button on said drive would shoot disks several feet out, so you could use your laptops in office war games. Take that, Bob the Mail man! clik-flflflfl
I hate to admit this but I loved the ka-chunk-clik of 3.5 disks. It was so much more satisfying than the 5 1/4 disk where you have to manually lock it in. I still have a 3.5" external USB for secured files that I keep off the hard drive.
Probably a BMW
I think there is also a “preceived value” benefit. It can’t cost much to put in a USB port, so let’s just say it’s $1.00. So they car companies put one in and pay $1.00 and raise the cost of the car $10.00 for that gadget and people preceive it as a value so they gladly pay it.
However if the cost of a car goes up $9.00 for no reason, people balk at it. This way you can effectively raise the price of a car and people will THINK they are getting a deal.
Now wait - I think USB heated slippers might be just the thing for a short winter’s drive.