Nissan Altima Hybrid review
Here is a review of the 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid.
Continue Reading July 1st, 2007
Posts filed under 'Cars'
Eclipse Area Shot GPS
As I have written before (1, 2, 3, 4) , I am would like to get a single-DIN GPS head unit that is able to control an iPod, satellite radio tuner and can be used for hands free phone calls. Yesterday, I was just browsing around and I found The Eclipse CD5100.
This head unit has some pretty cool features:
- HD radio ready (with an external tuner)
- iPod control capable (with iPod adapter cable)
- Satellite radio ready (with an external tuner)
- USB port, to allow playback of WMA and MP3 files.
The one feature that I wasn’t sure of is called Area Shot GPS. After looking into it, I know that I wouldn’t want this head unit.
If you are using Area Shot GPS, you have to log onto E-iSERV web site to enter the starting and destination points. Then you you can download the route to your computer. You then either burn this routing file to a CD-R or copy it to a USB thumb drive.
Now the head unit will display these directions in a static text display. The directions do not advance when the car follows the route.
With the Eclipse GPS-105, actual GPS capabilities are added, so the directions are synchronized with the location of the car.
But I do think that there are some things that will not work with this solution.
- Rerouting around traffic congestion/construction
- Entering new additional destionations
- Finding Points of interests near a particular location
Each of these things are possible, if you have access to a computer with a internet connection. So if you are on the road, you could use a laptop with an EV-DO card to update the head unit.
With these limitations, I don’t think that the Eclipse CD5100 is worth the money.
Continue Reading June 18th, 2007
Car Talk on iTunes
NPR’s Car Talk is now available on the iTunes Store as a podcast. This makes listening to the show on your iPod easier than this hint.
[via Autoblog]
Continue Reading June 6th, 2007
New Navigation Mode
Yesterday, it cost $50 to fill up our van with gas. This got me thinking that I should be using our navigation system to help reduce our gas usage. The navigation unit will give the most direct route to the destination, so this should reduce mileage.
The only problem with this solution is that the route doesn’t take into account whether the route is the most efficient for our car. For example, the most direct route may be on city streets, while our car may not get the best mileage on those roads.
I think that this is a perfect opportunity for an upgraded navigation system. Ideally, the navigation system would have an “Efficient” mode for routing. This would take the behaviors of the car when doing the routing. For example, a routing on a hybrid may prefer city streets, while routing for cars with conventional engines may prefer highways.
In addition to the types of roads, traffic patterns needs to be taken into account. Ideally this would use traffic data from a satellite provider to route around un-optimal traffic.
This type of system could be done by an auto electronics company like Alpine. The user could enter the characteristics of the care in the UI. Or, this could be sold by the Auto manufacturers, where they would sell different DVDs for each model of car.
Continue Reading May 25th, 2007