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KIA Bringing News & Social Media To Your Car
thecarchik writes "Earlier this week KIA made some major announcements about their future cars. They shed some light on the details of their new UVO system, which lets you answer and place phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages, and access music via voice commands. Moreover, their new widget-based system for the on-screen controls lets you include RSS news, financial information, and weather reports, along with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates. If there is one thing we can take away from this and Ford's recent announcement about the MyFord Touch system, it is that we'll see some heated internet technology battles between car manufacturers."
The NY Times pointed out a few days ago that many companies are already turning their attention to dashboard computing, much to the dismay of those who warn against distracted driving.
Would make sense if the vehicle were smart enough to find its way on its own (like horses did). But then, how much sense would a car make?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
"I kan has kar rek"?
Dunno ?
I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
I think Volvo points the way with their low velocity laser/radar collision avoidance system (18 MPH). However I would like to see universal adoption of a high speed system that would at least make collisions more survivable, if not prevent them entirely.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability. For a while back in the '70s, they were forcing car makers to increase the force absorption ability of bumpers every few years. It got up to 5 mph, but then in the '80s, with high fuel prices and a deep recession, the standards were relaxed down to 2.5 mph to encourage more profits.
The technology today is light years beyond what we had in the '70s. We could put RF chips in the major roads (buried, or on the railings, or whatever) to help cars stay in their lanes, we could mandate Volvo-style (and airplane-style) collision avoidance systems that would automatically swerve cars out of collision paths, and we could probably increase the shock absorption abilities of passenger vehicles. It costs money, to be sure, but we should ask ourselves, would we rather pay an extra $500 a year in taxes or an extra $100 a month in car payments and live, or be wealthier and dead (or paraplegic or quadraplegic or whiplashed)?
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system. Let's take off the blinders and fix this problem already.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
You're not talking about someone killed-in-action (cue obvious jokes about distracted driving). Kia's not an acronym.
Are you one of those tossers who think it's necessary to all-cap "Mac" when you speak of Macintosh computers?
Extra points to Soulskill for non-editing.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
..erm kia should concentrate on making road-worthy cars before they roll out wifi tech.
How about dismay of those who don't want gimmicks? Those who want primarily...a car. With resources going into its reliability, low fuel consumption and safety?
Yes, "one doesn't exclude the other". But effort described in TFS as at best misplaced in case of cars. There is no place for doing anything else for driver than paying attention on the road, perhaps with some background music or telephone via hands-free and voice control - and that's almost covered, not by car manufacturers. If passengers want something more - it doesn't have to built into the car.
One that hath name thou can not otter
KIA IS an acronym, it stands for Korean Internet Automobile. The new KIA cee'd was named to cee'd make it easier for people to text and tweet while driving, its original name is "Killed In Action after exceeding the speed limit and posting a tweet about it".
It's been shown in several studies that car kits are not much less unsafe than using a moblie phone while driving. Introducing even more communication equipment in cars will only lead to more deaths. And do you really need to follow Twitter while you drive? I think it would be a good idea to forbid cars with this kind of equipment on board, or make the equipment stop working while the car is driving.
-- Cheers!
It sounds to me that they are pitching a device that will take what you say to it, translate it to text, and send that text to someone else. And then when that person replies to you in text, it will read the text to you so that you can then use the speech-to-text recognition to reply to them again. How is this advantageous over just using a phone?
... oh, I don't know ... call the person on the phone?
You have now taken SMS technology and made it slower and more error-prone. Why not just
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"You can have my driver dashboard computing when you pry it from my cold dead haCRASH!!!"
A lot of places have rules about displays not being visible from the drivers' position.
Then there's the legal liability to the manufacturers when a pedestrian gets killed. *THEY* never agreed to any EULA.
And insurance companies, who will now raise premiums (it's what they do, you know).
I think I'll take the bus instead.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability.
And Millions more die from preventable diseases - like heart disease from obese or from smoking. 38,000 is nothing.
We Americans need to grow up and take responsibility for own actions instead of having momma Government take care of us.
Scratch that. We Americans are too fucking stupid and lazy to take care of ourselves.
We need more Government regulations! When the fuck is the Government guy going to come over and wipe my ass and change my underwear?! I'm starting to smell here!
Is the car a second home now? Maybe this stuff belongs in a camper, or a van (for long trips), but do drivers need to be that distracted? If you think there's a chance you'll be in a long traffic jam and get bored, sure, turn on the radio or use your cell phone and make a call, but there's no need to set up your car like an office or a living room.
Twinstiq, game news
I can't wait for dashboard programming.
Has it been determined yet that debugging syntax while driving is dangerous?
...or tweating as the case may be.
I'd rather have an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom with the bare minimum of gadgets and gimmicks than some driverless luxobarge with built-in twitter support.
Modern cars isolate the driver from the road far too much. Soundproofing and power everything makes it easy to forget you are doing 100mph in a large lump of metal.
There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.
Of course i have nothing really against driverless cars and people who have no interest in driving a car shouldn't have to, as long as I can still get on the same roads with a completely manual car
For user convenience, vehicles will be fitted with a special button to post "My Kia broke down again, FML" to the user's facebook account.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Helo. Iz in yr hwy, killin yr doods. KTHXB...[connection lost]
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I have been hit by a car as a pedestrian by a distracted motorist that was admittedly texting while driving - thankfully I was not killed. We are going to allow even more temptation to multitask behind the wheel? These things should be backseat only or banned completely. We crack down hard on DUI/DWI but this trend has the potential to be just as onerous.
eom
The irony of the spelling of Kia is not lost on me. K.I.A.
The last thing I want in the dash of my 10 year old car is a 10 year old computer system with a glitchy, faded display and prehistoric software and networking. Given the quality of today's cars, it's easy to make one last 10-15 years reliably. Technology changes so quickly that one of the things I look for when buying is as little tech as possible - no built in GPS, no talking alarms, no roof-mount DVD system and definitely no PC. It makes far more sense to buy an aftermarket GPS for $150 than it does to buy essentially the same thing preinstalled for $650. The same goes for $2,500 headrest-mounted DVD players.
While there at it, how about using all that fancy processing power to manage and control collision avoidance systems, roll over protection and electronic traction control. I would rather a combination of all of those types systems in every vehicle be what car companies pursue as the future ubiquitous automotive technology.
They say they are working to reduce the amount of time drivers spend looking away from the roads. Only future statistics can show this to be true or false. For the sake of the possibility that we will start having more "interactive accidents", I suggest that automotive companies put an equal eye on ramping up those technologies in order to at least make a play for positive future statistics, lest those statistics be responsible for squashing their interactive revelation.
A touch-screen in a car, at least for the driver, is a terrible idea. It can't be operated by feel; the driver has to look away from the road, and probably for more than a second. Not good. Twittering while driving? Please. "Fully Loaded", a Bruce McCall drawing, isn't a design goal.
Auto designers, desperately trying to get margins up with "more car per car" (an old GM slogan) are hanging on unneeded features that are cheap to install. Overpriced car stereos aren't enough any more. Giant hood ornaments are out (there's a "pedestrian impalement" test cars have to pass, in response to a period in the 1950s when auto hoods were weaponized). So now we have dashboard gimmicks.
In aviation, this is called the "head-down time" problem, and efforts are made to minimize head-down time. The military takes this to an extreme in fighters, with the HOTAS ("Hands On Throttle and Stick") concept. This leads to a proliferation of buttons on the throttle and stick, though. Aviation people think hard about how many seconds of head-down time it takes to do something.
If you want to cause accidents, put in a touch screen that's stateful, so the driver has to look. Then give it a timeout, so it goes back to the ground state if the driver doesn't give it undivided attention. This forces the driver to look away from the road. One of the examples in the original article looks very like that.
As a father of four children under 30, I can say that their expectations and use of "communication" technology are far different to mine. Unfortunately they - particularly my youngest - are also the most inexperienced drivers, the most overconfident drivers and the ones most likely to want to use these technologies while they drive. It seems to me to be a recipe for disaster. Society as a whole will pay in increased health costs and insurance premiums - maybe the car companies should start paying a safety tax on each of these cars sold.
Really, the whole thing about adding more airbags, traction control, etc. is retarded. We don't need Sync, an in-dash TV and a minibar in the center console. We need focused drivers. Just give us air conditioning, a heater, a stereo and a transfer case. Focused drivers are safe drivers, and a safe driver is the only safety feature you need.
Furries make the internet go.
It's no better for overpriced cars. 1 Airbag for an old M3 is $4500 wholesale.
Who knows what they raped the idiot for it installed (dude I know had to find the part, nobody guessed the price or even close).
There will come a time when almost all cars older then 10 or 15 years will have salvage titles and no airbags.
The nut jobs will scream about it being a conspiracy against the poor.
As far as Kias. I think they should skip the information appliances on the dash and spring for fancy options like a tensioner on the timing belt.
Seriously the belt tension is set by turning the water pump housing (which has an offset shaft). As soon as the belt stretches all bets are off. Bet they use tip top quality belts too.
I'm going to predict that current generation Kias have comparable reliability to first gen Hyundais and Yugos.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's fine, this sort of technology's rise will coincide with the rise of technologies that drive our cars for us -- so ultimately the distraction issue won't be an issue at all. We could probably have self-driving cars now if consumers weren't so leery of the idea.
This is just more useless crap designed to inflate the price and force the buyer to factory service dealers. From the buyers point of view, don't want or need it, can't find or use a radio due to complication, and just want a car they can drive without a night school class. I know I am in the minority, but how about an ashtray larger then two butts that isn't buried behind the shift lever or get rid of the counsel and install a bench seat. Anyone tried to enter your car from the passenger side lately? You just can't emulate a 747 cockpit in a Mooney, there is no room and no reason for it. A Porsche customer will not be buying a Kia and a Kia buyer probable doesn't want a Porsche.
if they are putting that in, the least they could do is include diagnostic code reader and real time system monitor
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
if they are going to put this much C**P in a car then they should go all the way and put a full AI in the car
of course then you will have
"Well Bozo not only can i drive better than you but i can Tweet about how much of a drunk moron you are and still get you back to that Hovel you call a house safely"
hmm new way to get out of a DWI jump: "But Officer ask my car im not driving HE WON'T LET ME"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Fixed the subject heading for you. There is only one cause for every vehicle collision on the road: DRIVER ERROR. (note I said vehicle collision, not deer collision for example)
Everything you've suggested is just padding. The more padding you put on a football player, the harder they hit. The safer the cars, the less drivers concern themselves with safe driving.
For example, who here routinely keeps their blind spots clear? If you don't, remember to tell the officer "the other car came out of NOWHERE!" But you've never been in a serious accident, so you must be a good driver, right? Just like everyone else who gets into serious accidents...
As for your swerving safety mechanisms, a good driver would disable them rather than surrender control of their vehicle. It wouldn't be long before some assholes start selling dog collars with those RF chips to keep dogs (which their owners irresponsibly let run on the roads) from being run over. Most of the time it is better to run over a small animal rather than risk losing control of the vehicle. Meanwhile many cars don't allow for their anti-lock brakes to be disabled, even though it's better to disable anti-lock brakes on gravel roads. Handing over control to technology can only be effective if absolutely every vehicle on the road is fully controlled by a unified system.
The investment you mention should be spent on driver training and higher license requirements. The more technology goes into cars, the more drivers need to know to operate the vehicle responsibly. Driver education is already well behind the technological advances, and the longer people survive their poor driving habits, the harder it is to teach them they're wrong.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
How can any of this be considered a major announcement about a car?
When a car maker tells me they have removed some electronic assholes from their vehicles, then I'll be interested.