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.

Comments

Why do you all-cap Kia?

[Nimey]

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.

Dismay of those warning against distractions?

[sznupi]

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.

Re:Make them safer first

[King_TJ]

I don't have blinders on about the problem, but I also realize that part of being a free human being is having the ability to take calculated risks, without some entity (typically government) spending my money for me in the interest of my safety.

Where people can agree that the cost-benefit ratio is really there, we've seen car-makers add all sorts of technologies to improve vehicle safety over the years. Anti-lock brakes, for example, went from unheard-of to standard. After a little bit of initial resistance, most people came around to understand that they really don't interfere with one's driving at all. They simply shorten stopping distance when you're in situations where you're trying to tell the vehicle to stop as quickly as possible (slamming on the brakes). So essentially, they improve the vehicle's performance.

I think we haven't seen some of these more drastic changes, like sensors in the roads, because there's too much loss of driver control involved in the scenario. THESE technologies say, "We think our computerized system has better judgment than you, the driver, so we're going to take control of your vehicle and drive it for you when we think it's necessary." Many people consider driving almost like a sport. It's a very intimate, hands-on affair, and these people would rather accept the risks that come with it than have the experience "dumbed down" for safety. (Do you think sports like boxing would go over well, if all the contestants had big plexiglass protective bubbles around their heads so you couldn't actually hurt their heads or knock out teeth? We can all agree it would be safer though, right?)

Even the "rest of us" who just consider driving a necessary chore (or even evil?), I don't think are necessarily "sold" on paying thousands a year in increased taxes for a computerized road system.... What about malfunctions that might CAUSE a random accident? What about unforeseen circumstances where the system tries to do what's best, but it's misinterpreting what's really going on? And maybe more importantly, what if people start taking it for granted, driving haphazardly because they "know the road system will stop them from wrecking anyway"?

Why?

[HalAtWork]

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.

I don't know about the rest of ye but..

[ickleberry]

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

Re:"LOLZ"

[KGIII]

Here in Maine there's a new(ish) distracted driving law. They took an interesting approach and opted to not single out texting while diving or using hand-held vs. hands-free and instead of just outlawing a single technology they've opted to simply make distracted driving illegal.

So far I've not noticed any cases of the cops abusing it which is nice. The one case that made the news was someone who was texting while driving and crashed. It should be interesting to see the initial judgments and challenges as it goes through the courts and as decisions are made and judgments handed down but that's not the real point to my thinking...

I would have to wonder, question if you will, the potential legal issues in states which adopt laws such as the one here in Maine. There is a lot to do behind the wheel of a car. We all think we're above average drivers and we all (okay, so not all of us but I suspect it is the majority by far) seem to think that those laws are in place for other people. We are, of course, better than that.

We, as humans, might not be evolving fast enough for the technology and I suspect that laws will also adapt to reflect this. I guess I'm being rather verbose in saying that I agree with you entirely. I see this being interesting, a very good idea as far as the ability to access information goes but a very bad idea as far as safety goes.

I suppose that I should add that I'm actually all sorts of excited about the potential and I'd certainly like to play with something along those lines. What? Me? Heh... I'm above average - I won't crash into nuffin' at all... ;)

Re:Make them safer first

[Hurricane78]

I have a very simple and obvious solution for you:
A new “driving” runlevel, that gets enabled at, say, 5 mph, and can only be disabled by slowing down again. Sort of a reverse Speed bomb. ;)
In that runlevel, the functionality is limited in the same way, when you are inside the engine of a racing game, as opposed to the menu (including the pause menu).

Building on top of that basic concept:

Everything that is displayed, is displayed on the front window, an a specific area with a maximum horizontal and vertical degree (FOV). And every still available control, is limited to special buttons on the steering wheel. Not some generic cursor cross. A special button for every function, or the function does not get integrated. Period. No double or tripe function assignment. No hold, double-tap or shit like that. If this means there would be too many buttons, well tough shit, cause then you have to reduce the functionality! Or make it better. (Recommended is a maximum of one button per finger.)

A nice solution would be, to be able to freely choose the displayed elements and button assignments when you stand. Like the 4096 out of 16.7 million color mapping. A 12 out of 240 action mapping, and a similar display mapping. (Which must automatically enforce free sight by disallowing displayables to be placed in obstructing locations.)

There, is that so hard?
This was 5 minutes of medium thinking.
Imagine I’d have a month of hard thinking! :)