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KIA Bringing News & Social Media To Your Car

Posted by Soulskill on from the prepare-to-be-run-over-by-a-tweeting-driver dept.

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.

2 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Dismay of those warning against distractions? by sznupi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  2. I don't know about the rest of ye but.. by ickleberry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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