I was invited to check out two prototype models of Chevy’s upcoming Volt plug-in electric vehicle today. I can safely say nobody has ever offered to let me drive a pre-production vehicle before so I jumped at the chance.
These cars were handmade in at GM’s design factory and are in town during the Olympics (GM is a vehicle sponsor). The fit and finish (and even some of the tech) wasn’t final yet as they are still tweaking the designs at this point.
It’s the first fully electric, plug-in vehicle and it was a lot of fun to drive. We were in a parking lot with a little track made out of cones around it and were able to get it going at a pretty good clip. Definitely ‘peppier’ than I was expecting.
I really like the idea of being able to simply plug the car into a normal wall outlet (you actually plug it into a box that plugs into the wall). It can currently go approximately 64 kms per charge running in practically silent electric mode. It will cost just under a $1 a day to charge the vehicle.
The driver’s dashboard:
The centre console:
This is what happens when you get the Volt up over 88 mph:
They even have an iPhone app that allows to you monitor many aspects of the vehicle as well as unlock/lock, start and charge it all remotely.
It’s all tied into the OnStar system. A free demo version of the Volt ‘Experience’ app is already on the (US) App Store if you want to check it out yourself…search for “OnStar Experience”.
I was also able to attach a camera to the windshield to get some driving video. Because it was a prototype, with a custom paint job, the engineers didn’t want me to attach the camera to any painted surfaces. I didn’t want to be the guy that damages a very expensive prototype either.
Here’s the resulting video with a cheeky soundtrack I added by Basement Jaxx that I think GM should licence for the Volt’s promotion:
It was a pretty cool opportunity to check out this pre-production vehicle, chat with a couple of the engineers who designed it and for the chance to drive it. I’ll be curious to see what changes get made when they finally put it into production next year. It’s supposed to hit the Canadian market in mid-2011.
Over the holidays, I got to check out a friend’s Go Pro HD which really blew me away since you can put it just about anywhere thanks to its numerous mount options, waterproof housing and wicked wide angle lens. Unfortunately it’s about $300 and I just can’t justify that right now but I still wanted to be able to have some fun with the cameras I already have and attach them to different things to shoot HD and timelapse videos.
So this weekend, I picked up a Delkin Fat Gecko Mini-Mount (Amazon link although I bought mine from London Drugs):
It’s a beefy suction cup mount for attaching your camera to all kinds of things…like your car:
I know what you’re thinking…but this mount is much more robust than the $12 mount I found on ebay (which I overloaded).
I wanted to try it out with some ‘safer’ positions first that I could keep an eye on but after spending some time today with it stuck all over my car, driving at different speeds (including taking it on the highway) I trust it to carry my smaller cameras like the Kodak Zx1 and even my trusty Nikon P6000 pretty much while attached in any position to my car, inside or out. Driving from my home to downtown (about 30 minutes on the highway) over all kinds of turns and bumps resulted in no problems with the mount…it’s solid.
Here’s a video showing some of the different angles I shot during my ‘test drive’ today:
The mount also comes with an extension arm which lets you get out and away from the attach point better so I’ll be trying that next. I also need to dig out my wide angle and fisheye lenses to make the field of view on the Zx1 even wider.
UPDATE: Found my fisheye lens and added the extension arm to the Fat Gecko….the results are pretty awesome:
I stumbled across this sticker and figured it was the perfect addition to my car (along with my FSM badge):
It makes me smile everytime I see it…and judging from the smiles on people following behind me (and pointing), it was a good investment. Now if only I could get my car to make the ‘transformer’ sound via my key fob, it would be perfect.
Earlier this week, I was contacted by CBC News to see if I’d be interested in talking on camera (as a technology expert) about various bluetooth devices and handsfree technology on the market. The reason for the story was the new law which goes into effect in British Columbia as of January 1st, 2010 where drivers are basically banned from using any kind of electronic device while operating their vehicle. This has led to a huge increase in sales and interest in handsfree devices and the CBC wanted to give consumers some information in order to wade through all the products on the market.
Hopefully, I helped to clarify some things for folks out there.
Here’s the segments edited together from the news broadcast which originally aired on December 31st on CBC News (Vancouver) which I captured with my TiVo (sadly not in high definition but I needed a haircut anyway):
Thanks to my pal, Tris Hussey for the recommendation to the CBC producers.
As some of you know, I recently bought a Kia Soul after the lease on my Toyota Matrix ended:
and I thought I’d describe a few of the interesting bits of technology that Kia has included in this vehicle. I won’t get into the car side of things as there are plenty of reviews/comparisons of this car (with others in it’s emerging class) on the internet. I realize that this type of car seems to be a love it/hate it thing when it comes to it’s looks. Obviously I like it or I wouldn’t have bought it so no need to go there.
What may surprise you is the amount of tech that gets packed into this ‘urban crossover’ when you consider the relatively inexpensive cost of the car. The model I bought (called the 4U in Canada) has an upgraded stereo package which features an 8 speaker (including a center speaker above the dash controls and a trunk mounted subwoofer), 315 watt sound system. For a factory installed system, it’s pretty impressive.
1. Voice activated handsfree with Bluetooth
The model I bought comes with steering wheel controls for using your cell phone in the car. This type of functionality is becoming more common in cars today but is usually found on much higher priced models.
The first thing you need to do is pair your cellphone with the car. You can pair up to 5 different phones and the car actually talks you through the process of setting up your phone simply by initiating the pairing process via the setup menu option above.
The first thing it does once it’s paired is downloads your cell phone’s contact list to the car’s memory:
Every time you turn the car on (and your phone is in range with bluetooth turned on) it will take about 10 seconds to transfer the contacts and display the above message (along with the computer’s voice saying it). At first I thought this was annoying but then realized it needs to sync your contacts with the car and really only takes 10 seconds to do so at the beginning of your drive. What really surprised me was that it works perfectly with my iPhone (a 1st gen model). I didn’t have to do anything other than pair it with the car and all my iPhone contacts are available to me via voice activation.
If you press the listen button on the steering wheel, the car will switch off your music and be in listen mode. Here you would tell it who you want to call in this format: “Call Lastname Firstname Location” so to call my work number I’d have to say “Call Biehler John Work” which the car will reply with a confirmation statement which you can say “yes” to in order to make sure it heard you correctly.
You also have the ability to set voice contacts in the phonebook locally. For example, I setup my wife’s contact info in the car to simply shorten it from what I have on my phone. I wish there was a setting in the phone options to change the order of the names or at least honor the settings from the source phone (mine are set Firstname Lastname on the iPhone). But I guess it’s simply an easier way for the car to process the voice request.
Pressing the hangup button on the steering wheel will end the call and your previously playing music will return. Incoming calls behave the same way – your music will fade out and you’ll see “incoming call from XXXXXXX” on the dash display. Pressing the pickup button on the steering wheel will answer it. You can also dial any number not in your contacts by simply saying the number: “Call 5-5-5-1-2-3-4″ and the system will display your spoken numbers on the dash display and ask for confirmation before dialing. Apparently this ‘manual’ dialing feature isn’t that common on other vehicles.
2. USB/iPod support
Like most car manufacturers today, Kia has support for the iPod built in as well as a USB port that can accept a thumbdrive (or even a portable hard drive).
iPod support is via a separate accessory cable that plugs into the AUXIN and USB ports which gives you the ability to navigate your playlists on the iPod or iPhone. My cable is on order so I haven’t played with it yet but it’s supposed to charge your device as well. Why KIA doesn’t just throw this cable in the glove box is beyond me. It’s probably about $0.25 worth of materials. You can’t just use your iPod/iPhone cable in the USB port as it’s expecting a mass storage device – it won’t even charge your device strangely. The iPod cable is almost unecessary though since the USB port can accept a thumb drive. It’s arguably easier to just buy a cheap, huge thumbdrive and put all your MP3′s on it and leave it in the car fulltime.
When you plug a USB device into the port, it will scan your files very quickly and start playing the first track on the device. It’s folder aware so you can setup playlists that way fairly easily. You get the full song details, ID3 tags, etc although the default display is the filename (whatever.mp3) in the larger font (which scrolls to show you the full length name if larger than the screen size):
Being able to navigate through a pile of music (from a number of different sources since the stereo also comes with Sirius Satellite Radio, MP3 CD support as well as AM/FM), easily from my steering wheel is new to me and pretty cool.
3. LED speaker lighting
While this gimmicky item won’t appeal to everyone, it’s kind of interesting that they included it. Kia’s target market is probably about 10-15 years younger than I am but I still like the lighting and don’t find it distracting at night.
Basically there is a bunch of LED lights inside the front speakers that can be controlled via the dash as to how they behave:
The OFF setting makes the speaker like any other one – no lights. MOOD makes the lights pulsate slowly. MUSIC has them lighting up to the beat of your music and ON has them at whichever brightness level you’ve set via the +/- buttons.
Here’s a shaky cam video of it in action (MUSIC mode enabled):
The only thing really missing is GPS. It’s not even an option in North America and in Europe is an expensive addon that is simply a Garmin unit built into the space that I currently store my sunglasses at the top of the center console. I’ve always been extremely underwhelmed by factory GPS units since they are fairly limited, usually not nearly as functional as store bought units (I love my Tom Tom) and usually cost thousands of dollars as a part of a technology upgrade to the car.
So far, the only thing I’ve done to the car, other than moving the TomTom over is put an Apple sticker on the rear window. I’m not sure what else I’d want to do to the car to geekify it more so if you’ve got any suggestions, leave a comment.
UPDATE: meant to include a couple of photos of the console controls and steering wheel layout since I hard time finding them online before I got to test drive one:
Update (June 21, 2010): With the release of iOS 4.0 firmware for the iPhone, I’ve noticed two interesting new things with the handsfree bluetooth setup and my iPhone 3GS: I no longer get the ‘Transfer Complete’ voice prompt (but the bluetooth icon still lights up on the dash and my phonebook has transfered) and now when I get an incoming call, the ringtone (including my homemade mp3 tones) for the caller plays through the stereo instead of the default Kia ringtone. Both nice touches that must have something to do with a change in the bluetooth stack used in iOS 4.
Update (July 2010):I still love my Kia Soul but unfortunately, one of the selling points I had is now gone. When I bought the car in May 2009, my dealership, Bay City Kia, included ‘free oil/lube/filter changes for life’. It was in the contract I signed. Unfortunately, this past spring, Bay City Kia closed down and months later I got a letter from Kia Canada explaining this and suggesting a few other dealerships for me to use for service. Too bad neither are anywhere near me and aren’t even close to being convenient to get to. I emailed Kia Canada’s customer service (provided on the letter I received) inquiring if Kia would continue to honour the free oil changes offer that was part of my contract and after waiting a week for a response, I was sent a form email basically saying no. I can’t blame Bay City for this…after all, they are out of business but I was hoping Kia Canada would at least do something for me as this works out to be a significant amount of money over the balance of my car payments that I now have to cough up (roughly $600-700/year or about 2 car payments). So if you’re looking to get a deal on your Kia, make sure it’s not a dealer specific deal, but rather a Kia deal so you can hold them to it, regardless if the dealership goes under.
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