Ford's inflatable seat belts are designed for the rear seat.
(Credit: Ford)Ford announced a new seat belt innovation on Thursday: seat belts that inflate during a collision. Designed for rear-seat passengers, Ford claims the new seat belts spread collision force over five times the area of a traditional seat belt when inflated. In a crash, the seat belts limit head and neck movement, which should reduce injury.
Ford also says the extra bulk of these seat belts gives them a padded feeling, making them more comfortable, so rear-seat passengers are more likely to wear them. Current usage statistics show that 82 percent of front seat occupants wear seat belts, but only 61 percent of rear seat passengers wear them.
These inflatable seat belts will be included in the next update to the Ford Explorer, with other Ford vehicles following.
Want to tweet with Ford's Sync? There's an app for that.
(Credit: CNET)Editors' note: Ford has clarified that its open platform is still in the prealpha testing stages. The article has been updated to reflect this information.
When Ford and Microsoft opened up their joint Sync platform for its own applications and updates, we wondered when the day would come that third-party developers would be given a crack at the in-vehicle infomatics interface. Well, that day may be on the horizon. Ford announced that it is testing an open-source platform to could be used in the future to develop applications that make use of Sync to connect to social networks in the cloud.
Ford's representatives said the system is built on a Robotics Studio platform by Microsoft that has been layered with an open-source cloud-computing platform developed by Ford that will allow rich--and hopefully seamless--interactions with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
So what's the point? How can social network interactions be useful and safe in 2,000-plus pounds of steel moving at 70mph? Ford's Venkatesh Prasad, group and technical leader of vehicle design and infotainment, posed the following scenarios:
The Ford Fiesta will be the test vehicle used in the University of Michigan's Ford open platform competition.
(Credit: Ford)Imagine you're on a cross-country road trip and you decide to stop in a new city for something to eat. Now, you don't know this new city very well, so you ask Sync to grab some dining and sightseeing suggestions. The application could then fire out a tweet, update your Facebook status, or query Yelp on your behalf and when the responses roll in, it could format them in an easy to understand way, for example as a custom points-of-interest menu.
Another possible application is a Green Car Challenge, where you compete with your friends to see who can average the highest fuel economy while suggesting the greenest driving routes to one another.
This all sounds pretty cool on paper; we'll have to wait a bit longer to know exactly how effective these apps will actually be. We expect that it will really depend on the size, make up, and responsiveness of your social network. I shudder to think of all of the Twitter-bots that currently follow me supplying any sort of advice.
The first test of Ford's open-application SDK will be in conjunction with a competition at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Students will compete to develop the best Sync application that makes use of the cloud. The winning team will have their app installed in Ford's first test mule, a Ford Fiesta, and will take a road trip from Ann Arbor to San Francisco to participate in the 2010 San Mateo Maker's Faire.
Ford currently has no road map for when we can expect to see the Sync open platform in production vehicles, as it is still in the prealpha testing phases.
Steve Ballmer and Alan Mulally at CES 2009.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)Ford Chairman and CEO Alan Mulally will be the featured speaker on the opening day of the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show, the Consumer Electronics Association announced Monday.
His keynote address will open the show the morning of Thursday, January 7. Although it's not Mulally's first time at the Las Vegas event--he also spoke last year--it will be his debut as the main keynote speaker. Recent opening keynotes have been given by Sony's Sir Howard Stringer and Comcast's Brian Roberts.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will speak the night before, as he did last year, taking over the slot traditionally given to Bill Gates.
Although he's not a technology executive, per se, Ford has made it a point to come to CES with lots of gadgets in the past. This year looks to be no different, as Mulally is scheduled talk up in-car tech like GPS navigation, location-based services, and video, according to the CEA.
Corrected on 9/22/09: This post initially had the day of the week on which Mulally will be speaking wrong. January 7 falls on a Thursday, not Friday.
Brabus added its own touches to this Tesla Roadster.
(Credit: CNET)
As is becoming common at auto shows these days, a number of electric cars were on display at the Frankfurt auto show, with automakers showing off research into next millennium's generation of vehicles. On hand were concepts from Peugeot, Renault, Audi, Volkswagen, and Ford. Two entrants from Tesla were on hand, one a Roadster tuned up by Brabus, the only current production car available out of this lot, and the other the upcoming Model S, expected to begin production in 2011.
Check out our full review of the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid.
(Credit: Josh P. Miller/CNET)
Spoiler alert: We gave the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid our Editors' Choice award. Although to be fair, after seeing its doppelganger, the 2010 Mercury Milan Hybrid, win the award previously, you had to have known the less expensive Fusion was something of a shoo-in.
However, our experience with the Fusion Hybrid wasn't an exact repeat of our time with the Milan. For starters, our tester was not equipped with the hard drive-based navigation system, which let us get a taste of the Sync flavor without the cheat sheet touch screen.
How did the screenless Sync experience stack up? Check the full review of the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid to find out.
Ford's crossover, the Flex, shows off original style in a practical people carrier, but doesn't short on the tech side. The 2010 model can be had with Ford's new EcoBoost engine, which delivers a huge amount of power without giving up fuel economy. The navigation option is excellent, featuring traffic, weather, and gas prices. Our review car lacked this option, giving us a chance to try out Sync's navigation service. This service proved problematic and frustrating, reinforcing our contention that onboard navigation is the best.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)
Over the last year, Ford has been at the top of the game with its cabin tech, offering the best MP3 player and cell phone integration, along with a truly useful navigation system. But less interesting were its engines. Ford just stepped up the performance end with its all new 2010 Ford Taurus SHO, the muscle version of its standard Taurus sedan.
This car uses Ford's new EcoBoost engine, a direct injection 3.5-liter V-6 with twin turbos. During our testing of the new SHO, we saw impressive 0-to-60-mph times, and even found a few points to compare to the much more expensive BMW 750Li.
We take a walk on the virtual side in today's Gadgettes. Virtual reality museums, robotic kittens, and fusion in your pocket!
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EPISODE 145 |
Household gadgets we’d like to see
Canon launches virtual-reality dinosaur exhibit in Japan
Robo-Kitty: Sega Toys unveils the Dream Cat Venus
Handheld fusion reactor on the way?
A propos (of) nothing
Vroom: Surf the Web with a Ford GT
It's About Time
Eris Planetary Sphere watch goes anywhere but the wrist
Pink Watch
Juicy Couture goes geeky
Tool Time
Ript Fusion body-shaping undershirt (thanks, Sam!)
Reverse Gender Gap
Ostrich three in one chair for sunbathing bookworms
BlingRX
Russel Hobbs RHG2TSW crystal encrusted bling toaster (thanks, Colleen!)
Kill Me
Fantasy coach bed for the budding superiority complex
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)
We were expecting a lot from the Mercury Milan Hybrid. After having briefly driven the Ford Fusion Hybrid, we had an idea iof what to expect from the power train, and we've also seen Ford's killer combination of Sync and Sirius Travel Link in a few cars over the last year. But we didn't realize what a car tech dream the Mercury Milan Hybrid would be.
The first clue it gives comes from the high-tech instrument panel, with a variety of virtual gauges that you can configure. Then there's the phone and MP3 player connectivity offered by Sync, along with its incredible voice command system. Sirius Travel Link mixes traffic, fuel prices, and weather into the navigation system. And finally, the driving experience, with its excellent fuel economy and seamless transition between electric and gas.
The Mercury Milan Hybrid is a remarkable car, and we've rated it appropriately.
Iconmobile designed this instrument concept for Nvidia's automotive chip.
(Credit: Iconmobile)Forget analog gauges; the instrument cluster of the future will be a 3D dynamic display configurable by the user. Computer graphics company Nvidia is has developed a chip designed specifically for the automotive market. This chip holds system software and graphics processing capabilities to show 3D instruments on an LCD. Partner Iconmobile, which did earlier work on Audi's A1 concept car, designed an interface for the chip that combines car information with navigation and entertainment. The Iconmobile interface serves as a demonstration and is not slated for a production car.
With the Fusion Hybrid, Ford is showing off the flexibility of a digital instrument cluster. NVidia's chip would bring 3D to the equation, potentially allowing for more useful navigation guidance or information structures.
Digital instrument clusters could save automakers money by letting them use a common hardware platform across models, and programming a different look and feel into the instruments to distinguish cars. Likewise, drivers could reconfigure the instrument cluster by personal preference or for different driving conditions. For example, a larger tachometer could used for sport driving, then minimized for the daily commute.
