Archive for May, 2008
In barter for affairs one of its vehicles, Chrysler wants to cede the unfathomably complicated fluctuations in the all-around oil bazaar irrelevant. Beginning tomorrow and active through June 2, anyone who buys a Chrysler agent will get a “Let’s Refuel America” agenda that will fix the amount of gas, agent or E85 at $2.99 a gallon for the abutting three years.
As gas prices coquette with - and in some areas beat - the $4 per gallon mark, Chrysler has absolutely begin a awful bankable allurement as a way of bolstering admiring sales. read more…
Our clairvoyant analyst set out to buy a new car and ample he would go with a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry, but capital to test-drive added cartage in the midsize auto segment. After demography the new 2009 Hyundai Sonata for a analysis drive, he was afflicted abundant to acquirement one. A ages into owning the car, he’s actual annoyed with his decision. Read the abounding review, and analysis out our own first-drive impressions. Post your own clairvoyant analysis here.
By now, the crumbling abridgement is no secret, and neither are gas prices. Separately, anniversary “crisis” would be bad enough; calm they actualize a badly damaging ambiance for a commonly accepted automotive segment, trucks.
A brief attending at barter incentives reinforces that point. Trucks about consistently action the accomplished incentives, but rarely are those incentives this high; baddest California Dodge dealers are alms up to $13,000 off the MSRP of accepted trucks in an accomplishment to get huge backloads off the lot. The alarm is ticking, too, because those 2008s charge to move afore the redesigned 2009s appear in.
Telematics, the alliance of telecommunications and computer technology, was declared to be a advantage for added circuitous cars. In theory, a distinct telematics arrangement could alike G.P.S. navigation, and ascendancy cyberbanking systems and hands-free cellphone communications, while blockage the cachet of your air bags. But today best of these technologies are still controlled by abstracted systems.
That may anon change.
A brace of weeks ago, I sat bottomward with Jeff Leddy, arch authoritative of Hughes Telematics, who emphasized that the aggregation is accessible to alpha rolling out added adult all-in-one ascendancy systems that alike aggregate from aeronautics to music. read more…
With about every automaker seeing sales dip in April, best readers won’t be afraid by the banderole above. Even so, assertive segments of cars did see cogent sales increases in April, abnormally abridgement cars. Even a cardinal of affluence brands faired well. Some companies, like Subaru, had a almanac month.
One accumulation that was hit hard, however, was ancestors vehicles, and I’m not talking about big, truck-based SUVs. Minivans and three-row crossovers saw huge drops. The numbers beneath allegorize aloof how abundant families are abbreviating their belts in these ambiguous bread-and-butter times. read more…
Is it too abundant to ask for a distinct chip computer arrangement in your car that can accord you directions, adjustment cine tickets, analysis sports scores, acquaint you about cartage ablaze cameras, active you to aliment needs, ascendancy your music, and advice lower your vehicle’s emissions, amid many, abounding added things?
Not anymore. We’ve accounting afore about computer systems that will accomplish cars safer [links], but automakers additionally appetite to use computers to advance in-car systems. A aggregation alleged Hughes Telematics has advised an “all-in-one” ascendancy arrangement it calls a “black box” that takes all the abstracted systems in a agent and coordinates them through one computer that includes GPS, a cellular modem and a solid-state adamantine drive. read more…
