Ford and Sirius Offer Travel Link Service
These days unless your car has a really smart box collecting and dispensing some kind of data from the dashboard, why bother? Big whoop if you have a radio or even a CD changer. You need data, Dude. How the heck are you going to drive without data? That’s right, the information-age car has to do more than pull in AM/FM and in partnership with SIRIUS, Ford plans to deliver big on the data promise.
This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the two companies are showcasing the marriage of the Sirius Travel Link service and Ford’s own next-generation navigational unit in the luxury Lincoln MKS, the Ford Flex, and the F-150 (all 2009 models.) The system supplies information on fuel prices by comparing data from more than 120,000 stations, collates same, and working with the nav unit, finds the best route to get you there.
Look for real time traffic info, coast-to-cast weather, all the sports scores and schedules your little heart could desire, and movie listings on top of all the programming Sirius already offers. In the selected models, the unit will come with a six month trial service period before you have to cough up the bucks to keep the data flowing. No clear word on what it will cost after that, but obviously the idea is to get you hooked so you’ll pony up whatever it takes when your six months is up.