There has certainly been enough on the news here of late about driving while texting to bring driver inattentiveness to the forefront of my thoughts. It’s now illegal in Texas to talk on a cell phone while in a school zone and I am making myself use my bluetooth headset while in the car and studiously ignore texts. I’ve rarely been guilty of texting while moving, but I have been known to do it at lights. I remind myself every time I get behind the wheel that no text message is worth my life or — worse yet — someone else’s.

By the end of the article, however, the authors ask an interesting question, “Will these kinds of technologies actually make drivers pay less attention behind the wheel?” They are essentially exploring the extent to which we’re evolving toward a kind of automotive auto-pilot that may instill a false sense of confidence in the driver that the car itself is taking care of them and paying attention — thus absolving the driver of the need to do so.

Essentially the same thing was said about cruise control when it first became an available option — and I have to admit, I’ve never made extensive use of cruise control on any car I’ve driven where the system was present. I’m one of those people who has to have the radio going to stay awake and I actually like having to stay alert and pay attention. Probably of all the emerging technologies, I’m most intrigued by night vision systems and that’s just a consequence of being in middle-age and wearing bifocals.

Will the cars of tomorrow offer more of a “cockpit” like experience and give the driver autopilot capability? Is that even a good idea? Or is it an inevitable evolution of the driving experience? Good food for thought as well as a nice tech read. Highly recommended article.

Now, bear in mind, I wasn’t chanting incantations for Tesla’s failure, but when I read that they have been unable to come up with the funding to build a new factory and headquarters in San Jose, I confess I chuckled a little bit. I did not chuckle, however, when I discovered they now plan to go to the government (why not, everyone else is doing it) and get $400 million from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.

In a a word — well, three words — aw, hell no! The only way I want to see Tesla getting tax payer dollars is if they are compelled to develop cars real people can afford. I have no desire to bail out the rich and trendy of California by paying for their Roadster development. The plug-in Prius, currently in testing, is racking up 65 mpg and the 2010 Prius that made its debut at the Detroit Auto Show is offering optional solar panels to assist with climate control. These are innovative, workable applications that will be on the road and within reach of a much larger number of consumers than the Tesla ever would. Get behind that with my federal tax dollars and let the rich fend for themselves.

- traffic info
- directions, and
- voice navigated news.

The guys over at Engadget, who haven’t been big fans of Sync, did a hands on review earlier this month complete with video shot inside a Ford Escape.

It’s short and sweet, but worth the 30 or so seconds of your life to “hear” Sync’s voice and eyeball the simplicity of the display. I always get a little worried that these in-dash displays will draw people’s eyes away from the road, but I have to admit Sync is low key and to the point. (TechNewsWorld goes a little more in-depth in their report here.)

I’m frankly more intrigued by the SmartGauge with EcoGuide technology that will appear in the 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrids beginning this spring. The system will provide a new instrument cluster that churns out real time data in order to teach drivers how to get the maximum fuel efficiency out of their hybrids. Now that’s a concept long overdue and is part of what the company is calling its “Human Machine Interface” strategy. (Also detailed in the TechNewsWorld report.)

While Ford continues to operate without the stigma of a government loan and the supervision that comes with it, the company has an opportunity to get outside the doggone box and offer some innovations that will draw customers back and, hopefully, qualify the company for any new loan programs coming out of the Obama administration geared toward environmentally friendly, fuel efficient technology. I hope we see more SmartGauge-like efforts coming out of the House of Henry because that is, in my opinion, the direction the carmakers need to be moving — out of the petroleum mindset and into the future.

Vitals on the MINI E include:

- 150 mile range
- 35 kWh lithium-ion battery pack
- 62 mph in 8.5 seconds
- full charge in 2.5 hours
- regenerative braking
- 204 hp electric motor

Do I even need to say, “Sweet?”

Add to this news of the “semi official” leak of photos of the next-generation Prius, with an official debut at the North American International Auto Show in January in Detroit, and the electric front is, pardon the pun, humming. There’s also hope that at that same event Toyota will give with some real info on the tests of its plug-in fleet.

Let the uber-wealthy keep their Teslas — assuming they ever get built. The rest of us are going to have more choices in a shorter amount of time than anyone would have thought possible.

Sam Abuelsamid over at AutoBlogGreen participated in the Audi Mileage Marathon, a seven-day, 2.832-mile event dedicated to competitive fuel economy. You can read about the resulting adventures and the techniques the drivers tried out in, “Audi Mileage Marathon: Fuel Efficiency Strategies.”

A sample of Sam’s conclusions include:

“It seems that for a long haul, driving smoothly, and staying at a reasonably safe distance behind a truck, is the best approach. If you have adaptive cruise control, especially on an Audi, it’s worth using. If you drive in traffic, manually shutting off the engine at stops is really only helpful if you have a manual transmission vehicle. As automatic start stop systems proliferate in the coming years this will become less of an issue though. The most important aspect however is safety. If you don’t get where you are going in one piece, it really doesn’t matter how little fuel you used.”

Christened the B0, and built in collaboration with the Bollore Group, the vehicle is powered by a lithium metal polymer battery pack. The advertised working range is 150 miles with a top speed of 80 mph. There are even solar panels on the roof to top off the battery and regenerative braking is employed while driving. Mass production is set to begin in 2009 and a showroom date of 2010. (Hat tip to Endadget for the story and click over to see photos.)

Other electric makers showing their wares in Paris included Nissan, with a roll out date of 2010 and global sales in 2012. Ditto for Mitsubishi. Look for coming products from Subaru, Smart, and Heuliez as well. Most have an operating range of 40 to 60 miles on all-electric power, sufficient to meet the needs of 90 percent of Americans on a daily basis. The Volt, set to hit showroom floors in 2010 with a scary $40,000 price tag, may, however, be the vehicle the turns public favor more solidly toward these vehicles. A hybrid electric, with a range of 40 miles, the Volt employs a small gasoline engine to activate battery recharging as needed and a computer system that purports to learn driver patterns and to activate the gas engine according to the degree of juice required.

Fast forward in my life to my forties when I became responsible for the care of an elderly, disabled person and airbags were one of the first things I asked about when I began shopping for the Honda Odyssey we drive now. I wanted her fragile bones protected in pretty much every way possible. I was surprised then at how far the protection had evolved. We have a 2004 that has a warning indicator showing when the passenger bags are turned off. It’s meant to protect children small enough to be injured when the bag deploys. In our case it usually happens when I put a bag of groceries on the seat.

In the past five years airbags have continued to evolve in terms of placement and deployment. Now Toyota has come up with rear seat bags designed to prevent passenger head injury in the event of a collision from the rear. On impact, the bag comes out of the roof in front of the back window and creates a curtain barrier to minimize impact. It seems like a simple idea — once someone has developed it. (Toyota has also developed knee airbags.)

Sometimes its these seemingly inelegant little advances that prove crucial when push comes to shove. So the next time you’re shopping for a new car (which granted in this economy may be awhile) ask about things like this. Trust me, you’ll be glad they’re there when you need them.

Essentially the conversion involves adding more batteries to existing hybrids like the Toyota Prius and replacing the original nickel-metal-hydride packs with lead acid batteries. (The conversion should use lithium batteries in the near future.) All to the tune of $7,500.

“Gas becomes optional,” Coquillette said. “Gas isn’t required to move this car anymore. If you want to drive a really long way, without recharging, yes, gas is required, but it gives you the flexibility of not having to burn gas anymore if you don’t want to. And that’s very liberating.” And very economical, with gas in the Bay area looking $5 a gallon square in the face.

Toyota doesn’t have anything to say about the conversions one way or the other, but the company’s environmental communications manager did offer this, “we really appreciate the fact that the Prius is the vehicle of choice” for owners trying to find more energy efficiency.

Of course what this really says is that people may not be willing for the automakers to get products like the Chevy Volt on showroom floors when there’s something they can do right now. And granted, there’s been little in recent months to inspire consumer confidence in the automotive industry.

Chalk this one up to good old-fashioned ingenuity and expect more as our times grow even more challenging.

They’ve mounted four CCD cameras on the front grill, side mirrors, and to the top rear. The resulting captured images are processed through an electronic control unit and put up on the monitor for the navigation system. Corrections are made for distortion, color, brightness, and other stuff to synthesize one overall image.

The cameras, also a Matsushita product, have view angles of 180 degrees on the horizontal and 120 degrees on the vertical. According to the report over at TechOn, “a near-infrared LED is mounted only in the side view mirror on the passenger side. When the near-infrared LED is lit, the driver can see the image in the passenger-side side view mirror on the monitor at night or in dark areas such as multi-level parking garages.”

There’s a much lengthier explanation of how the whole things works as well as comparison remarks for the similar Nissan unit. (Complete with photos.) Being an Odyssey driver myself, I can truthfully say the vans are not plagued with blind spots, in fact the visibility is remarkably good, but I wouldn’t turn down one of these systems if I could get my hands on it.

Nissan is joining the fray a little late, but they are also claiming that they’ve come up with a way to reduce both the size and weight of their electric inverters by 20 percent. If you’re a little shaky on the technology, inverters take the direct current coming off the battery and make it alternating current used by the electric motor to turn the wheels.

Nissan has developed a more efficient diode to regulate the current between the battery and the motor thus allowing the inverters to be 15 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter. That means more efficient and even smaller hybrids, a real plus since the one draw back to these vehicles is that the batteries are hefty — and it doesn’t matter why flavor we’re talking, nickel-metal hydride or lithium ion.

Right now Nissan is putting the new diode through its paces on an X-Trail fuel cell vehicle, but the plan is for the technology to find its way into all hybrid and electric products the company rolls out. Currently Nissan has a timetable of 2010 to launch a compact electric and an in-house hybrid.