While commuting, I came across yet another Tesla in the wild on the 405 freeway transitioning to the 10 freeway west. These things are starting to pop-up now. Pretty soon, it will be like a Prius.
Tesla Motors has a showroom in West LA where I drive past sometimes dreaming about how I could obtain one in this lifetime. However, until this week, I’ve never seen one in the wild.
I was driving on the 10 Fwy and I see a sports car coming fast on my left. I tried to figure out what it was and I wasn’t able to recognize it. I got my camera out and managed to get a few blurry shots of the Tesla in the wild.
To add insult to injury, it even had the car pool lane sticker on it. Damn.
The Honda FCX, which has been around since 2007, was sighted on the 405 recently. Apparently, it’s a prototype and not available directly to the public. This one looks like it’s a dealer test car. The FCX is a hydrogen fuel cell, zero emission vehicle (ZEV) and the EPA has confirmed a range of 210 miles. Must be nice.
According to Honda’s website, the Honda FCX Clarity is their production model of this ZEV and about 200 vehicles will be available for lease in Southern California. I wasn’t even aware that Honda has such a car out in production. Looks like everybody else is going to be playing catch-up.
I’ve seen the TV ads for the Nissan Cube but had not seen one in the wild until recently. I saw this one parked in the Ralphs parking lot in downtown.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to talk to the owner about the car because I was in a hurry and had to leave. But if I ever get a chance, I’m going to ask the owner what they think of the car.
The most interesting feature of this car is the right rear window area which has no blind spot at all.
Frankly, I wish Ford had brought their SYNus concept car to market. I’m sold on that concept car 100%. Not only does it not have a rear window, it also has a metal front windshield cover that comes out of the hood. See the SYNus video below.
Now that GM has filed for bankruptsy reorganization and showing that they are re-inventing themselves on TV, it appears that they are finally going electric… again. This is a GM electric SUV that I saw being tested on the 10 freeway in Los Angeles. I hope it’s not too late for them.
The last time I went to CES was back in the 90’s. In fact, if I remember correctly, I think I went every year for 18 years or so before I stopped going.
Well, I decided to return to CES and by chance, it happened to be the first CES in many years that had less people than the year before, probably because of this little recession thingie.
In any case, other than the Palm Pre announcement and the demo of Windows 7 Beta, I really didn’t see anything all that exciting. The Palm Pre looks very promising as the first “real” iPhone killer. This thing blows the Android OS out of the water. Windows 7 is basically Vista 2.0 and nothing at all to write home about. Some people are saying that Windows 7 may come out of Beta around September 2008. If so, that’s about when I should be almost used to using Vista, and not about to spend any more money on an OS from Microsoft.
Here are pictures of some cool rides I saw at the show.
The picture below is a concept car from Hyundai with some sophisticated electronics in it. When will it be out in the wild? Who knows.
This last picture below is the TV set (CRT at SD resolution) in my room at Bally’s, showing off it’s “Blue screen of death.” It’s amazing how many places Windows is being used. Even to check out from my room can cause Windows to crash. Nice.
As you may read previously, my attempt at going hands-free using the Motorola T505 was a failure. At my friend’s suggestion, I decided to go to the Bluetrek website to see what they had there.
They have a ton of bluetooth headsets, but they also have 2 car kits. One has a head-set plus car kit, and the other is just the car kit. The unit I got is called the Bluetrek Car Kit Suface Sound Compact, and is shown below. The MSRP is about $100 but I got mine online from Expansys where it’s currently selling for $54. You can also get this device at the Apple store.
Front showing the flat surface speaker
As you can see, the entire flat surface is the speaker. It’s very interesting technology, but it doesn’t seem to make the sound any louder than the tiny speaker that was in the Motorola unit.
After unboxing and charging the battery, pairing the unit with my LG EnV2 cell phone was a breeze, and didn’t even require typing in any passwords or anything.
Back of unit showing the clip for the visor
The picture above shows the back of the unit and the clip that is used to install the unit to the car visor. As you can see, there’s not much except for the large flat surface for the speaker on the other side.
The microphone is located on a “stick” shown on the left in the picture above. By lifting the “stick”, you move the microphone closer to you, and at the same time, this turns the device on. It might also contain an antenna for the bluetooth but that’s just speculation on my part. From what I’ve seen with bluetooth headsets, there doesn’t seem to be a need for any antennas.
Angle showing the buttons on the side
In the photo above, you can see the buttons on the right side of the unit more closely, with the microphone “stick” in the up (or on) position. The top buttons are for volume up and down. The bottom button is for “talk” and “mute.” If your phone is not set to auto-answer, you push the talk button to pick up the call. I have mine set to auto-answer so the call just comes through to the speaker phone so I don’t have to push any buttons.
The LED near the left bottom of the picture is an indicator light for power.
Installed on car visor
The device comes with a car charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket of your car for charging. This same cable unplugs from the car charger and can plug into an USB device for charging via laptop or similar devices.
Unlike the Motorola, I didn’t have any problems with buzzing or strange background noise with this device. The speaker is loud and clear. At first, I had some problems adjusting the microphone but I figured out that the best position is to have the microphone stick parallel to your face instead of having the end pointing to your mouth. After this adjustment, the outgoing sound was clear and loud enough for people to hear me.
When you turn on the device via the microphone stick, the unit with flash and make a repeated beeping sound to indicate that it’s pairing automatically with your cell phone. I like this a lot better than the Motorola which required you to push the “On” button for 3 seconds, then wait more time for it to pair.
The only thing that is a little bothersome is the microphone stick itself. On two occasions, when I was moving around in the car, I hit my head on the stick. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it’s a little annoying. It’s not a big deal but something that I thought I should mention.
Otherwise, I’ve been happy with this device, and now I am fully hands-free and legal on the streets of Los Angeles.
If you live in California, you should be aware that as of July 1, 2008, if you drive and talk on your cell phone without a hands-free device, you can get a ticket. I’ve pretty much ignored this law change until recently.
Last year, I bought this Plantronics Discovery 640 from Best Buy, I think for about $80 but I’m not sure. Assuming you know how big a casino chip is, you can see that this bluetooth cell phone headset is very small. The sound quality from this unit is excellent. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, the ear piece keeps coming off, and the charger plug keeps falling out during charging. I also just didn’t like having something in my ear for a long time. I guess I could never live in a Star Trek world where you have to have one in your ear all the time. Actually, I see a lot of wannabe deal makers wearing these things all day, and all night. They even wear it when they go out clubbing. Yeah, so cool.
As the July 1st deadline comes closer, I decided I’d better get something else pronto. So back to Best Buy I went and found this Motorola Motorokr T505 hands-free bluetooth device for about $130.
It has a rechargeable battery, a built in speaker and microphone, but can also broadcast on FM to your stereo system in your car. In reading the reviews by people, there seemed to be some complaints about the FM signal being marginal in Los Angeles.
When I tried it out, I didn’t have any problems with the quality of the sound coming from my FM stereo. The bluetooth setup was a snap, and pretty much everything worked as advertised… except for one small problem. My first test call receiver told me she heard a buzzing sound in the background. I didn’t make much of it since it could just be the connection, her cell phone, or even something in my car. So I made another call, with the same problem.
Finally, I took the unit out of my car and made yet another call and the buzzing was still there. It couldn’t be the connection, or my car, or all those people’s cell phones. The only constant was my cell phone and the hands-free device. I’m not about to change my cell phone right now so I guess I’ll have to return this unit and try to find something else.
I hope I find something before July 1st. I don’t want to go to jail.
In the last month or so, I’ve been seeing these almost golf cart sized “cars” on the road. I assumed they were electric cars but didn’t know what it was. I finally got curious enough to google it and found the company called “Smart” and their car is the “Fortwo.” [Click on the picture to see other angles of the car.]
It turns out that it’s not electric but does get good mileage. The company is a joint Venture between Mercedes-Benz and Swatch (yes, the watch maker), and it’s been out in Europe but only recently (1/2008) in the US. Because of the Mercedes engineering, they’ve put a lot of work into safety, including 4 standard airbags (2 front, 2 side).
According to the website, they have 3 models available in the US. The basic stripped version sells for $11,590 and just comes with the naked car. Their middle model called “Passion Coupe” sells for $13,590 and includes air conditioning, panorama roof, and power windows (and some other stuff). Their top model is their Cabriolet, and basically is their Coupe plus a soft top for $16,590.
Other interesting specs are:
A lot of people are probably going to be concerned about safety so their website really has a lot dealing with this issue. One of their big features is:
“The tridion safety cell is a “hard shell” that surrounds the smart fortwo’s occupants with an energy displacing system of longitudinal and transverse structural members. Then the engineering team added Electronic Stability Control (esp) and ABS brakes to make the smart even more technologically advanced.”
They have a video on the website showing an offset head-on collision between the Smart and a Mercedes, shown in slow motion from different angles. The Smart’s tridion safety cell does seem to do what’s it’s supposed to do.
When I owned my MG Midget, one of the biggest problems I had was bus and truck drivers forgetting that I was in front of them at the stop light and almost rear ending me when the light went green. However, part of that problem was how low the MG was. The Smart car is not that low. In fact, their seat is higher than normal, partly for higher visibility, but also for side collisions (as explained on their website).
The price seems perfect for High School and College kids and the safety features may help parents feel more comfortable with their newbie drivers going on the streets. The middle model has a MP3 (read iPod) input for their stereo system. It’s clear that their demo-market is head-to-head against Toyota’s Scion.
It’s small, but “smart.” If I get a chance to drive one of these, I’ll report back.
As the holiday season goes into overdrive, so does gas prices. It’s such an interesting coincidence that when people have to travel to meet their friends and family, the oil companies jack up the gas prices. Weird.
This is a picture of a gas station price sign in downtown, that is electronic (maybe LED), and not the regular plastic numbers that they have to manually change with a stick.
With prices fluctuating so often, you would think that all the gas stations would get this high tech sign with electronic numbers that probably can be updated via the Internet.
Of course, this convenience could encourage the gas station owners to change the prices every hour, on the hour. Maybe it’s not such a good idea afterall. At least not for us drivers.
