For $1,595, Ford will sell you a Blind Spot Information System (BLIS) which uses radar to detect vehicles approaching your “blind spot.” But, as Christopher Jensen points out at the New York Times, blind spots don’t have to exist in the first place. Summarizing an SAE paper on blind spot safety, he explains how to get rid of the pesky things.

“The driver leans his head against the driver’s window and sets the mirror so that the side of the vehicle is just visible. Then, the driver leans to the middle of the vehicle (between the front seats) and does the same thing with the passenger-side mirror.”

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TTAC Commentator eggsalad writes:

In the 1950’s, everyone smoked. Car manufacturers installed electric cigarette lighters in every car. Not long after, a Very Smart Person took advantage of this universality and designed the Cigarette Lighter Plug. It was a brilliant way to get 12 volt power to all manner of accessories, from CB radios to cell phone chargers. Then folks stopped smoking. So many that car manufacturers eliminated the cigarette lighter as standard equipment. Some now offer an “ashtray delete” option. As drivers have all manner of accessories—GPS, radar detectors, Zunes, Nintendo DS, etc.—that the lighter socket itself remains. Now it’s just called a “power outlet.” Problem is, the 12 volt power outlet and its corresponding plug are absurdly large for their current functionality.

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Electronic monitoring of motorists is gaining legitimacy, as the federal government explores a pay-per-mile road tax and California mulls pay-per-mile insurance. But will the possibility of improved efficiency and use-based taxation convince drivers to accept on-board electronic spies? Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has already expressed his fondness for pay-per-mile road taxation, and the Chicago Sun Times reports that he’s willing to pay participants nearly a grand to help him test the idea.

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Motor Trend’s Angus MacKenzie recently got some seat time in the new Shelby GT500, and calls it “a pretty impressive piece — fast, loud, and blessed with the best steering ever in an American Car.” “But,” writes MacKenzie, “the thing that annoys me most about the GT500 — about the whole 2010 Mustang range, for that matter — is the live rear axle. It’s the wrong technology, done for the wrong reasons; emblematic of the cynical ‘near enough is good enough’ attitude from Motown management that helped drive Detroit’s automakers into a ditch.” And thereby restarted a squabble that makes the global warming debate look like a lover’s spat.

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In my many years as a ghostwriter for a leading exec of Volkswagen, there was one joke that was always shot down. Early VW navigation systems gave you the voice prompt “die Route wird berechnet.” Which translates to “the route is being calculated.” It could also be understood as “I’ll charge you for the whip.” My one-liner that a new VW comes with a factory-standard dominatrix was always suppressed. I wonder why.

I was reminded of my dark past when I opened Automobilwoche [sub] today, only to read that BMW intends to turn their Minis into a gabfest on wheels. Carrying the moniker “mission control,” electronics will listen to the traffic on the car’s CAN bus, and then the gizmo will drown you with clever remarks.

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You’re a ZipCar customer.
You have an iPhone in your pocket, and would like to know where the nearest available car is.
You open the ZipCar application.
The map shows you a wide selection of cars. You specify the type, the selection shows those.
You touch the screen and reserve a car.
As you get to where it’s parked, you press a button, which makes the car honk, helping you find it.
And then you open the car, enter and drive off.
Owning cars just changed—a lot.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed. How could Toyota Prius, The Next Generation, not offer direct access to Apple’s technophile (technophobe?) gizmo? No USB paradise by the dashboard lights? True story, brought to you by PriusChat (motto: “Press our buttons”). “The USB integration won’t be available out of the factory until September, and it will only come with the Navigation option package that is available in the Prius III, IV, and V. Customers who buy their Navigation-equipped Prius before September will be able to have the USB kit installed at the dealer, but at their own expense. There are no specifics right now, but it looks like in September when the USB connectivity is added to the Navigation package, the price of the Navigation package will be going up. It hasn’t been established yet whether that price increase would be the same as the price a dealer will charge to install it, or if the dealer-installed USB will be more expensive.” It doesn’t take much Insight, or a Honda Odyssey without iPhone integration, to realize that this is a major marketing misstep by the ToMoCo. Did you know that Microsoft’s Zune can operate through your vehicle’s FM radio? Just sayin’.

When developing new car gadgetry, automakers are faced with making a very basic assumption about their potential customers. Are we the consumers willing to trade our fundamental, if somewhat-anarchistic, assumptions of freedom for some wimpy, gas saving benefit? From accident black boxes to driver-behavior monitors, most red-blooded pistonheads say, hell no! Apparently BMW reckons that more people want toys than want (perceived) freedom. And they’re developing an intelligent navigation system that will learn your driving habits to prove it.

Ford has released a study (via PR Newswire) that shows its proprietary (for now) SYNC system reducing the amount of time spent looking away from the road while performing tasks that probably shouldn’t be done while driving anyway. Want to find a new song on your iPod while doing 65 on the freeway? Ford says that without SYNC this task can take 25 seconds of crash risking attention from the road. With SYNC, the task is done in a mere two seconds. Reading a text can take 11 seconds, but Ford claims that SYNC’s text-to-speech output can reduce the task to two seconds. “We know people want to stay connected in their vehicles, so Ford is continuing to deliver that connectivity for them responsibly and safely, says Susan Cischke, Ford’s group vice president of Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering. But unfortunately, their study used subjects who were already regular SYNC users. If you’re still getting used to the system, fiddling with it could return your in-car cell phone use to DUI-levels of danger. After all, how hard is it to wait for a light (or heaven forbid, suffer through a song you don’t like) before messing with your iPod? Luckily, if you do crash while playing with SYNC on the go, Ford has added an Onstar-like 911 feature to rush rescuers to your mangled Focus. Or if you want OnStar-like features from a non-Detroit OEM, that might be in the cards as GM is in talks to license its in-car Big Brother.

The vocabulary used to classify hybrid drivetrains has been lagging considerably behind new developments, as Wikipedia’s article on the matter proves. The old parallel, serial, mild and plug-in hybrid categories do little to illuminate public understanding of the underlying technology, and much to confuse it. Enter the BYD Dual-Mode, VW “Twindrive” and, now, the AVL “Turbohybrid”. With cooperation from BMW, Bosch and LuK, AVL has developed a mild-ish hybrid drivetrain. The consortium claims it’s cheaper and more fun to drive than a “full hybrid” while offering nearly the same efficiency. Care to deep dive?

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