4G Toyota Prius: A smartphone on wheels
The dash of the LTE Connected PriusHere's a dashboard shot of the Alcatel-Lucent "LTE Connected Car," perhaps the world's most Internet-enabled, multimedia automobile.
Included inside this 2010 Toyota Prius are four touchscreens - two in the dash and two behind the front seats - that access numerous car features, as well as the Internet, numerous multi-media functions, etc. In all the LTE Prius offers more than 50 applications
"We wanted to show what is possible with next-generation mobile networks," Derek Kuhn, vice president of emerging technology, told TheStreet during a technology demo Tuesday in New York. The company has even described the tricked-out Prius as a "smartphone on wheels."
In a related story, Wired reported that while this vehicle is only a prototype, this technology should be available in the Prius within 3 years.
Labels: toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:54 PM
3 Comments:
Indigo Incarnates
I'm all for gadgets, but... Wow... When is the driver supposed to have time to look at the road with all those displays competing for attention? Ha ha ha ha!
this capability already exists with a simple small laptop/netbook and the USB cellular broadband dongle.
The last two summers, we took long road-trip vacations (5-6 weeks) and use a laptop connected to the broadband cellular network - even at highway speeds doing email and using GOOGLE Maps to determine alternate route scenarios which we then would feed into the dashboard GPS.
We'd research the places we were visiting.. almost in real time..
we'd find out ... for instance.. where Battery's Plus was located in Duluth.. then fed the address into the GPS and went straight there.
ditto when we needed to do laundry.. We'd find the address of the laundromat... and navigate directly there.. then we'd figure out what was close by that we could check out why we waited for the washer and dryers.
We found virtually all the campgrounds nearby as we traveled ..
But our rule is that the driver does non of this unless stopped.
The navigator does all of the research and queries...
but if you want to see a real irony - check out the police cars of many jurisdictions now days.. they have a fixed laptop positioned over the center console and pointed towards the officer.. clearly for him/her to use.
Verizon and others are now selling mobile cellular hubs that allow up to 4-5 laptops to connect to it via wi-fi...
Want to know where the cheapest gas is relative to your location.. or how about if you're driving a NG Hybrid and you need to know where the refill locations are..
the whole new field called location-based advertising is exploding but not yet in the general public's consciousness.
hopefully, we'll have auto driver soon so we can really enjoy these technologies!
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