Originally published February 19 2006
High-tech electronics are counted on to sell cars
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
News.com looks at the trend in automobile manufacturing of pumping up the electronics in a vehicle to attract tech-savvy customers.
To some young drivers, a car that's also a video game system may sound like a dream come true--or so Nissan Motor hopes with a new concept car aimed at gamers.
Nissan's Urge sports car, introduced at the North American International Auto Show here this week, is a prototype where the steering wheel and pedals become game controllers when the car is still.
The Urge may be one of the more extreme examples of a trend to introduce more entertainment features to help differentiate a vehicle in a crowded marketplace, especially to a generation used to mobile phones and portable music players like iPods.
High-end features like navigation systems and backseat video monitors can add as much as $2,200 to the cost of a car, according to J.D. Power and Associates.
Such features performed well in a study rating consumers' awareness and willingness to purchase, and carmakers are aggressively promoting cars as entertainment centers.
"That trend is definitely growing," J.D. Power's Larry Wu said, adding that the lag time for adopting new technology in cars is much shorter than it used to be, though still a far cry from the speed of the consumer electronics business.
The xB, built in Japan and costing about $17,000, docks an Apple Computer iPod next to driver controls and has small, airplane-style screens in both headrests.
GMC, the General Motors division focused on trucks and vans, is marketing its GMC Explorer as a "rolling living room," GM's William Bleau said at the auto show.
"A lot of the value that carmakers put in their vehicles is in electronics," said Grimme, whose company is the No. 1 supplier of semiconductors to the auto business, including to top-tier suppliers like Delphi, Germany's Bosch Group and Japan's Denso.
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