Posted 09/30/09 at 08:37:03 AM by Paul Lilly

You'll have to kick it old-school and visit a dealership the next time you plan to buy a vehicle from General Motors. That's because the auto maker is puling the plug on its seven-week experiment of selling new cars in California through eBay, the online auction site.

As reported by The New York Times back in August, the eBay venture was considered a "crucial part of GM's effort to return to profitability after five years of heavy losses." Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president for U.S. sales, said the auctions would be attractive to a customers who wish to skip the whole negotiating process, but GM quickly found the opposite to be true. Vehicles were given a 'Buy-it-Now' price equal to GM's supplier price and potential customers could submit a lower offer. Not surprisingly (except to GM), dealers reported receiving low-ball offers. Welcome to eBay.

Had the program succeeded, eBay said it would try to expand it nationally and was open to working with other auto makers. But with GM dealers saying the online marketplace didn't boost sales, eBay may have a tough time drumming up interest from others.

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Posted 09/22/09 at 08:32:27 PM by Ryan Whitwam

If you’re in the market for a luxury car in the next few years, they might try to upsell you an Atom-based “infotainment” system. BMW and Mercedes-Benz expect to get the units in cars sometime in 2012. Mercedes-Benz will make the systems available to buyers of its S-Class and C-Class vehicles. BMW will have them in the 7-series.

Intel’s Paul Otellini said these would be just the first of many in-vehicle entertainment systems based on the Atom platform. It’s possible this is the beginning of a trend. Maybe these carputers won’t be relegated to luxury models for long. This is yet another creative use for the Atom chip, but will anyone be interested?

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Posted 02/24/09 at 05:14:57 PM by Alex Castle

A major theme of this year’s TechFest—the conference for Microsoft’s researchers to show off all their coolest projects—has been human-computer communication. Of all the demos we’ve seen so far, we think the Commute UX in-car dialog system, seen in this video, is the most likely to actually impact our lives within the next, say, five years.

Commute UX is an advanced speech recognition system designed for use in cars. In the video, Principal Architect Ivan Tashev shows off how it can be used to quickly and smartly (based on incomplete information) select a song to play from an onboard MP3 player. It can also manage your cell phone, allowing you to dial a contact by voice (yawn), or even to dictate a reply to a text message (!). Finally, Tashev demonstrates how the car’s user manual can be integrated into the system, allowing you to ask questions about the operation of your vehicle, a feature that will be especially useful in rental cars.

We may have exaggerated a little in the title; Commute UX isn’t going to help you fight crime, or even keep you company on the long, lonely road. Still, it does look like it could be an incredibly practical technology for controlling the peripheral elements of your automobile. Stay tuned for coverage of other new technologies shown at TechFest!

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Posted 02/05/09 at 06:59:16 PM by Alex Castle

The afternoon session at TED today wasn’t exactly a smorgasbord for those of us looking for high-tech tidbits, but there were some fascinating talks about emerging technologies that will make a major impact on the way we live our lives. So even though they're a little outside of our normal field, we’ll give you a quick rundown of some of the interesting developments.

One of the most exciting presentations of the afternoon was given by Shai Agassi, the one-time heir-apparent at SAP who gave it all up to found a company called Better Place. Better Place’s mission is to create a fossil-fuel-free transportation infrastructure, and after hearing his talk it’s hard not to believe that they can do it. His plan centers on a widespread grid of charging and battery-swapping stations that will allow electric cars a much greater operating range. Also interesting is his idea that when a person buys an electric car, they shouldn’t have to pay for the expensive battery, but rather “rent” it from his company.  According to Agassi, the combined effect of this system will be electric cars that are cheaper and more efficient than their gas-guzzling brethren.

Read on to learn about more new technologies!

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