These technologies make it easy to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel, while still being able to make phone calls and listen to music. All of this relies on good voice recognition software.
Ford Sync
Sync technology is a rebranding of Microsoft’s Auto technology. The internet connectivity comes from the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network, navigation comes from Garmin, and speech technology comes from Nuance Communications.
The technology is divided into four different categories: mobile, music, info, safety. The real-time information provided by Sync is a complimentary three-year subscription for owners of new vehicles equipped with the service. Subscription fees apply after three years.
- Mobile
- Hands-free calling
- Incoming text messages read (only a few phones supported)
- Custom ringtones play on incoming calls (only a few phones supported)
- Loads contacts from a supported phone
- Music
- Indexes songs from music devices
- Voice commands to search music by artist, title, genre, etc.
- Intelligent music engine to “play similar” songs
- Podcast and audiobook support
- Stream audio over bluetooth (only a few devices supported)
- Powered USB port to charge and share data over
- Info (Navigation)
- Voice guided turn-by-turn navigation
- Say “traffic” and for real-time road conditions
- Say “services” and access recent news, sports scores, or weather forecasts
- Say “vehicle health” and a report shows vehicle diagnostics, scheduled maintenance information and recall information, and lets you schedule service online
- Safety
- 911 assist connects you to a 911 operator after an accident in which an airbag deploys and it will send an automatic message if your injury prevents you from speaking
Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge UConnect
I believe their technology comes from Alpine. It is again a suite of features: phone, nav, tunes, studios.
- Phone
- Voice memos
- Hands-free calling
- Loads contacts from a supported phone
- Nav
- Touch screen interface and voice commands
- Voice guided navigation
- Comes with SIRIUS real-time traffic for one year ($50 value)
- Tunes
- 30GB Hard drive to store songs or photos
- Powered USB port to charge your phone
- Watch DVDs on the screen
- Studios
- SIRIUS satellite radio for first year ($150 value)
- SIRIUS Backseat TV, family friendly channels over satellite streamed free for first year ($80 value)
What Have I Learned?
Both of these technologies overlap many features. Ford doesn’t include SIRIUS radio as a Sync feature, even though a complimentary 6-month subscription comes with most new vehicles.
It feels like Sync has more features even though Uconnect is a good contender. I know that you can upgrade Ford’s Sync software so that is appealing since new features may come with new versions. Although, if I had a family, Uconnect’s Backseat TV is compelling to keep the kids busy.
There is one feature I didn’t talk about… WiFi/Internet access. I read this article about different offerings from auto manufacturers such as GM, Chrysler, Volvo, and Ford. They all charge a monthly fee between $29-$59 after paying an initial $200+ install fee to setup a WiFi hotspot that uses cell technology to connect to the internet. The $59 fee represents the largest bandwith offering of a 5GB usage per month.
But I don’t see why those built-in options are worth it when compared to the MiFis from Sprint and Verizon. For the same cost, you’ll get as good of wireless service and you can take it with you once you park your car.
Do I Know of Any Issues?
I haven’t test driven a vehicle with either technology yet, so I can’t even vouch that either works well from experience. When I talked to a Chrysler salesman, he told me that the Uconnect navigation voice recognition was poor and it was much easier/quicker to use the touch interface to enter locations/directions.
According to the phone support list from Ford Sync, the iPhone does not support text messaging, audio streaming, or ring tone transfer.
To see what features Sync supports on your phone, look at this PDF.
I also browsed the forums for Sync and came across an interesting issue that I would run into with my iPhone. Apparently, iPhone OS 3.1 has caused complete havoc with Sync and there are a number of issues: songs re-indexing all the time, bluetooth audio streaming happening for no reason, etc. This hasn’t been fixed yet (see this forum topic).
The Next Step
My next step will be to test drive vehicles with these technologies. The problem may be finding a car salesmen who can talk about the technology in-depth.
I also wonder what is next for these systems. What is still missing? Wouldn’t adding a WiFi adapter to a car be a useful addition? You could then sync. media/maps/news directly to your car whenever a WiFi hotspot was in range. This could happen every night when you park your car at home.
I’m excited to see where this technology goes. Will a day ever come when a person doesn’t buy a car for what’s under its hood, but instead buys it because of what it has in its RAM?
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