Another day, another example shitty behavior from a big, popular company. This time it’s Tesla who basically shut down autopilot for a purchaser who picked up a used car.
Let’s explore what happened and why it sucks.
(more…)Category: Automotive
Alpine, Pioneer, and JVC want to upgrade your car
Alpine, Pioneer and JVC all introduced new touchscreen car audio at CES. The over-riding themes this year are, ‘larger screens’, and Amazon’s Alexa for Pioneer.
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A quick update on our Lanmodo article from last week
Last week, we brought you word of a new night-vision camera/monitor system for your car (which you can see here). In that article, I had some concerns, which I heard back from the brand on. So, rather than burying that in an inline update, I thought we’d give it a separate posting.
(more…)Is the Lanmodo Night Vision System good idea?
(There’s an update to this article, which can be read here)
We, as a society, seem to be inundated with cameras. Some are there and we don’t even see them (public security cameras) and others we’re super aware of and interact with (the camera on your phone). Our cars even have cameras, most commonly in the form of a backup camera, and even in the “protect yourself in a crash report” form of a dash cam. Well, what if your dash cam could help you see even better? That’s what the Lanmodo Night Vision System is offering up.
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Get outside with Outdoors and Land Rover
If you’re thinking about reading up on the outdoors – planning an adventure, researching gear, and the like – Outdoors magazine has been one of the pre-eminent publication that folks think of (frankly, the boldly simple name seals the deal, don’t you think?) Well, they’re pairing up with another brand that truly conquers the out of doors – Land Rover – to do something new.
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BMW has changed their minds about Apple CarPlay
Cars – these days – have a lot of tech built into them. At the same time, our phones have taken on more and more capability, and the trend has seen those phone-based features get integrated into cars via things like Apple CarPlay. But what happens when a auto manufacturer decides to put their customers over a barrel? BMW did that earlier this year, and have re-evaluated their decision.
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BMW+CarPlay: Why does BMW hate their customers?
Starting in January 2018, we started hearing about BMW’s plans to charge new BMW customers $80 a year to use Apple CarPlay in their cars. These plans were widely called stupid. BMW wants to charge for both the option and the ability to use it. But it gets worse: BMW issued a software update for the rear-view camera. The update took CarPlay away from customers who previously had it working. This is bullshit.
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Norshire is here to PUMP you UP (tires! pump up your tires.)
Under-inflated tires are a safety problem at worst. At best, they ruin your gas mileage. Neither are great, but stopping at the gas station and paying to use their broken air pump sucks, too. Norshire solves this for you, by making the world’s smallest tire inflator.
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BMW following through on charging $80 per year for Apple CarPlay
BMW indicated at the beginning of 2018 that they were going to charge a subscription for CarPlay as a feature, and now they’re keeping that promise. It will cost $80 / year to unlock the Apple CarPlay feature, or $300 for a (lifetime) 20 years subscription. The decision to pay for a lifetime subscription has to be made during the original purchase of the car. The first year of CarPlay is provided for free.
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