What can find you a good Chinese restaurant, a reasonably priced hotel bed, the nearest ice skating rink, a store where you can buy a shirt, the best museum in town, a place to walk in the woods with your kids, a spot to park your RV, a safe port in a storm and even the way home when you are lost?
A devoted spouse? Your best friend? A cracker-jack concierge?
Maybe, but if you have trouble with relationships, you now have a new electronic pal to rely on.
This year Sony will introduce a computerized personal navigation system for autos that not only enables motorists to plot a course and navigate it as they watch their progress on a five-inch color LCD screen, but also to call up thousands of listings of hotels, restaurants, shops, museums, theaters and even RV parks-all with the click of a button.
The Sony product is the latest in a string of personal navigation aids that rely on the Defense Department’s network of 24 satellites known as the Global Positioning System (GPS), the $12 billion umbrella that helped guide Stealth bombers over Baghdad and tanks in Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.
“This is sexy,” said Keith Hendrick, president of Road Scholar Software, a Houston-based firm that has developed software for a similar navigation system called City Streets for Windows that links the military satellites to IBM compatible laptop computers. “GPS has a lot of sizzle.”
Sizzle, maybe. High-tech razzle-dazzle, for sure.
All of the new products-Oldsmobile offers an onboard navigation system as a $2,000 option for some 1994 Olds 88s-provide miniature screens with high-resolution graphics and highly detailed maps.
Once the driver has given the computers basics on location and destination, an icon appears on the map representing the vehicle. Like in Monopoly, Road Scholar even lets you choose whether you want to be a truck or a car.
After that the computer and satellites take over, guiding you along the route you select or choosing one for you if you would rather leave the driving to it.
Punch in the address you want to find, and it pops up on the screen with a suggested route. The onboard computers at once use any 3 of the 24 available GPS satellites to track the vehicle as it moves, updating its position once a second as you watch your icon make its way along the blue and red lines representing streets.
Though the GPS service available for public use is not as accurate as the one the Pentagon reserves, the system still guarantees that it places you on the map no more than 90 yards from where your vehicle is. Often it is within a few yards.
But that’s where the similarities between the in-car systems end.
The heart of the Sony system, which will be marketed initially in California, is a CD-ROM drive, a mushroom shaped antenna that perches on the car’s roof or dashboard and a receiver that captures the GPS signal.
The receiver is not much bigger than a large hardcover book and can fit under the driver’s seat. The monitor, which can be mounted next to the steering wheel, displays detailed city, state and regional maps through CD-ROM software developed by Etak Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif. It is operated by a hand-held, infrared remote control.
The Sony product is unique in that it offers EtakGuide, 7,300 listings, reviews, addresses and locations for hotels, stores, restaurants, museums, theaters, parks and RV locations on CDs.
Complied from Fodor’s travel guides and Trailer Life Magazine, the listings are extremely detailed and automatically linked to the vehicle’s position.
For example, if you select the restaurant icon and decide you want Chinese food, the system first provides a review of the nearest place, lists its best dishes and shows its price range and the credit cards it accepts.
Once you choose your restaurant, the system finds it on the map and shows you how to get there. If you don’t care what you eat, ask for the nearest restaurant and the computer pinpoints it.
The same applies to sports complexes and other places of interest. There is even an icon to click if you want to know the history of the area you are in.
The Sony product comes in two versions, one installed in the vehicle and a portable model.
But the cost for this wizardry is high. Sony Electronics’ Mobile Electronic’s Division, which is marketing the devices, estimates they will cost about $2,200, with limited software, when they go on sale in California during the second half of the year.
Road Scholar’s system, operated by a mouse, sticks to basic navigation, but with the same GPS, the same accuracy and the same Etak maps. Using hardware developed by Rockwell International Corp., the company that built the GPS, the basic software, antenna and interface for the laptop will cost less than $500, said Hendrick, the company’s president.
“We are maps for the masses,” he said.
Hendrick said he saw three levels of the market for his product. “First there are the early adopters,” he said, “the 100,000 people who will buy any new gadget.”
Second, and the largest application, would be from small commercial users, including emergency vehicles, delivery services, taxi services and dispatchers, who cannot afford the more sophisticated systems that have been on the market for years, he said.
The final level of the market would be traveling salespeople, realty agents and business people.
Sony spokesmen were more cautious about the market. Ken Turner, vice president for marketing for Sony’s Mobile Electronics Division, refused to talk about projected sales figures. Other company officials noted that 40,000 of the devices were sold in Japan in 1992, when they were introduced.
Sales in Japan jumped to 140,000 last year and are projected at 400,000 units in 1994.
Oldsmobile has secured a foothold in a potentially lucrative sector-car rental agencies.
Avis Rent A Car conducted a pilot program in San Jose, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley, outfitting a fleet of cars with the devices. The test was so successful that similar cars are being introduced in the San Francisco Bay area in the next few months.
Avis officials said the ease of operation of the Oldsmobile system, which has only seven buttons, attracted customers.
There was another factor: This system talks to you, even telling you when and where to turn.
