Ford is exploring a way to personalize your vehicle that doesn’t involve fancy wheel covers, decorative ground effects or unusual paint schemes.
Rather, Ford is looking into reconfigurable switches that allow drivers and passengers to place controls where they use them most.
Today, for example, you might find the power window switch on the door armrest. With reconfigurable switches you could place it in the dash, center console or wherever you choose.
Or, you could replace the power window switch with one that activates your cell phone or power seat control or add switches to activate the navigation or DVD entertainment system.
“You could put the switches where you want for what systems you want,” said Ron Miller, project leader for intelligent vehicle technologies at Ford’s Research and Advance Engineering studios.
The switches look like really big fuses that plug into sockets wherever the buttons for such items as power window, seat or door-lock controls are now.
You’d also be able to change which gauges appear in the instrument panel as well as the background colors whenever you wanted, a system earmarked for the ’05 Mustang.
Ford also is considering a keyless ignition system soon like the one in the Cadillac XLR and Lexus LS430. A fob with a host of sensors would replace the key. You’d carry the fob and only have to press a “start” button on the dash to start the car. The fob also would unlock the car as you approached or lock it when you exited. No word on when or which vehicles.
Latest from South Korea: Hyundai is developing two small sport-utility vehicles. One, code-named JM, comes out next fall as an ’05. It’s smaller than the Santa Fe, or roughly Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV4 size. It will offer front-wheel- or all-wheel-drive and a choice of 4- or 6-cylinder engines. A couple of years later, Hyundai says, there will be a larger sport-ute about the size of a Ford Explorer.
Kia also will get a version of the JM next fall as an ’05 return of its Sportage SUV that’s been absent from its lineup since ’03. But there are no plans for it to get the Explorer-size sport-ute.
The new Sportage will come with a choice of 4-cylinder or, for the first time, a V-6.
Hyundai and Kia share the same platforms on the Sonata/Optima and XG350/Amanti (new for ’04). Early next year they’ll share platforms on the next generation Hyundai Elantra and Kia Sportage, both of which are slated to bow at the Detroit Auto Show in January. A five-door wagon-like version of Kia Spectra will arrive four months later and debut at the New York Auto Show next April.
Also, for ’04 Santa Fe offers three engines, a 2.4-liter 4-cylinder; 2.7-liter V-6; and, for the first time, a 3.5-liter V-6. But the next-generation Santa Fe, due out for ’06, will offer a V-6 only.
Matter of perception: Cadillac general manager Mark LaNeve is in a bit of a quandary.
“We were No. 1 in the latest J.D. Power initial sales satisfaction index and No. 2 in the initial quality index behind only Lexus. But stop 10 people in the street and nine will tell you Mercedes is better than Cadillac. It took a while to earn the quality ranking; it looks like it will take even longer for people to recognize it.”
Good/bad news: Robert Lange, executive director of safety integration at General Motors, says he’s pleased that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s new rollover rating test recognizes that vehicles with stability control are more likely to avoid a rollover than vehicles without.
When sensors recognize a potential skid, stability control uses the anti-lock brakes and/or throttle control to prevent loss of control.
But, Lange said, he’s disappointed the public is blase about stability control, and doesn’t care to learn what it is or to pay extra money for it as an option.
“Stability control makes a vehicle safer by helping to avoid a crash when people unexpectedly reach the limits of their own control of the vehicle, which is the reason we added it as standard equipment on our full-size 15-passenger vans for ’04. Yet the take rate [purchase as an option] is low,” he said, without elaborating on just how low it is in percentage terms.
As long as Lange was in a bad mood, we figured why not ask him about the Union of Concerned Scientists claim (Cars, Oct. 6) that GM has designed and developed (in a computer) a vehicle that not only gets higher mileage with lower emissions, but also is safer than any vehicle on the road today.
“It’s easy to make claims, not as easy to build an actual motor vehicle and mass-produce millions of them annually. Anyone who can do better should get $20 billion in capital and do it,” he said.
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Hear Jim Mateja on WBBM Newsradio 780 at 6:22 p.m. Wednesdays and 11:20 a.m. Sundays.
