High-tech gadgets woo young buyers

The car CD player is going to die. Many young buyers will never play a CD in a vehicle — ever.

The world inside a car has dramatically changed, according to all of the evidence on the floor of Cobo Center during the 2012 North American International Auto Show.

Part entertainment and part information, infotainment systems have taken center stage with many carmakers, and they're packed with more electronics than a spaceship (and often are just as complicated). But they are essential to attracting young customers, who apparently feel anxious if they're not in touch with all of their friends 24/7.

Cadillac has its CUE system on display. CUE stands for Cadillac User Experience and is one of the most advanced telematics/infotainment systems around. The CUE touch screen provides feedback when you touch it. It, in a sense, touches you back, providing a click or pulse so the driver can spend less time looking at the screen and more time looking at the road. It's genius.

But is it necessary?

That's the thing about all of these systems; no matter if it's MyFord Touch, Toyota's Entune, Hyundai Blue Link or General Motors Co.'s OnStar. Each does something positive, but many arrive with a few negatives as well, said Jake Fisher, a program manager at Consumer Reports, the influential automotive shopper's guide.

"They need to be simple," said Fisher, as he toured the displays at Cobo Center.

Consumer Reports recently bumped the Ford Edge from its highly sought after "recommended list" because MyFord Touch caused drivers to spend too much time looking at the large display screen.

Ford has addressed many of the magazine's comments with improvements to its MyFord Touch system and voice-operated Sync system. While I have always liked MyFord Touch (and never found it too difficult to use and never got into an accident using it), I see why some changes were made to it. Everyone is, obviously, not as smart as I am.

And Fisher has a point about overly complicated systems.

They don't enable good driving; in fact, they make us worse.

"I would never even consider buying a car today without Bluetooth," Fisher said.

Many consumers wouldn't, either. It has become a standard option for them.

To take it one step further, most people expect to get into their vehicle and have their phone automatically sync with their car, even if they're talking on the phone as they get in.

Hands-free phone operation and bans on text messaging while driving have become rallying calls in many states following a spate of accidents connected to distracted drivers. Currently, nine states ban drivers from talking on a cellphone without some sort of hands-free device and 35 states have banned drivers from texting while behind the wheel.

Unfortunately, distracted driving has become a buzz phrase that many are familiar with but not sure what it means. In the simplest terms, distracted driving means not paying attention to the most important thing you're doing in the car: driving.

Drinking coffee is distracted driving. So is trying to calm a crying baby in the back seat. So is everything else a person does in the car that does not involve driving. We're a multitasking nation; we assume we can do three things at the same time. Of course, what we're doing is three things poorly, and one of those things is operating a 2-ton vehicle at 70 mph.

Perhaps the best telematics system is one that would simply turn the car's center stack display screen into an operational version of the driver's cellphone. It could easily use an accelerometer to judge when the car is moving and block out some functions.

It would allow drivers to operate everything with the same knowledge they have already learned about their phones. They could open up all of those apps everyone talks about — Pandora, Stitcher, I Heart Radio — and listen to whatever it is they listen to.

It could be as simple as a cradle for the phone. That's it. If the phone has voice-recognition software — and soon it will — the driver would already know how to use it.

Sweet and simple. Or, you could turn off your cell phone, turn on the radio and just drive.

sburgess@detnews.com

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