New High-Tech Cars Function as Mobile Workstations
NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, for you motorists making that morning commute, you will soon have a few new gizmos to fill your time during traffic tie-ups, Lou, and those stoplights.</s>LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: We could use some more of those, I guess. CNN's Ed Garsten says high-tech devices rolling off the assembly line now will allow you to keep your eyes on the road while performing the many tasks.</s>ALLEN: Do we want to?</s>ED GARSTEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Making the most of time spent stuck on the road, if you thought the cell phone is a lifesaver, now meet the Delphi's Communiport mobile productivity center. It lets you use your personal digital assistant along with your cell phone while you're driving.</s>JEFF OWENS, DELPHI CORPORATION: You can do obviously, Web interconnectivity, here. You can bring your e-mail in and out of the vehicle via your palm device.</s>ELECTRONIC VOICE: You have three items in your business category: item one, fax presentation to team, completed.</s>GARSTEN: It's relatively cheap, less than $500, and requires no complicated installation.</s>OWENS: In literally, in five seconds out of the box, if you have got a cupholder and a 12-volt cigarette lighter, you're ready to go.</s>GARSTEN: A factory-installed version will be available early next year on Cadillac Seville.</s>OWEN: By voice recognition, using voice techniques here, keep the eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, and enable them to use the devices and still maintain a safe drive.</s>GARSTEN: Another heads-up idea, literally: new instrument displays, for the first time, let the driver decide what will appear.</s>OWENS: Anything from the miles per hour, to the brightness of the lights, turn signals. But you can also display navigation information.</s>GARSTEN: Add in the mobile productivity center and even more information can appear before your eyes.</s>OWENS: You can look at a phone list. You can look at sports scores, stock quotes.</s>GARSTEN: Delphi says it's all displayed below the sight line.</s>OWENS: So the driver never has to take their eyes off the road.</s>GARSTEN: But what about a cockpit toy for your ears? the radio in the built-in mobile productivity center has a slot for an MP3 digital music card, so you can play tunes downloaded from the Web. The engineers say, with all these onboard gizmos in the works, getting behind the wheel will never mean just driving ever again. Ed Garsten, CNN, Brighton, Michigan.