1. An emotive advisory system for use by an occupant of an automotive vehicle, the system comprising: a computer configured to receive input indicative of an operating state of the vehicle and input indicative of an emotional state of the occupant, generate data representing an avatar having an appearance and data representing a spoken statement for the avatar having at least one speech characteristic, the appearance and the at least one speech characteristic (i) depending on at least one of the operating state of the vehicle and the emotional state of the occupant and (ii) conveying a simulated emotional state of the avatar to the occupant to prompt the occupant to pose a query regarding a cause of the avatar's simulated emotional state, receive input indicative of a query from the occupant regarding the avatar's simulated emotional state, in response to the query, generate data representing another spoken statement for the avatar and including information about the cause of the avatar's simulated emotional state, and output the data representing the avatar for visual display and the data representing the statements for the avatar for audio play.
1. An emotive advisory system for use by an occupant of an automotive vehicle, the system comprising: a computer configured to receive input indicative of an operating state of the vehicle and input indicative of an emotional state of the occupant, generate data representing an avatar having an appearance and data representing a spoken statement for the avatar having at least one speech characteristic, the appearance and the at least one speech characteristic (i) depending on at least one of the operating state of the vehicle and the emotional state of the occupant and (ii) conveying a simulated emotional state of the avatar to the occupant to prompt the occupant to pose a query regarding a cause of the avatar's simulated emotional state, receive input indicative of a query from the occupant regarding the avatar's simulated emotional state, in response to the query, generate data representing another spoken statement for the avatar and including information about the cause of the avatar's simulated emotional state, and output the data representing the avatar for visual display and the data representing the statements for the avatar for audio play. 2. The system of claim 1 wherein the computer is further configured to determine whether a predetermined event has occurred and to query the occupant via spoken dialog if the predetermined event has occurred.