http://www.hybridcars.com/ford-car-connectivity-enabler-electric-cars-not-prerequisite-27860/ Auto alternatives for the 21st century Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:24:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.hybridcars.com/ford-car-connectivity-enabler-electric-cars-not-prerequisite-27860/#comment-24991 Ronnie Sat, 01 May 2010 17:01:22 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/wordpress12/?p=6925#comment-24991 Looks great. I can’t wait for the real electric cars to hit the markets.

]]> http://www.hybridcars.com/ford-car-connectivity-enabler-electric-cars-not-prerequisite-27860/#comment-24990 AL Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:19:54 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/wordpress12/?p=6925#comment-24990 I worry about that perhaps my electric car get infection by malicious software, result in vehicle malfunction, and increase probability of accidents.

]]> http://www.hybridcars.com/ford-car-connectivity-enabler-electric-cars-not-prerequisite-27860/#comment-24989 ex-EV1 driver Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:27:21 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/wordpress12/?p=6925#comment-24989 This is just the uninformed imagining silly things. As an EV driver who has logged 10′s of thousands of miles, including several thousand miles of road trips, I can see the use for web connectivity in the car but they seem to have it mostly wrong. The benefit is for me to check the car’s charging status when I’m not in the car. Charging times, today, are a variable event depending mainly on the temperature and whether the charger breaker has blown (a common problem at RV parks). Knowing whether your car is charged or charging (or how fast it is charging) would be useful information to have while you are away from your car so you can do other things while your car charges.
Another useful thing that would help battery life is if you could remotely start your car charging. It turns out that leaving a li-ion battery fully charged for long periods of time stresses it out and decreases battery life. It would be nice to be able to leave a car plugged in but call it a few hours before you need it to tell it to actually start charging.
The only thing that would be of much use while driving is knowledge of whether a charger is in working order or possibly whether it is occupied. This generally should happen before you depart and, as TD astutely points out, can be done using your cellphone just as well as having an internet connection in the car.
I see a lot of these problems going away as charging infrastructure proliferates but web connectivity could be useful today.
What really scares me is having Microsoft in my car or controlling my household electricity.

]]> http://www.hybridcars.com/ford-car-connectivity-enabler-electric-cars-not-prerequisite-27860/#comment-24988 TD Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:58:22 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/wordpress12/?p=6925#comment-24988 Why would I need or pay hundreds or thousands of dollars extra for all this connectivity in a car when I can get all that connectivity from my phone? And at least with my phone I can carry it with me when I leave my car.

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