Auto Trends

Engine Shutoff for Naughty Car Buyers-

This gadget is not always such a good one to have on your car… especially if you make a habit of being a few days late on the payment of your bills. On the other hand, for those with poor credit, this handy little device might be an amount of reassurance for the dealer that you WILL pay on time.

This is how it works - for many of these devices, after you pay your bill on time they send you a code number to type into your “black box” and it will allow you a full month’s use of your car. However, if you do not pay your bill, you will not receive a code and your car will sit out in the driveway inoperable until the “repo” person can get there.

The other method is through wireless remote that can be activated or deactivated by the push of a button. But as we all know, there will probably be ways to bypass such devices, and to stop this they will have to dig deeper into your cars electrical system… which means more problems for you!

Just as long as they don’t start putting alarm systems on homes that won’t allow the owners to enter if they forgot to pay the mortgage on time!

Web Access for Your Beemer -

Well, as if you couldn’t have already seen this one coming…BMW is going to be introducing Internet as an option in their vehicle line, called ConnectedDrive. It will use the exact same technology most cell phones use, which really has to make one wonder, why bother.

We are talking about using Edge Technology, so you know high speed should not be a problem. And it won’t be a problem, simply because high speed is simply not an option with “Edge” technology. You have slow, and then you have slow, and if you are really in a hurry, you have even slower.

At least the screen will be bigger that your cell phone and it is situated in the center of the dashboard , so it will be easy to access by both the driver and passenger. It will be controlled by a an iDrive mouse, so detailed maneuvering might be next to impossible.

For safety sake the Internet will not function while in motion, but if you’re ever stuck in a traffic jam and you notice the Beemer in front of you hasn’t moved in awhile… now you’ll know why!