Driving Into The Future

By Anita Hamilton

Derek Lipscombe can start his car without taking the key out of his pocket. When he shifts into reverse, he can see if anything is behind him without glancing in the rearview mirror or turning around to take a look. And he can keep pace with the car ahead--no matter what the speed--without tapping the accelerator, hitting the brakes or fiddling with the cruise control.

A prototype of some supercar of the future? Nope, it's just Nissan's Infiniti FX35, a cross between a sports car and an SUV. Lipscombe, 36, an attorney in Santa Barbara, Calif., opted for a series of add-ons that have turned the latest Infiniti into a state-of-the-art technological marvel. Hundreds of thousands of other Americans are doing likewise, shelling out for cool gadgets that can help with the drive, entertain backseat passengers and--though there's some disagreement here--make the trip safer. These add-ons are pumping some fuel into the auto industry's depleted tank. New-car sales have sagged in recent months, but many buyers are willing to shell out extra for everything from satellite radios (about $200) to sensors that warn you if the car gets too close to something ($700 and up) to portable hard drives that can hold 5,000 of your favorite MP3s for that big summer road trip ($800). "People want luxury. They want entertainment. They want convenience," says George Barris. He should know: the legendary car customizer designed the original Batmobile and once decked out a Cadillac limo for Elvis Presley with a TV, a record player and even a gold-plated, electric shoe buffer (in the 1960s, that passed for cutting-edge automotive style).

Today automakers are grateful for the add-ons. Intense global competition and falling prices have made overall profit margins on new-car sales razor thin. Options, on the other hand, provide carmakers with profit margins up to 50%. Sell enough $2,000 navigation systems, and you're talking serious money.

The buyers are clearly there. Factory-to-dealer sales of mobile video and navigation devices amounted to more than $450 million in 2002, a 54% jump from 2001, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Americans bought 800,000 rear-seat entertainment systems and 300,000 navigation units. XM Satellite Radio, which went nationwide just 18 months ago, has some 500,000 subscribers, and the company expects to reach 1.2 million by year's end. And it's not just luxury-car owners who are shelling out for the high-tech extras. New-car buyers can find options like these on everyday models, such as a $25,000 Honda Accord and a $22,000 Pontiac Vibe.

But is all this gadgetry useful? TIME journalists test-drove the new devices to find out. We liked the adaptive cruise control and rearview cameras on the Infiniti and Lexus. One of our testers thought the parking sensors on the Jaguar XJ Series were great; another found them annoying, but everyone loved the cars' backseat entertainment.

Perhaps the more important question is, What do consumers say they want? According to J.D. Power & Associates, eight of the top 10 new features that consumers say they would like are safety related. These include night-vision systems, adaptive headlights and collision sensors--all available on many luxury cars today. And two companies, AssistWare Technology of Wexford, Pa., and Iteris of Anaheim, Calif., have developed lane-departure warning systems that alert drivers when they are drifting. A small camera attached to the rearview mirror monitors the car's position in relation to the lane markers on the road ahead. If the car drifts over, the system beeps to warn the driver. Already on commercial trucks, the systems should be available for cars by 2005.

But there are risks as well. Navigation systems can lead drivers astray. Voice-recognition systems don't always understand commands--or they force you to speak like C-3PO to be understood. Sensors beep for no apparent reason. Some critics wonder if all this new technology will backfire by increasing driver distraction, which already accounts for 25% of car accidents. "When you are traveling along at 60 m.p.h., a millisecond of inattention can lead to a crash, even if you have a warning system," says Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington.

But even as the kinks get worked out, many customers are enjoying the ride. Lipscombe, who paid $45,000 for his Infiniti, opted for a host of extras: a satellite-based navigation system, a rear-seat DVD player, an "intelligent key" that he never has to insert in the car, a rearview camera that displays on the navigation screen when he backs up and adaptive cruise control that automatically slows down the car when he gets too close to the vehicle in front of him, then speeds up again when it's safe. The gadgets cost him an extra $9,000; Infiniti says 40% of all FX35 and FX45 buyers have made the same decision. "It's really hip," says Lipscombe.

New entertainment options could even become standard on some vehicles. Automakers estimate that more than a third of all new minivans and SUVs are now sold with a video screen for watching DVD movies or playing video games. In some cars, like the $32,000 Honda Pilot SUV, a 7-in. monitor flips down from the ceiling so passengers in the backseat can watch. Cordless headphones keep the sound from disturbing folks in the front. For the new Jaguar Vanden Plas ($68,000) and XJR ($74,000), optional video screens ($2,650) are built into the back of the front-seat headrests, so each rear-seat passenger can watch his or her own screen. Additional jacks let kids hook up an Xbox or PlayStation to take on the road.

Sporting-goods salesman Mike Hamilton, 45, takes his family from its Manhattan Beach, Calif., home to Salt Lake City, Utah, every year at Christmas in his 2000 GMC Yukon SUV. It's a 10-hour drive, but his wife Stephanie and sons, ages 12 and 15, don't mind. That's because he paid $8,000 to install a TV tuner, a navigation system and three screens for movies, video games or TV. "After we check into a hotel, the kids ask us if they can go back into the car to play video games," he says.

As new gadgets continue to be rolled out, manufacturers are concerned about the balance between offering drivers features and overwhelming them. Last year BMW debuted its $68,000 745i with iDrive, a silver dial coupled with a small screen that a driver can use to do everything from saving radio presets to activating the seat warmers. The system was widely panned. Car and Driver dubbed it "a lunatic attempt to replace intuitive controls with overwrought silicon."

The new $68,500 Audi A8 L, available June 12, may have benefited from BMW's mistake. While it features a similar, joystick-like knob, it's supplemented with manual buttons you can push when you get tired of wading through the onscreen menus. Still, we encountered some problems in our test drive. The navigation system routinely directed us to take the least convenient route to our destination. And the trunk door popped open all by itself on two separate occasions after we left the car.

The challenge for automakers is to keep real consumers in mind. "People who design these things have to realize that the normal passenger doesn't have a degree in computer science," says Kim Vicente, director of the University of Toronto's Cognitive Engineering Laboratory. "Most of us don't care about computers. We just want to drive." And have a little fun while we're at it. --With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit