Gadgetory

there have been a lot of tech innovations in cars lately like pointless 3d maps voice commands that emulate a moron and head-up displays that looked as if a five-year-old got bored halfway through the job but I've got some better ones I'm Brian Cooley with my top five simple technologies all cars should have number five smart seat heaters now even if you set your seat heater to lower medium it should be smart enough to start at high until it gets to lower medium any modern home furnace can do that and those things are about as smart as a milk carton also why does the automatic temperature control on the dash and the seat heater have no communication with each other there's got to be a link there now I put all this at number five because I've just seen this show up in a tiny way in a few cars but not nearly enough considering how much we love this creature comfort number four small car keys drive a Jaguar lately you better wear strong pants the key is the size of a small ham and slightly more dense and they're just the poster child for an entire industry trend toward these huge heavy transponder key fobs any tech that makes you miss the way they did it back in the 60s is tech that's gone wrong number three speed limits on speedometers one of you needs to patent this right now and make a grip here's the idea a number of cars already have the ability to know and display the posted speed limit where you're driving but they typically show it way the hell over on the GPS screen no car I've driven yet takes the simple step of illuminating the correct numeral on the speedo dial what could be more elegant and glanceable don't forget to share some of your patent troll earnings with old cooling number two Bluetooth time sink in most cars you still have to set the clock here in 2014 that's VCR like now some cars with factory navigation do auto set the time from GPS but many don't and non nav cars can't yet there you are with a paired bluetooth phone a perfect source of accurate network time for the dashboard clock and yet it doesn't talk to your phone surely a Bluetooth spec to do that could have been done years ago number one is media unites all media I'm fed up with cars that still have separate buttons and often separate interfaces for radio media and what they call media apps guys it's all media put it in one place I bet you've had some brilliant simple ideas for car tech if you care to air them out in public shoot him at me and I'll share some of the best on a future show on cars at cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching