Gadgetory

how well does Siri play with Bluetooth Ford reprogram ease DCP gearboxes and what are your favorite EQ settings on your car stereo all that more on this week's episode of cnet roadside assistance this is the show where we take a minute to answer your questions and read your comments I'm antuan goodwin alongside Wayne Cunningham with Mitchell Chang on the controls let's jump right into it as first question is pretty interesting it's comes in from Mason Salt Lake City not the rapper it says hi guys i have a 2004 350z which I love it has the factory Bose stereo system in it and i'm no audiophile so this works great for me however it's beginning to come up on about 10 years old and there's no aux input let alone bluetooth or other connectivity I've even tried the adapters with the cassette on the the end aside from FM units which our hearts use in the city is there anything I might not be aware of that would work last show Nathan Salt Lake City yeah remember when just just 2005-2006 finding an aux input in a car was actually a I'm practically a miracle oh yeah yeah I had a car of about that same generation my RSX type-s was with a note for it and they'd had it both just a minute similar situation here I just gave up and use tape adapters for everything that was before I was a car tech editor that's true this is a question we get a lot actually is how can i hook up my ipod or whatever to my car right and so the interesting thing about Bose systems with that vintage is that usually they consist of two parts you've got your head unit which may have like a six-disc in-dash changer and a tape deck your radio and all of that and that sends a pre amplified signal to an external amplifier which is underneath your seat somewhere usually underneath the passenger seat and maybe in the driver seat i'm not sure but and then that amplifies the the audio and before it sends it ultimately out to the rest of your speakers in your car so there's actually a couple of ways that you can kind of a couple of different places that you can kind of get in between those those signals to kind of interjecting the easiest way that actually require zero cutting and in very little rewiring is instead of using a wireless FM transmitter use a wired FM modulator that would actually plug in line between the cars antenna and the antenna port on the back ear car stereo so it's a physical connection it can send a stronger signal since it's not FCC regulated and it you can even actually overpower week radio stations with with a good FM wired FM modulator so there's one option that you've got there the other option are going to be integration kit that may take take advantage of I'm not sure if the has a satellite radio input but the the integration kit sometimes take advantage of that basically by piggybacking you're pretending to be a satellite radio receiver and allowing you to select stations or artists as stations that way that'd be a connection on the back of the head unit right off ya again and they might have other yeah connections back there for maybe a CD changer if that was a I don't know if that was an in-dash unit in this car or a you know one of those cartridge things or something thank you but you know a teggy and I'm kind of thinking that it may have been a fix this in-dash changer if anything if it is either a single dish single disc in dash or an index changer I think bio for most automakers were ditching the external CD changers and everything except minivan yeah i just looked this up actually the amp should be located in the far left trunk corner and says so there's actually a lot of good online stuff about where to find this than you or to find equipment in your car even easier to reach yeah i would think just pop the hatch and pull up a couple of panels you have to take your seat out or you know contort yourself upside down like I did when I was doing that because that brings us to the the last way that you could that you can add all sorts of integration to your system is actually by interrupting the signal that comes from the receiver and then it was between the receiver and the amplifier so you would use something like a DSP or a line out converter or anything basically to you cut the wires that we come off of the back of the receiver you in insert this device in line between it in the amp and then basically then you'd be able to add whatever you wanted the one that I'm thinking of right now is the rockford fosgate I think it's called the 362 it's got an interest it's got a weird name rockford fosgate but basically what this allows you to do is it does a number of things first of all it's a DSP it's actually called the 360 60 is actually a 3 the word 63 it's at eight channel DSP so it the first thing that it does what it's designed to do is actually allow you to tune the audio so it it gets the signal is coming out of the receiver it cleans it up and then it allows you to kind of tweak the found the way that you want but what's interesting about this this particular unit is that it also has the ability to do things like add auxiliary inputs you can add a bluetooth module that allows you to do audio streaming a2dp wireless streaming also i'm not sure does he was easing i thought i have ipod he doesn't really specify what he's looking specify yeah just want something to connect yeah I mean I suppose you could put like maybe an ipod cable or iPod adapter into this you could yeah you def did you you could you could go I think you just use the auxiliary input in that case yeah so it's actually an interesting way to add that the problem with this method if you're not interested in really kind of getting in and and playing with the 31 band EQ and and plugging your laptop up to it via USB and really kind of tweaking the the phase delay between the channels is that you're paying 700 bucks to add an auxiliary input and Bluetooth your car so it's not exactly the most cost-effective way to do it that most cost-effective would probably be like a cheap integration kit yeah basis points out he's not a lot of audio files so probably doesn't want our tweak all the I love maybe could become an audio file by tweaking all this or you just keep using the tape adapter until the tape player dies we should all inevitably do they all do so I think I'm easy to change that head unit on those cars that are probably well integrated that's just above a receiver it should pop right out it's just you know you when she once you pop the receiver out then you've also got to pop out the bose amp which I mean most receivers have integrated amplifiers anyway that put out a reasonable amount of power yeah so that that's a couple of options that I think we've actually probably discussed on the show before but it you know your mileage may vary it just really depends on on how deep into it you want to get if you just don't care about audio quality but you want an easy is you want something that's easy to install and maybe even easy to yank out why are deaf in module eight ER is probably going to be the best thing for a non audio file right right we've got a voicemail this actually commented on a question we answered the last week about about Reuben sandwich was looking for new tires for his Kia and we were wondering why does he needed tires on a new Kia hey cnet guys I we've been over here from Boston leaving sandwich I just use the sandwich because it's more memorable than Reuben but I'm just getting back to you guys it is the 2011 kia optima aspects and the reason i decided to buy new tires even though my car only has six thousand miles on it was because a lot of here in Massachusetts be called an asshole they tend to ship lanes without directional and you have to stop short and so long story short a woman decided to pull that on me and I break even with electronic stability control abs and all these other technologies in the car the car just slid into the back of burn no damage was done thanks for the spike strip in the front of my car which is a great thing for Kyle parky but uh yeah that's the biggest reason I had to get rid of them and so I actually looking from tons of 97 das NT there and I actually got them how to take them back they gave me the wrong tire size and I wanded up with continental extreme pws which has the DWS into the tire itself not on the side walls with actual tires so as soon as your s disappears you no longer have a snow traction the W disappears you no longer have what traction and if your ID disappeared then you have no more dry traction look the show guys thanks for that our last on that show thank you bye yeah so it seems that Reuben was looking for really grippy tires I guess when I really need here which is probably why he went with those bridgestone potenza at the beginning those are a lot of people use those for like autocrossing not that particular one but the bridgestone potenza brand you see that a lot of times yeah and I guess the not only to avoid sliding into the red cars are all over the road but I guess also that you know Massachusetts you're dealing with whether you know yeah and I mean depending on how the ABS system is tuned I mean the point of abs is actually you know it keeps you from sliding but then it does so by basically letting go of the brakes every couple of milliseconds yeah so the idea is that you know it well I mean adding more grip may decrease your stopping distances it may actually not it just really depends on how short you need to stop but yeah it's always maintained that tires are the best upgrades you can make to a car right of course with one of these as he describes Massholes if they if they cut into you so you could too quickly i mean there's nothing you can do and yeah if any suggestions literally nothing yes no note nothing you can do about that I do think that's interesting the wear indicator on those tires were I think he said it's actually imprinted on the tread of the tire and that if once you start seeing the letters disappear then you basically are changing the rating of the vehicle because the rating of the wheel the tire because you have less I guess less the profile of the tread depth changes yeah and that that's it that's a great little detail and you know something they put on a quality tires opposed I guess something that's just cranked out to get the lowest price for right I really missed those tires that had like a colored strips molded into oh yeah and so you did a burnout you could leave like a nice that's colored I don't think it did too many burnouts and I Kia Optima SX it's an sx you might maybe front tires spinnin radically exactly haha you could do a burnout in the yaris you can do a Burnout know anyway I've never doubt in the arts anyway bill comes from larry d he says i'm looking to replace the head unit in my 2003 toyota sequoia i put a kenwood unit in my wife 2000 maxima so she can use hands-free bluetooth the great folks at Crutchfield set me up and she loves it back to the sequoia i went hands-free to but the old us-spec ipod interface has to go he noticed that kruskal's website shows a lot of units that are available for pre-order are these units that were announced at CES or something he's not used to pre-order a sort of thing and he also wonders if we have a recommendation for under the four hundred dollar price range bluetooth and ipod iphone are the only requirements so it doesn't sound like he wants to replace the stereo I just kind of sounds like he wants to add bluetooth and an iphone or if you technically the ipod connectivity read an adapter yeah so I don't like what are your thoughts on the the pre-orders I think maybe you know the well the coal car stereo realm is I mean it may have gotten hit a little bit by you know some I mean there was the disasters last year and in Asia maybe that hit the hit these problems or this industry a little bit but i don't know i mean these are very specialty parts so i don't there was i don't think there was a ton of new stuff shown at CES they certainly still have like a lot of stuff from the previous generation still available so maybe it was just a glitch in crutchfield supply yet i don't know i don't think i don't think there's any particular reason why you know there's a lot of stuff that we've seen and it's it's not available just yet but it will be soon they hey sometimes there's like just R&D time built into it and then the iphone 4s guys we're still relatively new not in the tech world but to you know some company that you know making a kit that you know they're trying to figure out a way that as we'll talk in a second make sure that siri works with it or you know any any any number of things could be the reasons why do you think it held up it may actually just be that um the sequoia is just not a high priority vehicle for a lot of these manufacturers your your Scotia's and your your Metra's and they just maybe haven't gotten around to doing it yet the too busy designing camaro integration kits that have touchscreens on them so it could be any number of reasons yeah a lot of the adapters though are fairly Universal I mean you know take you talked about the us-spec iPod adapter all right I'm not sure which one he's got it I don't know what his problem with that one is maybe it's just like I said adapter or something but some of them have been pretty good but if he wants to replace the whole head unit which may be the the thing I didn't quite get that from his email but and but I think one thing he points out here is he had a very easy time replacing his wife's head unit mm-hmm so I think he's got that upgrade bug now and which is a good thing and I think you know pay more people need to realize how frankly easy it can be to upgrade a hen you dint in a car and get iphone connectivity Bluetooth connectivity all this stuff for really fairly cheap hmm um you know I mean you've seen head units at 150 bucks 200 bucks you get all this you know pretty advanced stuff that if you optioned it in a new car it might cost you you know six hundred thousand dollars right and yeah the interesting thing is that you know for a Toyota generation like a the mounting kits like the actual bracket that you would use to hold a receiver in usually about 12 or 15 bucks but I'm thinking that you know because I don't know if he's just trying to keep it under 400 bucks you could get a new stereo and a kit that has bluetooth and I've been and I nite by connectivity that'll probably be better than what's already in there the world's your oyster if you're any good if you want to go single din um you can't get anything above 400 bucks so just find something that you like Sony's got kids that have Bluetooth built into it they're sort of tune trinkets pioneers got a couple of them Alpine does a really good job with their sort of necklace receivers that'll you'll be pushing right up on your four hundred dollar price point there but I think pretty much any single day and receiver that I've ever recommended on the show probably work for that yeah and yeah there's a lot of options I guess the big thing you want to consider right now is would you want to go meh class or not I mean do you still want to play CDs or are you over that you just want to bring in your ipod iphone whatever and hook that up yeah there's an amazing man I'm not seeing a lot of stuff that says pre-order there's certainly a mix of in stock and out of stock and right what not on the Crutchfield site which is just that mean that is the go-to place for any any of this kind of upgrade and you want to do and if you just if you wanted to keep your stock stereo and you just wanted to add ipod control and add bluetooth to your vehicle but to keep the stock stereo the one that have recommended on a number of occasions at the dice mediabridge DIC ii their immediate media bridge for toyota's the 270 280 bucks and it basically plugs into the satellite radio receiver on the back of your stereo and gives you ipod bluetooth you can keep your satellite radio if you have it by piggy like ice piggybacking through it and then you also get an auxiliary inputs pretty much adds just about you know everything that you'd want a little bit more and then the interesting thing about that is that if you get the right adapter for it i think can keep your steering wheel controls for things like volume skip and if there's a mute button you get that also nice nice so probably with that you'd mean you need to do a little wiring behind the head unit and i just look plugs in it's like a harness yeah so it's just like you you take the dashboard apart plug it in plug it in and you're good to go right maybe a few wires underneath the you know the carpet or whatever to get that the adapter into this may be the center console if you want it there or maybe put it in the glove box which yeah yeah maybe but if you're going if you're doing if you do if you're going Wireless you using bluetooth for everything oh that's true yeah i mean that that last part is even optional i always think of plugging in just because i've got an ipod or iphone so it's yeah looking in good yeah definitely good but i mean that's just like one usually you could kind of drape that kind of threw the the back of the glove compartment without having to cut anything yeah and then just kind of have that pig tail hanging out that's what I do we've got another question about a Toyota Toyota Tundra this is from Renee be rini rani Renee Renee says good day gentlemen I recently purchased a 2012 toyota tundra double cab look it for a good decent backup camera because it's hard to see directly behind me due to the truck sighs my chocolate factory bluetooth aux and USB ports but no large screen Ted unit so standard radio display I'm looking in the Magellan 9055 LM with wireless backup camera or a wired rearview backup system from costco by rearview safely safety i prefer a wireless system and also one that's not going to cost me an arm and a leg and he much as yes as the droid bionic and it's curious if there's any way connect the camera wirelessly to his phone and use that as a back of you i guess um no you can't connect your i mean not without doing some serious serious modding i don't think there's a like a turnkey solution for that but your question as to whether the Magellan is good and the backup camera is good I actually just got both of them in this week so I'll be testing the the Magellan 9055 LMK and it's wireless backup camera this week you'll be able to see the full review on cnet car tech sometime next week so i'll let you know whether it's worth it and that's the one that integrates with the pnd with the right navigation device so you got your magellan navigation and then it the camera is actually universal it on one in there's the camera that it actually gets its power from 12 volt in the back of your car thinking that you can you basically tap into the rear view lights of your car that's how it knows you're backing up and then on the other end you've got the wireless receiver that basically just has a video out so you can kind of plug it into anything whereas so if you decide to upgrade your head units to like a pioneer or al pie and you could probably keep the camera at that point and then take advantage of the in dash display so it is i like that they've done that modular lee i'm sure they would prefer that you buy the Magellan P&D but I like that they didn't lock you into that though but just stay tuned for that I'll let you know whether that combo is that is worth the money right now would you recommend wireless or wired what would be your wires best but I mean the wireless systems the last time I test the wireless system was about two years ago and I ran into an issue where I was when I was driving around I would occasionally pick up video feeds from security cameras because they used the same wireless protocol I don't know if the new systems have fixed that but this is like an old audiovox system about two years ago and I could just I could just park my car around the corner from our offices in seed security camera from a design firm that's nearby and then the next alley over if I parked in that alley I could watch TV because they had some sort of like a wireless cable box or something you know just I could just watch the Food Network no sound tiny two and a half inch screen so we'll see if they fix that Oh a wired system takes a little bit more effort to wire because you've got to run the cable through the body of the vehicle yeah that's the longest that's the full distance yeah the better it is like a solid connection for starters and you only have to do it once so I think that if you it's worth the effort but I mean for ease of installation the wireless is definitely the way to go and one thing I like to with this kind of system or one good way to go here too is you can get these mirrors rear view mirrors that actually have a screen small LCD integrated into the the rearview mirror and so when you do put the car in the back up that that screen lights up and suddenly you're looking that view and you're actually looking in the same place you would normally look when you're backing up you know over your shoulder well that's that's one place you should be looking up that I maybe that was screened back at other ways to do that but but yeah so that image pops up in your rear-view mirror so I can just look up there and get a fuller view behind you then you would get in the just using the mirror itself and I assume that Magellan would work with some of those mirrors that are out there hey you just have to like run the connection the it would just be a matter of installing the the wireless receiver in the right place and run into connection the problem with those is that usually the image is about two inches diagonally uh this is a big ol what is this like six inches seven inches holy crap that's a huge screen on that looks so stupid on the avails that so yeah you get like a bigger screen there and you're in a big old truck and your windshields pretty far away yeah having that a little bit of extra real estate couldn't hurt so now what about a two DP kit for with it'll work with Siri so yeah we got an email from Jim he says I'm looking for a car kit to wirelessly stream audio for my iphone i will be using the line in on my car stereo so it needs a microphone mainly to you Siri of course it needs to work with theory I would also like either a line in or cable connection from my ipod so I could charge the phone and get a bitter hardwired connection for log longer trips what do you guys recommend i started laughing halfway through that because i just realized that he fit that he'll be plugging this into the line in on a stereo but he needs something that has a line in i thought that was a little funny I said wirelessly stream audio from his phone so the easiest way to do that uh I got props today alright so the easiest way to do that would be this little thing right here and this is the extreme mac in charge auto BTW now it looks like a power cable but instead of a USB port or a 30-pin you've got this auxiliary connection now there's a little pinhole mic on the top of it and there's a button that activates your iphones voice control so if you get in your car in series activated and your bluetooth pair to this device you can hit that button Syria will come up and you'll be able to talk to her just like you normally would it also has a to amp USB connection on the back of it and it comes with a 30-pin dock cable so you can actually plug your phone up to it to charge while you're doing all of this for longer trips now of course if you needed to plug directly into the stereo you'd have to unplug this but I mean it's it's it's actually a very simple way to kind of do that there's actually a full review of this device up over on the car tech blog that's the extreme mac BTW extreme mac in charge auto BTW okay and for your use is it probably the simplest way to do that of course you probably want to you know also get like a suction cup or something in mouth your phone where you can see it because this doesn't have like a display and it doesn't integrate with the car stereo or anything it's literally just a bluetooth the line and input another option would be something like the scotia motor mouth too and this basically is a tiny little microphone shaped thing that you would plug into your your your car's auxiliary input again this would kind of stick out of the dashboard like a little wart it the trick is that if the Bluetooth will allow you to access your phone's voice controls without its own voice controls and you can access Siri if it is something like a parrot kit that has its own native voice command when you hit the voice button and it steps in and does its own thing then you'll need to have physical access to the phone so you can hold down the home key right so those are the two ways to do it these are very simple kits they don't have voice command built into them so you hit the voice button on them they defer to the phone right and so that that'll activate your Syria right then right yeah the only thing is the the Scotia motormouth has a little bit it's a actually a lot better microphone but it doesn't self charge it has a battery in it you have to charge it up every couple of days and it also won't charge your phone that's why I think the extreme max solution is probably going to be the best for what you want it to do yeah that's it is a little bit inconvenient a pin to take the thing out of your car or car and charge it up when and it looks like a power cable so no one's going to breaking your car steal it you just leave it they're all the time right the extreme mac one yeah definitely looks like good solution definitely should do what Jim is looking for here we got another email from Kevin which follows on a discussion we had and I was last week or couple weeks ago he says that we're talking Kevin writes it we were talking about the Ford Focus and fiesta cars in the dual clutch transmission and how customers thought there was something wrong with the clunks when you start moving again from stoplight he says he purchased 2012 ford focus SE with the fuel saver packagin and was never familiar with the DCT unit a dual clutch transmission unit before this he says when he took it to the ford dealer here and tacoma washington asked about the DCT they told they he told me they test drove it and reprogram the computer as to which computer the transmission or the sink upgrade I wasn't told but the records online show it was the sink upgrade in March 2012 he says he noticed a difference in gas mileage after the dealer reprogrammed the computer compared to what they didn't mess with the garden and I'm not even sure if they actually did anything at all and just that they reprogrammed the computer to make the customer feel satisfied and he says he doesn't want to trade the car back in heard they don't want him to trade the car back in with a little vague on the ending there but what they did is I don't think they did any reprogramming and the transmission I think they reprogram sync which is an upgradeable system and he and Kevin you could have probably done that yourself even if you didn't want to run to the dealer yeah I don't think something like a I mean they can change the software in that transmission or they can upgrade or your reprogram the software and the transmission but it's not something they're going to do very often and those cars really just come off the line I think Ford is probably pretty satisfied with those right now I haven't heard of any recalls or anything like that about getting those those transmissions reprogrammed it at this point and you know I assume that that is something they could actually do that the dealer but that is a pretty in depth thing whereas reprogram in sync is fairly easy and that's something you know we've done here at the office right there actually any number of factors could contribute to your increase in gas mileage season could have changed yeah you know density the air is different you may be getting used to the car and just like your inputs could be smoothing out over time that could also contribute to the the perceived smoother a sort of clunks it's like if you when you pull away from a light if you do something and you get a weird clunk you may not realize it but your behavior changes a little bit and so you could just be getting used to the car or I mean maybe they did do some some magic maybe you've just got like Dominic Toretto from The Fast and the Furious it's like what's at your dealership and you just like gave you a little something extra well performance upgrade in there yeah it could've been but I've very seriously doubted I think it's probably your behavior in your environment or changing as their as their want to do and it's just you're kind of getting a placebo is what you're feeling yeah I think so I mean something like reprogramming sink is probably going to happen maybe or an upgrade to sink could you know software upgrade could happen maybe every year or a couple times a years but a transmission software upgrade that's more something it's not going to happen yeah that's gonna be like more every two or three or four year thing if it ever happens maybe I haven't heard anything afford responding to this but there was a lot of a lot of hoopla about like those gearboxes when they first came out so I mean it it's not completely out of the realm of realism that maybe for quietly need something that's really made a big deal out of it they certainly could have yeah but it also if it shows on the he mentions his butt online if you went to sink my right calm it's not going to show ya a transmission upgrade it's only going to show the sink upgrade exactly so dad I know which website you went to I'd be willing to bet if to think my ride website though because that's the only place I know where those bulletins for upgrades are posted absolutely got another email from Ryan fizza regarding audio settings I notice that on the car tech videos you guys sometimes have the bass and treble settings a little higher than the center position do you have a go to setting for all those audio options when you test the car to try and create the best sound also you guys ever consider publishing a list or a video about the best factory not aftermarket car stereo systems so for me when I get into a car the first thing I do is that every the flat same here right around listen to that for a while and then if something doesn't sound right or if I'm listening to kind of music and I want to bring out something in that music or I'm listening to a lot of audio podcasts then I get in and play with the settings and try to make it sound better but I try to at least give everything a couple of days on flat just a flat with no balance correction no fader color correction one of the things that I hate the most about getting in a car is when I get in and someone set the fader all the way to the rear so that's like the one thing you don't want a car stereo to do and that that they actually try to engineer out of cars used to have like they're there to midranges down by your feet and then to that fat in the parcel shelf and though they've been moving speaker placement and adding tweeters to the front to kind of bring the sound in front of you and raise it up to eye level and the first thing people do I don't know who dev it but whenever we get a new car in its always set like three or four tix to the rear right yeah when I start listening to music it in cars start testing the stereo I do the same thing I immediate look at those tone settings and equalize it out to flat just to get I mean that's the default setting that the engineers audio engineers at the car company set it at that's what they tuned it for and so that's what they think the best sound should be right and so yeah that's what we that's sort of our standard testing procedure here then sometimes you're like riding around like in the own in the Wrangler you got it set to flat you're riding around here listening to a variety of music sand and then you know one day you just want to listen to a bunch dubstep but there's too much space that's like oh yeah it's almost like stupid to say this but there's almost too much bass to listen to bass heavy music from that Wranglers audio system it's got an infinity system with a powered sub and the cabin is basically just all hard plastic so it's just really echoey in bumi and that's great if you've got the top down but are we riding with the top up you kind of want to turn the bass down a couple of ticks so really depend on the vehicle yeah the same thing with Rockford 5k systems oh yeah definitely net all the way up those are notoriously bass heavy and this is something I t2 after listening to do it on flat for a while if I notice it's say either too bassy or two trebly like an example was the acura when they rolled out that new Els Els system I noticed that was really nice crisp crisp highs but it seemed it was just it just really seemed it was tuned for acoustic music and so I wanted to see well if I had listened to the music that I generally like to listen to let me see if I can actually tune it for that so I changed the settings and did find it actually did have bass it did have a richer responsive you could find in that in that tuning but you did have to set the tone canoes and some of the best ones have like they're they're the preset eq curves yeah like you know like like pop or country I don't know how they decide which genres get their own eq curves but I mean they're you know like you get a rock setting or if you're in the 2012 22 yaris you get music and talk is it yeah there's only two settings are actually personally I found my I preference in any Q is to boost the treble a little bit and boost the base just a little bit more mm-hmm leave the center flat and sometimes if there is those three bands i can even sometimes lower the center like one or two ticks and boost the base with one or two tix leave the treble the same I think it just depends on what you're listening to that week and the the nature of that stereo is there's no like magic magic magic setting that works for everything it really depends on if you're like if I'm if I'm listening to a lot of jazz then it's maybe not important that the base over power is actually important in the base does not overpower or even different kinds of jazz something with a lot of double bass you know you kind of want to maybe bring that to the forefront so you kind of you know feel the beat but you know something that's a little more meandering piano yeah it doesn't really matter you want something more balanced let's move on to our last question here that we can cover today this is a we were talking about the Dearman engine earlier and he's our we don't have a name for this emailer here but he says that we're talking about they order mention this is the engine that it uses two opposing cylinders they actually have the bojan between the two cylinders and it pushes the two cylinders apart and he says I was talking to right he says he remembers back in the nineteen fifty 40s and early 50s a guy made a modification to a car the same weight as a first gen Hummer he essentially used a propane tank in the trunk and humidified air to help push Pistons inside the engine without burning is much gasoline giving it more miles per gallon the guy who test drove the car with him claimed it went about 200 miles on a gallon of gas saying they drained the tank went across the street to the station only filled 2.5 gallons in the tank of course like most of these investors they seemed to disappear or die mysteriously something to do with oil companies not wanting this technology to be made this is like a classic conspiracy here theory here I remember we have had solar panels since the 1960s back on NASA's NASA's projects but it wasn't a big deal for consumers until the last 15 years or so I keep good work love the show so what do we think about this this car that ran on propane and gasoline and humidified air I there's it depends on what you bring into the situation as far as your biases because I look at situations like this and I think alright cool here's a very novel and interesting way to get 200 miles per gallon out of a vehicle the size of a Hummer okay now shrink that down and fit it into a civic oh yeah probably not going to happen solar panels have been around for years on NASA's project NASA had unlimited funds and it's the nearly unlimited funds near its beginning but solar panels are only just now starting to get to the point where they make economical sense for anybody yeah they were very expensive and not very efficient either you're still not very efficient yeah they've been growing into the fishes I was actually talking to some guys from Stanford do work with solar solar cars actually and they said that fishin see has grown about one to two percent per year which is yeah a slow progression but it's like you cover the roof of a Prius and only have enough power to run the electrical immunity the air conditioner yeah you're not getting a lot of juice out of those and with this car that used propane I mean if it burned a whole tank of propane and only a gallon of gas yeah i might get 200 miles but propane whew oh yeah that's cleaver an energy-efficient propane yeah yeah you can certainly know there's certainly a lot of inventions out there I guess the most current one that I've heard about a lot is this idea of electrolyzing hydrogen in your car using the electric system forcing that hydrogen into the fuel lines and having so having that combust in the cylinders along with the gasoline hmm you know it's a little bit of a perpetual energy type of thing here and so then people claim that it actually gets better fuel economy but I think there's studies online let's say now it doesn't really give you anything significant that's I mean is that like the equivalent of like putting a turbine on the front of a boat in saying that it powers itself right didn't Mythbusters try to do that I think they'd to try to do something like that yeah I don't know it's just seems a little weird friction comes into play and eventually stopped moving yeah well i think that's that's all the time we have here for roadside assistance if you have more question if you have questions for us you want to talk about next week you can email us at car tech at cnet com you can read the show notes that from the show we've just completed here car tech at our blog site for this a show car tech cnet com or look at the show notes for our other show car tech live you can give us calls leave us a voicemail was like Ruben did at 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