[CEATEC 2013] How green can cars get? We have started to see a slight shift among buyers of cars who have jumped aboard the hybrid bandwagon, with Toyota’s Prius leading the way. Of course, the move to fully electric cars have yet to catch the imagination of the masses because of charging stations, the relatively limited range of an electric car compared to one that runs on gas, and of course, the entry cost which can be prohibitively high. Regardless, it is nice to see companies work on future forward technologies when it comes to vehicles, and this is where Clarion’s EcoAccel app comes into play.
To know whether you are driving in an eco-friendly manner could prove to be challenging if your vehicle does not already arrive with such an integrated system in the first place. Clarion’s EcoAccel app will be powered by a head unit that runs on the Android operating system, where it will read the relevant data picked up by sensors to rate your Eco driving habits. Right, it does not seem as though the folks over at Clarion intend to deliver this product across the Pacific to the US, but hopefully they will change their minds about that.
Clarion EcoAccel App Helps You Driver Green(er) original content from Ubergizmo. 
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[CEATEC 2012] Clarion announced its Next GATE in-car navigation devices earlier this year, but left out a lot of consumers when they decided to make it iPhone-only. However, it looks like that might not be a limitation anymore. At CEATEC 2012, Clarion showed off a new Next GATE devices that features Android support. While there wasn’t a working model to play around with, it looks like it has all the features of a typical in-car navigation system with MirrorLink connectivity. Android phones will be able to connect to the device via Samsung’s Drive Link app (only for the Galaxy S3 for now). And even though it mirrors the display of your phone, Next GATE won’t be able to run every app that your phone runs: only those that support this feature (i.e. TuneIn Radio etc). While it sounds like a bad thing, I guess this means that drivers won’t be distracted by the myriads of apps they have on their phones since they’ll only be able to access the essential ones.
[CEATEC 2012] If you’ve got a nice and loud audio system set up in your car, and you’re looking for a way to keep the same audio output capabilities without the need for an additional car battery – you’re in luck. Clarion recently announced the launch of its full digital speakers for vehicles. Brand new high performance speakers that are touted to produce lossless quality digital audio, at the fraction of the power needed to run your current lossy audio-playing digital analog speakers. The full digital speakers eschew the need for a digital to analog converter through the use of Clarion’s digital signal processing technology. This means that you’ll be able to listen to your music the way it was intended to when you’re playing it from a CD or high-quality digital audio file.
A couple of months ago, Clarion announced the launch of its 
