Automotive manufacturers are using every trick in the book to squeeze more fuel efficiency of their vehicles to help buyers at the pump and to meet looming federal mandates for efficiency. One of the ways many manufacturers are doing this is by going to automatic transmissions that have more forward speeds. Having a transmission with more speeds allows lower engine RPMs on the highway leading to less fuel consumption.
In the past, many vehicles had used four or five-speed automatic transmissions. The six-speed automatic transmission became common over the last several years and now manufacturers are looking beyond that to seven and eight-speed transmissions. Ford and General Motors recently announced that they will jointly develop advanced nine and 10-speed automatic transmissions.
The two automakers say that the initial design and engineering work on the new transmissions is already underway. The new transmissions being developed will be used for both front and rear wheel drive vehicles and promise better fuel efficiency and improved performance. The agreement between Ford and GM marks the third time in the last decade the two automakers have collaborated on transmissions.
Previous engineering tie-ups between the two companies helped produce high-quality six-speed transmissions for front-wheel-drive vehicles. The two automakers have delivered more than 8 million of these transmissions to vehicles around the globe. The nine and 10-speed automatic transmissions will be used in just about every automotive segment including cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks. More details will be announced closer to the launch of transmissions.
Facebook and General Motors are bosom advertising buddies once more, with the car company returning to the social network to promote the Chevrolet Sonic, just short of a year after claiming it saw little return from ads on the site. The lure has been “newly available targeting and measurement capabilities on Facebook,” Chevrolet marketing VP Chris Perry told AdAge, and will see the GM model pushed through the latest “Find New Roads” campaign.
General Motors surprised the online industry back in May 2012 by ditching Facebook from its advertising strategy, using only free company profile pages for user-engagement. At the time, sources inside GM claimed that the firm had found paid Facebook promotions “had little impact on consumers” despite rumors of a $10m advertising spend.
In the intervening months, however, Facebook has refined its advertising systems, including introducing its FBX ad-exchange which can push targeted promos directly into the user’s timeline. Another improvement is how mobile adverts are displayed, something which appears to have ticked off some of GM’s requirements too.
“Today, Chevrolet is launching an industry-first, ‘mobile-only’ pilot campaign for the Chevrolet Sonic” Perry confirmed, describing Facebook’s role as being part of “testing a number of mobile-advertising solutions.”
Although GM cut off its advertising drip to Facebook last year, that didn’t stop negotiations between the companies. ”We’ve had an ongoing dialogue with GM over the last 12 months” a Facebook spokesperson confirmed, “and are pleased to have them back as an advertiser on Facebook.”
Still unclear is how much, exactly, General Motors will be spending on its Facebook campaigns. Last year, the car company was believed to have a $40m budget for the social site, only $10m of which actually went on paid advertising.
One of the more interesting electric/hybrid vehicles on the market today is the Chevrolet Volt. This car is isn’t a traditional electric vehicle or a traditional hybrid with Chevrolet calling it an extended range electric vehicle. The car uses mostly electric power to drive the wheels and has an onboard gasoline generator that charges the battery when longer driving distance is needed than a traditional electric vehicle will allow.
EPA fuel economy estimates are often wildly misleading when it comes to purchasing new vehicles. Many automotive manufacturers are at the focus of investigations and complaints over drivers being unable to come anywhere near the EPA estimates promised for fuel efficiency. Chevrolet has taken the time to point out that owners of the Volt are routinely exceeding the EPA estimates for driving distance using the Volt.
According to Chevrolet, the typical owner of one of these extended range electric vehicles who regularly charges the vehicle is going 900 miles between fill ups. Chevy says that kind of fuel efficiency is saving these drivers about $1300 a year at the gas pump. Some drivers are going even longer with one Volt owner named Brent Waldrep from Michigan saying that he has driven more than 23,500 miles in his car over the last 21 months only going to the gas station twice.
Waldrep claims that the last time he filled up his Volt was in August of 2012 and he still has 65% of that tank of fuel left. He claims to travel 9000 to 10,000 miles between fill ups. A Volt owner in Texas has been able to travel over 5000 miles on two full tanks of gas. Another owner from California claims to get about 7000 miles between fill ups adding about 3 gallons of fuel to his car every three months. The Volt as an all-electric driving range of 38 miles before the gasoline generator kicks on to keep the car going for up to 344 miles per tank of fuel.
Once upon a time, your car had to be the fastest or the most luxurious if you wanted to stand out. Now, as GM has discovered, a car has to be talkative if tech-savvy drivers are to take them seriously. A path that started with OnStar has ended up with cars that talk to your smartphone and tablet, quietly plan their own servicing, and generally take the sting out of owning and maintaining a modern vehicle. SlashGear sat down with GM President of General Motors North America Mark Reuss to talk infotainment and how the company is betting on more than just top speed for models like the new 2014 Cadillac CTS.
We’re no strangers to GM’s in-car tech. The company announced earlier this year that it would be equipping all of its models with in-car LTE, and promptly showed off a demo of what you could do when your 4G connection is actually baked into the car’s electronics, rather than just a dumb mobile hotspot in the glovebox. We also played extensively with Cadillac CUE, the infotainment system built into the 2013 ATS, last year.
GM isn’t a late entrant to the infotainment market, however, and gambles like baking expensive LTE radios into every single model aren’t exactly new. “If you look at our history, we’ve long had OnStar as an asset” GM President Mark Reuss told us. “So I think bringing that demonstrates the commitment we’ve made. There were a lot of tough times at the company when we looked at the equipment that we put in to do that, and generally did not price for. So that’s generally a long-term financial commitment to what we think we’re now being able to look at: an amazing opportunity for us for 4G, the expansion of that pipe we’ve invested in.”
In fact, Reuss argues, car connectivity and the functionality that enables could well end up being the 21st century’s equivalent of extreme customization. “If you look at how people use their cars, if you look at the changing demographics, new people coming into the car-buying market, most of those people have sort of an “ultimate customization” available, they see all the different devices available today” he pointed out. “That’s a reflection of who you are, that’s a reflection of how you live … it’s almost like hot-rodding used to be, right, sort of like that type of creativity that you have. It’s very low-cost, it’s very fun.”
Examples of that flexibility GM has already demonstrated range from remotely setting LED color schemes and cabin temperature, monitoring fuel levels and economy from across the country, and turning your car into a Skype video conferencing suite. However, Reuss says, the key is minimizing the stress involved in owning a car.
“That attention and care is now delivered through the pipe of the car, because the car is now bringing that information back to both the dealer, our engineers, and us as an OEM, and that’s really important data to us from a safety standpoint, and it’s important to the customer” Reuss says. “It takes the challenge of thinking about “when’s my oil going to be changed?” and “when are my tires going to be rotated?”; it takes that away from your busy life. And these are big, big things because the world is not getting less complex, and these type of tools in fact can make your daily life less complex.”
Still, it’s a big investment to web-enable every car you produce, especially when only part of your audience might walk into the showroom with an understanding of cutting-edge informatics. According to Reuss, GM has tackled that in how it markets each system across each of its brands, picking out the key functionality it knows potential drivers are going to be most interested in, as well as able to afford.
At the budget end, for instance, there are models like the Chevy Spark, aimed at younger drivers who are particularly smartphone-savvy. “You see widely different approaches in GM in how we’re doing this” Reuss points out. “The reason for purchase in a Spark of the screen we have in the car, the bring-your-own-media, don’t underestimate that. This is a car that’s under $13,000 … so that car in that price point is one approach to connectivity and bring-your-own-media, that replicates basically what you have on your phone in a very simple way, a fun way.”
On the other end of the spectrum is Cadillac’s CUE, which doesn’t assume the driver will necessarily be coming to the car with a pocket or bag full of the latest phones and slates. Instead, Reuss says, “the CUE system embeds more of that technology into the car, into the center stack of the car.”
For Cadillac drivers, the appeal of a system like CUE might not be its streaming media capabilities but how it unlocks new safety and convenience features: tech that builds on the same underlying informatics hooked into the car, but delivers that access and data in differently focused ways. “The price point is wildly different,” Reuss concedes, “but that type of information, integration, safety systems, crash avoidance, automatic cruise-control, radar-detected cruise control: that data and that format in the car you’ll see on the most expensive models in the range. And it replicates a lot of the function of what a tablet, or a smartphone, would do for you on a use-basis.”
The next example of that growing technological focus inside and outside of the car comes in the shape of the new 2014 Cadillac CTS, the company’s latest sports sedan. Set to hit the road later this year, the CTS builds on the excellent example of last year’s Cadillac ATS, borrowing the expansive all-digital driver instrumentation from the more expensive XTS, and cladding it in a sharp suit with echoes of the eye-catching 2014 Corvette Stingray.
On the outside, that design language expresses itself in features like the daytime running lights, extending down from the main lamp cluster and under the bumper. Like on the new Corvette, GM has worked hard to diffuse the LEDs so that they illuminate as two solid strakes of light; that, director of Cadillac exterior design Bob Bonaface tells us, gives the whole family a recognizable face, and one which you can spot no matter whether it’s day or night.
It’s arguably on the inside that the technological and materials focus is most obvious. Just as the Corvette team strove to be “authentic” in their choice of finishes – opting for real carbon-fiber, real metal, real leather rather than cheaper lookalike alternatives – so the new CTS dresses its cabin in premium materials. Eight interior finishes will be offered, ranging from the more traditional black, tan, and brown leather, through to more eye-catching shades like blue, each with optional contrast stitching. Real carbon-fiber and aluminum also show up again, joined by open-pore and natural finish wood.
The center stack has the same zero-profile touch sensitive buttons, topped by an 8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen with anti-gloss and oleophobic coatings, as we saw in the Cadillac ATS last year. However, the ATS’s LCD sub display in the driver’s binnacle has been replaced with a huge, 12-inch 1280 x 480 cluster display, capable of showing multiple instrument layouts and even 3D graphics of the car which can be scrolled through using wheel-mounted controls. It’s all driven by a tri-core ARM11 processor running Cadillac’s proprietary Linux OS.
The only visible sign of that underlying tech that GM wants drivers to see, though, is a smooth and responsive interface. It’s still a work-in-progress, Reuss tells us, but it’s one the car company is committed to: making its car’s controls just as tactile and efficient as analog would be, while also having the flexibility benefits being digital brings. “Things we’re working on to make them perfect is the feedback and latency of something so simple as a volume control,” he says, “so we’ll work to perfect that, but the use and layout of it is spot-on, so we’re committed to that.”
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating (or, in this case, how many drivers aren’t punching their dashboards in confusion), the GM President says the response – even from those who might traditionally be considered more tech-averse – has been positive. “While the demographic for Cadillac may not be the very youngest car-buying population, our population is currently changed by the use of those devices no matter what your generation is” he argues. “You immediately understand what [CUE] is and how to use it, so we’ve had very little feedback that that’s a problem; very little from the CUE system in both the XTS and ATS.”
Next up is third party developers wading in, as GM throws open its In-Vehicle APIs and invites coders to cook up new functionality and features based on having core access to the infotainment stack. Alongside that, there’s an official plan for “agility and capability” over the next decade, Reuss says, though he also points out that consumer demands more than anything might well shape what car dashboards look like and deliver in tomorrow’s models.
“I don’t know how it’s going to evolve, and that’s exciting to me” Reuss concluded. “It’s sort of an open world of possibilities for it, and our job is to provide those open world of possibilities enabling people’s lives to be easier, to provide new advantages to buy a GM car, and to provide a user-interface that’s extremely safe, and easy to use, and very consistent.”
General Motors, maker of that awesome new Corvette, has reported its Q1 2013 sales figures, and it looks to be all good news. During the first quarter of this year, General Motors sold just under 665,000 vehicles, resulting in a 9.3% increase over the company’s total vehicles sales from Q1 2012. The company also recorded its best March sales in five years, selling almost 246,000 vehicles in just 31 days.
As for a breakdown of some of GM’s subsidiaries, Cadillac sales were up 38% from last year, while Buick was up 28%. GMC saw a 14% increase, and Chevrolet saw the smallest gain, with a 5% jump. Overall, GM saw an increase in sales across the board, which is no doubt a good sign for a company that recently found itself in a deep hole.
As for what types of cars have most popular during the past year, GM reports that crossover vehicles saw the biggest increase from last year, with a 25% jump, while trucks were up 10%. As for the folks who want more fuel-efficient vehicles, those numbers saw an increase, but not as much as you’d think — combined mini, small, and compact cars were up 14% from last year.
Unfortunately, GM didn’t report any of their financial earnings — just sales numbers this time around, but with such an impressive increase in sales, we have to guess that GM is slowly starting to make progress digging themselves out of that wretched hole. With the launch of the 2014 Corvette later this year, we should hopefully see GM further into the black as we go along in 2013.
General Motors has announced the pricing, MPG, and other relevant details of its 2014 Silverado pickup truck, with the base price coming in at $24,585 and going upwards from there. This is the same base price as the 2013 model, so there’s nothing too surprising to see. The 2014 Silverado was first unveiled back in the middle of December alongside the GMC Sierra, which looks similar.
The 2014 Silverado has quite a few features and improvements, but a handful standout among them, including the new EcoTec 3 engine, which is said to be both quiter and more fuel-efficient than the previous offering. The cab has been given a boost in both strength and insulation, with less road noise than the 2013 model; the interior has been completely redesigned as well. The bed is new and offers standard box-rail protector, and a CornerStep bumper has been tossed into the mix.
The Silverado is rated at 23MPG on the highway for 2WD midels, with the 4X4 dropping down to 22MPG. Those who purchase this beast of a truck will receive a two-year/24,000 scheduled maintenance program, with up to 4 maintenance appointments included in the truck’s price. These maintenance visits include tire rotations, multi-point inspection, and oil changes with filter replacement.
Said the company’s vice president of sales and service in the US Alan Batey: “The 2014 Silverado is new from hood to hitch. When you combine the innovative features of the new Silverado with base pricing equivalent to 2013 models and standard scheduled maintenance, Silverado becomes a great choice for pickup customers, helping them save money when they buy – and when they drive.”
The opportunity to design a new, next-generation Corvette doesn’t come along too often, particularly when it’s the iconic Stingray, and so GM has wasted no chances in putting together a car that demands performance benefits from every aesthetic decision. SlashGear caught up with GM at the New York International Auto Show to take a look at the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray coupe and convertible and talk authentic design – inside and out – with the execs responsible for guiding the changes in the new model.
From the outside it’s clearly a Corvette at first glance, but take a longer look and the evolution of the design becomes clear. The 2014 car is 4mm lower than before, as well as being wider and 15mm longer; the wheelbase has increased by an inch, pushing the front wheels forward and giving the car a better footprint and handling, in addition to making it look more composed and aggressive. New lights front and rear, as well as a new collection of vents, perforate the bodywork, which has a new blend of creases and sweep-lines.
Importantly, the design elements aren’t done solely for the sake of appearance, but also invariably serve a performance element too. “You want a compelling design, you want a strong aesthetic” GM’s Kirk Bennion, Exterior Design Manager for Corvette, told us. “We try to do things where, okay, this gives us a new look that we like, we think it’s attractive, but if we can also benefit with some functionality then it’s a double win. We like to do that with Corvette especially.”
So, the front grill and the hood vents aren’t just for show, but sit at either end of a new, ducted extractor that feeds cool air across the radiator. That itself has taken on a whole new angle: where Corvette radiators of old went from upright to leaning back, Bennion explained, the 2014 model actually tips its radiator forward, into the flow of air. Each of the grill blades in the hood sits at its own, specific angle for the best flow.
That’s not the only trick ducting. The 2014 Stingray sees the return of intakes on top of the rear arches, sitting on the long swathe line that runs from the back of the car, down the shoulder-line, and blends in interesting angles with the hood and arch creases. They’re not for cooling the brakes, but instead are the rear trans and diff coolers, which are just visible through the upright outlet vents at the back of the car. They also saw GM’s engineers take on the challenge of delivering a huge eight cubic meters of air per minute through each intake, while simultaneously avoiding debris. Side vents – finished in carbon-fiber – are also fully-functional, delivering a reduction in drag as well as cooling benefits.
Like many other recent cars, the 2014 Corvette Stingray makes ample use of LED lighting; however, GM has taken a few new approaches in how it implements those lamps. Up front, there’s a new single, bi-functional headlamp with daytime running lights replacing separate fog lamps. That’s something we’ve seen on models from Audi and others, but GM has played with the positioning and angles of the LEDs to make the lighting more consistent.
“We wanted to avoid ‘carnival light’ spacing” Bannion told us, referring to the tendency for LED lamps to look like a string of individual bulbs rather than a solid bar of light. “We really worked hard to keep the LEDs close together, to diffuse the light.” To do that, the LEDs are actually downward-firing, into a diffuser lens that smooths out the individual brightness of each into a consistent whole. They’re set next to a stack of amber LEDs for the turn signals, which also blend together into a solid lozenge of light, and everything is embedded into a black stainless steel assembly which creates interesting reflections depending on the angle from which you’re looking at the car.
That same attention to detail is continued at the rear of the car. GM has stuck with the dual-element tail lamps that have been a feature of Corvettes since 1961, but it has used the same downward-firing LED technology as on the headlamps for some extra visual flourish. “The technology here again is indirect LEDs, so the LEDs are horizontal, they’re throwing the light down into the cavity, for even-lit appearance. They kinda avoid having the spottiness” Bannion explained. “Also, with the lamps being three-dimensional, is very new for the car as well.”
The result is a car that treads the line between classic and contemporary, just as GM expects a Corvette Stingray buyer to demand. “They’re still dual-almond shape, but we really felt we needed to break tradition, have a car that’s more distinctive, more unique at night” Bannion pointed out. “There’s a lot going on with lighting technology right now, and you can see manufacturers are doing more and more to have their cars be seen, or be seen as exclusive with the night-time signature.”
It’s when you’re inside that the changes are most obvious, however, particularly if you’ve ever found yourself behind the wheel of a previous-gen Corvette. The dashboard and seats are less of an afterthought compared to the exterior, Helen Emsley, Interior Design Director for Performance Cars at GM, told us. So, the 2014 dash is more like a jet-fighter cockpit, surrounding the driver in an arc of controls and gages. Those gages have been redesigned for the new Corvette Stingray, with a choice of digital and analog views in the 8-inch instrument binnacle, and variations according to which of the three driving modes – touring, sport, and track – the car is currently set to.
Just as the exterior design has sought to make aesthetic details serve a functional purpose, so part of Emsley’s focus with the new Corvette has been to make the interior more authentic. “This is a Corvette. If it’s metal, if it’s aluminum, it should be real – it is real aluminum. If it’s carbon fiber, it’s real carbon fiber,” she explained to us. “It was very important to us that we show real, authentic materials.”
That approach has continued over to the passenger seat, with Emsley saying that GM wanted to make the 2014 Corvette Stingray just as much of an experience for the person not driving. So, the “co-driver” gets a separate interior, in Emsley’s words, a second cockpit arch with their own speed gage and heating controls. Materials all round have taken a step up in quality, with hard surfaces replaced by soft-finish plastics and contrast-stitched leather. In fact, GM has even cooked up two new, exclusive leather colors for the Corvette: black may well be the most popular, Emsley concedes, but the new beige and new red finishes are expected to draw some buyer attention, along with the existing black & grey and black & dark brown options.
Everywhere you look there are thoughtful design decisions, showing just how much consideration the GM team has put into the interior of the new car. Recognizing that many Corvette buyers want to replace the standard seats with more sports-focused alternatives, Emsley points out, GM will offer a choice of two styles with the 2014 model: either the normal touring seats, or special sports seats as a cost-option. More mundane – but no less important – considerations like storage have been addressed in clever ways, too, like a sizeable storage cubby hidden behind an 8-inch motorized drop-down infotainment display.
The Stingray convertible – which made its North American debut at the New York show – is certainly beautiful, but those who opt for the coupe also get a choice of roofs. Three targa tops are on offer: the standard, carbon-fiber roof which is painted to match the body; a premium version which is left in exposed carbon; and a polycarbonate version which is translucent, allowing more light into the cockpit. There’ll also be various body/performance packages, such as the Z51 with its tall rear spoiler – helping reduce lift – and larger wheels.
All in, it’s a suitably considered approach to what’s undoubtedly a muscle-car icon. “When you think of the opportunity, every time you get to do a new next-generation Corvette, you realize that there has to be certain calculated moves in order for it to be seen as the next-generation, and that’s why we felt we needed to make some of these changes” exterior design chief Bannion told us. Throw in a new LT1 6.2L V8 engine capable of 450 HP and 450 kb-ft of torque, and you’ve got performance that matches the great looks, too. The new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray will go on sale this fall, in both coupe and convertible versions.
This week the folks at Chevrolet have revealed the 2014 Camaro Z28 (or Z/28 if you prefer), a beast of a vehicle with a 7.0L LS7 V8 engine with no less than 500 horsepower ready for road-thrashing action. This machine works with 470 pounds-feet of torque under the hood paired with a six-speed Tremec TR6060 manual transmission. The look of the vehicle is all classic Camaro with a smooth-yet-sharp set of aesthetics for this years battle with the best.
Inside this next-generation automobile you’ve got a set of hardware that’s ready and willing to be compared to the more powerful Camaro ZL1. As Chevrolet let us know this week, you’ll find that the Z/28 is 300 pounds lighter than the ZL1, this thanks to a series of changes in the makeup of the car. From its lighter wheels to the thinness of the rear window glass panel, this car has been polished to perfection. Even the air conditioning has been made available only as a stand-alone option for your ability to keep the weight low.
Chevrolet has also noted that this 2014 model has averaged three seconds faster than the ZL1 in tests they’ve conducted thus far.
While the new Camaro Z/28 is not intended to compete in a specific race series, it is solely focused on track capability. In initial testing, the Camaro Z/28 is three seconds faster per lap than the Camaro ZL1. That extra speed comes from three areas:
• Increased grip: The Z/28 is capable of 1.05 g in cornering acceleration, due to comprehensive chassis revisions • Increased stopping power: the Z/28 features Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes capable of 1.5 g in deceleration, and consistent brake feel, lap after lap • Reduced curb weight: The naturally aspirated Z/28 weighs 300 pounds less than the supercharged Camaro ZL1, with changes ranging from lightweight wheels to thinner rear-window glass
Once you’re past the tweaks and pushes, you’ve got a fabulous set of Recaro racing seats inside that complement a set of aesthetics across the entire vehicle that make it appear ready for any of your most race-ready road-blasting adventures. You’ve got a flat-bottom steering wheel, blacks and grays with bright red accents – mostly in the stereo and speedometer areas – and an overall look that reads: SPEED.
The engine, again, is of course the monstrous heart of this amalgamation of Camaro bits and pieces – here you’ve got your hand-assembled 7.0L (427 cid) V-8 made from top-end parts as follows:
• Titanium intake valves and connecting rods, and sodium-filled exhaust valves • CNC-ported aluminum cylinder heads • Forged-steel crankshaft and main bearing caps • High-lift camshaft • Hydroformed exhaust headers • 11.0:1 compression ratio, and a 7,000 rpm redline. • 10.5-quart, dry-sump oiling system
You’ve got what Camaro engineers describe as “the very best components in the industry” used here in the chassis of this high-performance vehicle, including 19-inch diameter wheels and tires, forged aluminum wheels that is, wrapped with “massive” 305/30ZR19 tires. This vehicle uses the ultra-high performance Pirelli PZero Trofeo R tire, the first production implementation of said technology – one that they say they believe is now the widest front tire on any production car – hot and large!
You’ve got Brembo Carbon Ceramic Matrix™ rotors as well as fixed, monoblock calipers. You’ve got 394 x 36 mm front rotors matched with six-piston calipers up front and 390 x 32 mm rear rotor paired with four-piston calipers. This setup saves another 28 pounds (12.5 kilograms) compared to comparable two-piece steel rotors.
And that’s not all! We’ll continue to run down the full layout of this lovely vehicle as it hits the road later this year. Chevrolet dealers will be getting the Camaro Z/28 “later in 2013″ while the vehicle will be appearing in track events throughout the USA in Spring of 2014.
This week at the 2013 New York International Auto Show we’ve had the opportunity to have a hands-on experience with the next-generation Buick Intellilink infotainment system. This system has been revealed as coming with the 2014 LaCrosse as well as the 2014 Regal, both vehicles working with nearly identical implementations of infotainment and media playback throughout. It all begins on an 8-inch touchscreen display that sits front and center of the vehicle, able to be accessed by the driver or the copilot with ease.
Buick’s next-generation IntelliLink infotainment system works with wireless connectivity for your mobile devices, customizable options galore, and an easy-to-use user interface from start to finish. And it’s all builds on a hearty connection of both safety and security with OnStar. If you’re an OnStar user, you’ll be able to access city-by-city weather reports and ultra-simple embedded navigation using their “traditional Blue button” – rather handy.
You’ll be working with connectivity to a selection of apps for music, starting with Pandora. With Pandora you’ll have a collection of custom-built radio stations with new music coming in by the day – you’ll also be working with a set of 60 “favorites”, starting with radio stations outside of Pandora. These stations can be AM, FM, or XM, and you’ll have plenty of space left over to store “favorites” in contacts, destinations, and music from media aside from radio.
You’ll be able to connect with your media and your apps for control of the many various things IntelliLink works with using your touchscreen or by controlling your system with your voice. IntelliLink employs natural language voice recognition allowing you to control most anything you’d be able to control with your finger. You can enter destinations, browse media, safely place calls, play music, and control a variety of other functions as well.
If you’re a fan of using your touchscreen interface, you’ll find the controls to be rather familiar. You can do what Buick calls a “fling” through your lists, swipe up and down, and drag all around – basic control cues you’ll have learned well by now due to your everyday use of your smartphone or tablet devices. You can also control your music, set destinations, and more with IntelliLink’s connection to your smartphone – this done with a USB cord or Bluetooth wirelessly.
Of course the audio experience you’re going to have with the output this IntelliLink system is controlling depends entirely on the vehicle you’re driving. With the 2014 Buick Regal you’ll be working with a new nine-speaker Bose sound system including “strategically placed” tweeters and a fabulous subwoofer – you’ve got an acoustically optimized interior as well. With the 2014 Buick LaCrosse you’ve got seven standard speakers including the, again, “strategically placed” tweeters as well as a subwoofer all coming together to complement a quiet, acoustically optimized interior – with optional 11-speaker Bose Centerpoint Surround Sound being available as well!
Have a peek at our Buick tag portal for more information on the IntelliLink system as it appears in more vehicles through the future, and don’t forget to check the rest of our Car Hub for auto action from here until forever!
Today the 2014 Buick Regal has been made official, infused with new technology from start to finish and looking like a vehicle you’ll certainly have to experience for yourself. This vehicle has been designed by Buick to be a “sportier and smarter” evolutionary mark in the line of successful midsize sedans. You’ll find not only new technology here made to enhance the way you drive, but to enhance the way you drive safely each and every day as well.
This vehicle line works with Adaptive Cruise Control as well as – for the first time – all-wheel drive. With Adaptive Cruise Control your vehicle will be able to sense traffic ahead of it, adjusting speed and stopping the vehicle automatically while in heavy traffic. This vehicle also introduces a set of new technologies in the radar- and camera-based safety features category:
• Rear Cross Traffic Alert • Lane Change Alert • Side Blind Zone Alert • Lane Departure Warning • Forward Collision Alert • Collision Mitigation Braking
In the 2014 Buick Regal you’ll also find the next generation of IntelliLink integration – that’s natural speech recognition as well as a set of controls more intuitive than ever before! The new Regal works with a more “expressive” look both inside in out – starting with new front and real styling, signature wing-shape LED daytime running lamps as well as LED taillamps, you’ll also find a fully redesigned central instrument panel and console with new fashion interior trim.
Under the hood you’ve got a new 2.0L turbo engine (as noted above) with 18 percent more horsepower than with what’s found in the Regal Turbo. The first all-wheel-drive system you’ll be working with here goes by the name Haldex. In addition to rolling out with superior use of the traction you’ve already got, this Haldex all-wheel-drive system will enhanced cornering with the Regal GS when driving in GS mode. That GS mode comes straight from your Interactive Drive Control System – and you’re going to love it!
You’ve also got the option to work with a 2.4L engine with eAssist light electrification technology on this 2014 Regal model. You’ll be working with six-speed automatic transmissions that are matched with both of your engines and you’ll have a six-speed manual with your Regal GS as well – and electric power steering is featured on all models here and into the future, too.
This all-new Regal is making its debut this week at the New York International Auto Show 2013. We’ve got our eyes on it and will be pushing more information – and more up close and personal action – to you soon! Stick with SlashGear in our Car hub as well as our New York Auto Show 2013 tag portal all week long!
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