Hasta La Gadget!

Kelley Blue Book’s list of Top 10 Family Cars of 2011 acknowledges our love affair with big. Seven of the 10 are SUVs or crossovers although Kelley and KBB.com, its online arm, say “safety, comfort, economy of operation, child-friendliness, a reasonable purchase price and good resale value” are also key. Tech didn’t appear to play much of a role: no mention (in their writeups) of cars with standard Bluetooth or iPod adapters. Below, the KBB Top 10 Family Cars, excerpts from their comments, and our notes on what else you should know about this top 10.  See bottom-of-story for the three cars that should have made the list.

Ever since they struck an alliance back in 1999, Renault and Nissan have been super tight, sharing both a CEO and a goal to make EVs more accessible, but with Renault’s Zoe gearing up to hit the market in 2012, the French automaker has proven it’s not pulling any punches when it comes to competing with its Japanese partner. In fact, reports give Renault’s EV a starting price of roughly €15,000, which compared to the Leaf’s €27,000 price tag, is a pretty hefty difference. The catch — of course, there’s a catch — is Zoe owners will have to lease their batteries for about €100 a month. With the added battery expense, however, it would still take nearly 10 years for the Zoe to meet the Leaf’s price. We hope this doesn’t put a damper on this 12-year love affair, but honestly, we’ll take an affordable EV any way we can get it.

Renault’s Zoe EV to give Nissan Leaf competition at lower price — Nissan-Renault alliance forges on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the NaviSurfer II, but for those patiently awaiting the update of this commuter computer, VIC Ltd. has just given the thing a pretty hefty overhaul. The new NaviSurfer II UBU-3G runs on an auto-specific Ubuntu 10.10 and sports a 7-inch touchscreen, 250GB hard drive, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 3G HSDPA modem, and three USB 2.0 ports. Possibly the most useful upgrade of all, however, is the inclusion of a built-in GPS receiver, rocking a Navit navigation system. Unfortunately for those lacking in the dashboard department, this sucker’s Double DIN, or about twice the size of the standard car radio, but if you’ve got room for the thing, the NaviSurfer runs €300 (about $400).

Update: The VIC Ltd website is currently down — looks like someone might be throwing a little too much traffic their way.

VIC Ltd NaviSurfer II UBU-3G in-car PC gets built-in GPS — finally originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Within a few years, your car may become a hub of interconnected devices, media and online services.

And you thought it was for getting you around town.

I spent a little time recently in a tricked-out 2009 Corvette whose dashboard included some proof-of-concept technology to integrate the car with a smartphone, a tablet and the internet.

The console was created by QNX, the company that makes the operating system underlying GM’s OnStar systems, Toyota’s upcoming Entune and other vehicles. It’s similar to these systems, except it extends them by adding even more integration with the consumer devices you’re carrying.

In this car, the dashboard can interact with other devices in your car, such as your iPhone, a BlackBerry or RIM’s upcoming tablet — the BlackBerry PlayBook. It can play media from all of the above, or connect to the internet (by 3G) to stream music from Pandora.

Because QNX also makes the operating system underlying the PlayBook, there’s also a possibility that developers can create software for your car as easily as they can for the tablet, using HTML5, Java and other tools familiar to app developers.

I take a look in this video at some of the ways cars will soon gain even more sophisticated connectivity.