OWNING a talking car that navigates for you used to be the subject of futuristic TV shows like Knight Rider and The Jetsons.
Welcome, then, to the future. Australians are taking to satellite-navigation units like never before, letting their vehicles rather than their passengers tell them where to go.
And it's little wonder the gadgets are becoming more common. Entry-level global-positioning system (GPS) navigation units have more than halved in price from over $1000 to less than $500.
They are also coming in different forms – from big-screen units in cars' dashboards to portable units you can take for a drive or a stroll or as added features in mobile phones.
Pioneer mobile electronics group general manager Peter Hutchison says almost 600,000 Australians currently rely on GPS gadgets to navigate for them, and he predicts that number will double in the next two years. "Looking forward to 2009, we would see that hit the 1.2 million unit area and that will give us about 29 per cent of market penetration in vehicles in Australia," Hutchison says.
"In more mature markets, some 17 years old, they've experienced some 50 per cent of market penetration, so Australia still has a long way to go."
But Chris Smith, location and navigation group manager for Sensis, which supplies Australian maps for GPS systems, says the Australian market is growing quickly and has "a lot of potential".
Smith says a recent Sensis poll found 26 per cent of Australians have used a GPS device in their car, 35 per cent are interested in buying one in the next year and 44 per cent are keen to try a satellite-navigation system and its services.
In fact, consumer technology analyst Peter Blasina predicts the GPS unit will "be the hottest item this Christmas – it will dump the iPod".
He says the technology will increasingly become part of portable gadgets and will eventually be teamed with traffic reports to provide the ultimate, hassle-free driving experience.
Pioneer Australia made its forecasts while revealing the company's first GPS units for the Australian market – a move made 17 years after it introduced the world's first in-car GPS unit in Japan.
The leading in-car entertainment provider introduced two products to the market – an integrated GPS unit with a hard drive and a host of multimedia features called the AVIC HD3, and a portable GPS unit called the AVIC S2.
Pioneer's AVIC brand stands for audio, visual, information and communication, and is designed to take some of the stress out of driving, car electronics group product manager Paul Baddeley says.
He says issues like not knowing where you are going, where you can find a petrol station or an ATM, when you will arrive at your destination or having a mobile phone ring can create "chaos" in the car that can be solved by an integrated GPS unit.
The AVIC HD3 is an all-in-one in-car unit with a 17.7cm (7in) touch-sensitive screen. It is a double-DIN sized unit – the size of two standard dashboard panels – and must be professionally installed.
Baddeley says the AVIC HD3 is designed to take over from a host of in-car extras.
It features a 30Gb hard drive with 10Gb dedicated to storing music (it can rip songs from CDs as you insert them) and also comes loaded with the Gracenote CDDB library so it can add song, album and artist information to files automatically.
The HD3 also has a radio and can play MP3 CDs, and can be fitted with an optional iPod adapter so you can control your iPod's tunes while it hides and recharges in your glovebox.
The unit can also play DVDs for the benefit of backseat passengers, and can be linked with optional screens in the back seat for this purpose. The HD3 can also be fitted with an optional rear-vision camera, with the footage shown on its screen.
Bluetooth is also featured in this gadget, allowing it to hook up with Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones to make and take calls. It also has voice-recognition so you can place a call by announcing the name of your contact or simply reading out a phone number.
This gadget's voice-recognition feature also lets you search for destinations or perform other operations by announcing the appropriate command.
The AVIC HD3's hard drive comes preloaded with Sensis maps of Australia and an extensive points of interest database including supermarkets, ATMs, petrol stations and restaurants. Users can choose to show these points on screen as icons as they approach, even choosing to display only specific store brands like McDonald's, for example.
The HD3's navigation system also calculates six different routes for each destination, allowing you to choose your favourite, and, with Smart Routing software, learns your preferences over time, whether you prefer to avoid toll roads or right-hand turns.
It also determines your estimated driving time, and provides close-ups of turns with its voice directions.
The device also features a 3D Gyro Sensor that measures your car's height, speed and direction to more accurately estimate where you are on the map, even if the GPS link disappears or you enter a tunnel.
This addition, with other technology, also allows the AVIC HD3 to determine and display information about your car's acceleration, G-force, angular velocity and battery voltage.
At $3799, plus installation costs, the HD3 will not be suitable for every Australian driver, but Baddeley says Pioneer have had feedback "that you could pay up to $5000" to have a similar system installed in your car.
Pioneer's portable GPS unit, the AVIC S2, is more economically priced at $799 and features Sensis maps, an MP3 player, SD card slot and Bluetooth connectivity.
But Blasina, who has been testing the AVIC HD3 unit, says there are advantages to having one device that lets you control your car's many extras.
"The integrated system definitely works a lot better than having a whole pile of different components in the car," he says. "It's much better than having a radio, a Bluetooth device and a portable GPS unit.
"That's not to take away from the ease and affordability of GPS units from TomTom, Navman and Garmin, though, and I suspect a lot of people still won't want to have their car retro-fitted or to pay that much for an integrated system."
Blasina says Pioneer's integrated unit is cheaper than dedicated GPS systems from car makers including BMW and Lexus, however, and elements including its connection with mobile phones, points-of-interest database and its revamped, user-friendly menu make the driving experience more enjoyable.
According to Pioneer's estimates, only 1.8 per cent of GPS units used in Australia are integrated into cars, but the company predicts this will grow to 8.6 per cent by 2009.
Blasina says that figure may grow even more once GPS maps can be updated to include up-to-the-minute traffic information, allowing you to avoid gridlock.
"That's the killer application," he says. "I've seen it work in Europe and California and it's just tremendous. It could tell you that the M1 is blocked, for example, and recalculate the route for you."
Integrated GPS units will get competition from portable gadgets in the future, including mobile phones.
Nokia this year introduced a fully featured GPS navigator into its N95 mobile phone and GPS also features in the new BlackBerry 8800 mobile phone.
Nokia Asia Pacific multimedia sales director David Watkins says mobile phones have become multimedia computers that will eventually marginalise some single-use gadgets, including MP3 players, digital compact cameras and even GPS devices.
"My mobile phone is a now a personal navigation device with turn-by-turn instructions," he says. "In my N95 I have access to GPS maps from 100 countries and thousands of points of interest. I've used it to navigate around Singapore, Malaysia and Finland."
Watkins says phone users can also install similar GPS software on other Nokia mobile phones and Windows Mobile smartphones, and use a Bluetooth dongle to transform a mobile phone into a GPS unit.
He says GPS features will also trickle down into more Nokia mobile phones in future, ensuring more Australians will be taking direction from their gadgets in future.
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