As part of its goal of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion, General Motors has created a safety brand called Periscope. Periscope will focus on three areas of vehicle safety: vehicle technology, research, and advocacy. “Periscope is how we develop safety through a human lens – it’s the intersection of our research, advocacy, and vehicle technologies and an articulation of the work our engineering team is doing to help everyone on the road – including drivers, passengers, pedestrians and more,” said Maryann Combs, GM vice president of Global Vehicle Safety. Based on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 94% of serious crashes are caused by human error, so GM is committed to developing and implementing new technologies like Buckle to Drive and Teen Driver that can help further reduce driver error. OnStar Guardian, a new mobile app, extends the power of OnStar to smartphones to enable customers to bring key OnStar safety services anywhere [...]

Click here to start a live tour Now you can get the dealership experience on your phone, computer, or tablet without leaving the comfort of home with Chevy MyWay. The service launched on January 6 and offers you a live walk around and discussion with a Chevy product specialist. You can chat using your microphone or the chat box and the person will answer your questions, give you a complete tour of the vehicle (or vehicles!), and send you links for more information if needed. We tested out the service today and chatted with Jimmy, a product specialist. He was standing in a large brightly-lit studio in the metro Detroit area, and the room was full of 15 shiny new [...]

Are you a book lover? How about a Buick owner? If you answered yes and yes, you’ll love this: Buick recently partnered with the media company Hello Sunshine to bring Reese Witherspoon’s popular book club “Reese’s Book Club” directly to your Buick’s infotainment screen. The built-in app allows drivers to select from a specially curated collection of podcasts and audiobooks, all categorized by genre, at the touch of a button. “We’re thrilled to partner with Buick on this exciting new venture,” said Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden, in a press release. “Reese’s Book Club is driven by a powerful community who appreciate authentic, quality storytelling, and we’re excited to further expand this community with Buick.” It is [...]

Let’s talk vehicle safety features! It seems like new technology is released daily to aid in keeping drivers and passengers safe on the road, so the wide variety of options can be confusing. While each brand has slightly different names for their safety features, most are comparable across vehicle makes. In early 2020, the Department of Transportation endorsed a list of standardized names in an effort to promote standard language and reduce consumer confusion of safety features between brands. Active Park Assist This option will automatically steer your vehicle to assist with parallel or reverse perpendicular parking. How much it controls depends upon the specific brand and model you have, but some will also handle the gear shifts, braking, and accelerating. Adaptive Cruise Control Using radar and camera technology, this feature lets you set a cruising speed and a distance from the vehicle ahead of you. When it slows down, you automatically do too. When [...]

Chevrolet Dealer near Dubuque awaits arrival of Amazon’s Alexa   You may soon have a new passenger in your vehicle: Amazon’s Alexa. GM will make Amazon’s Alexa available on model year 2018 and newer cars, trucks, and crossovers with compatible infotainment systems. “Customers already love using Alexa at home, and soon they can bring her with them on the go, whether they’re looking for a new car or own a compatible Chevrolet, Buick or GMC vehicle already on the road,” said Ned Curic, VP of Alexa Auto at Amazon, in a press release. “We’re thrilled to be working with GM to help their customers stay more connected, more entertained, and more productive.” Runde Auto Group is also excited about this news as enhanced [...]

Does age have an effect on a person’s driving skills?  Well that’s a question that Ford Motor Company recently tested and tried to answer.  Get in your car, drive to the gas station, fill up, then come home. Easy, no problem… right? This is what an elderly person would hear: 1. Take a walk to your car on your increasingly painful arthritis stricken joints. 2. Open the door and try to balance as you worry about how your going to adjust yourself to sit. 3. Pivot your painful hips in such a way that they won’t cause to much pain as you elevate yourself down to the seat and twist into an upright position. 4. Buckle in [...]

If you haven’t been in the know, then you’d be excited to know that Motor Trend has placed its highest honor to none other than the Chevy Volt Sedan. Winning the Motor Trend Car of the Year (COTY) is no easy task. With 21 vehicles to compete with and a week of intensive testing on various roads and conditions the Volt proved, time and again, that it was the leader of the group. The following video shows the testing they put these vehicles through and what they look for in their pick for Car of the Year .     With most COTY winners Motor [...]

The Volt is just about here and Earth is anxiously waiting for its eco-friendly arrival. Why not help out the environment while experiencing one of the most high-tech rides of all-time.  And at the same time, you can save some green in gas $$$ for driving green? It all seems like a win-win to me. You know what else, though? The fact that if you buy the Volt you could be going home to a professionally installed 240-volt charge station. The Volt runs in one of three ways. 1. All electric – up to 40 miles on a single charge. 2. Extended range capability (gas/electric mixed) – designed to drive up to 350 miles without stopping to recharge or refuel. 3. Gasoline – will last another 300 miles. Needless to say, the [...]

Who could have ever guessed just how big Google would become and how much usage Google Maps would get on a daily basis. And who knows how much more they will grow in the future?  Not me.  All I know is that Google does, almost everything, right.  OnStar must know this too as they recently took advantage of Google’s wealth of knowledge and voila (minus the accent): Google Maps now comes to OnStar as an app. Later this month all GM vehicles  (from 2006, up) that are equipped with Turn-by-Turn Navigation will be able to use the Google Map feature.  This feature will be available through OnStar eNav Technology and will enable users to effortlessly receive directions and turn by turn visual signals to get to [...]

If the toppings are free, the more the merrier, right?  Maybe the same can be said of the Ford SYNC feature.  I’d like to think so, especially with Ford’s already impressive “topping” list of features such as Turn by Turn Directions, Traffic Alerts, Hands Free Calling, Voice Activated Music, and 911 Assist, just to name a few. However now there’s even more to look FORwarD to as the SYNC will be capable of pulling up Movie Listings, Stock Quotes, Airline and Rentals and even your Horoscope! In a tech world, Ford keeps our appetites in check with all of these great features that keep getting packed on top of their already great SYNC technology.  Check out the video below for more information and demonstrations of the new features.   [...]

What’s not to love about the Ford Fiesta?  The fact that it demolishes its competition, such as the Honda FIT and the Toyota Yaris, in nearly every category out there is probably an understatement.  And now there’s more!  The Fiesta, in addition to beating the competition in terms of: 1. Horsepower (competition ranges from 106 to 117 hp vs. the Fiesta at 120 HP) 2. Safety 3. Features And we just learned that the Fiesta also takes the top prize in terms of fuel economy. While the FIT offers an impressive 28/35 MPG it falls short of the Fiesta’s recently announced and officially official 29/40 MPG. Need I remind you that in addition to all of these class superior specs, the Ford Fiesta starts at $13,320 while the FIT starts at $14,900 – [...]

Want a good indication that the future is here? How about the fact that the products currently in the works make the things that we could have only imagined “to be the future” look primitive and obsolete?   The EN-V Prototype (Electric Networked-Vehicle) manufactured by General Motors plans to be hitting the streets as the new “Urban Mobility Vehicle” (think along the lines of a Segway, but not nearly as basic and lame). Tired? Drunk? Hurt or just lazy? The EN-V has you covered as it works autonomously, meaning that it can drive itself with the integrated GPS. In addition to an array of safety features and smart programming for heavy traffic, sudden reaction sensing, and the like,  the EN-V is an electric vehicle. It will plug into a [...]

Who would’ve thought that the key to getting your teenager to drive responsibly was in the car keys … literally.  If you’re a parent, you’re naturally going to worry about your kids when they start to drive. Who doesn’t get discouraged when they see another fatality on the news involving teens, beer, and speeding? It’s enough to make any parent want to keep their kid’s vehicle options limited to a bike or the bus … God forbid they ever walk anywhere. But alas, we must face the reality that our kids need to drive — ask any parent who has ever played the chauffeur role. (Note to audience:  In tonight’s performance, the role of the chauffeur will be played by the person who writes those clever little blog posts.  The role of the kids will be played by the [...]

According to the title, this blog post is about fuel cell vehicles.  Not sure what they are?  Ok.  Fine, then let’s start with a conversational detour. Ever wish someone would walk up to you and hand you the keys to a new vehicle? The closest I’ve ever come to hearing about something like this, I previously mentioned when I wrote the anecdote about Doug in our Field of Dreams blog post last year. There’s also that scene from Pay it Forward, where some guy hands Jay Mohr the keys to his new Jaguar S-Type car in an effort to … you guessed it … pay it forward. I was looking at GM’s Project Driveway a little today and I checked it out to see if I might qualify to drive a new state-of-the-art Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle. Project Driveway is the first large-scale market test of fuel cell vehicles with real drivers in [...]