Kit, come pick me up!: Send directions to your Mercedes GPS via the web
By Ema Kwiatkowski
Its just like Night Rider! Ok, not really.
Sadly the car can’t drive itself, nor does it have a sarcastic sense of humor and cool blinky lights on the hood. Though you can send it directions to the nearest Blockbuster via the web, and have your GPS know where you want to go when you get in to drive.
Today Mercedes-Benz USA announced their new Search & Send feature. This gives select Mercedes owners who subscribe to Tele Aid the ability to send directions directly from their computers to their vehicles. The new technology has been developed in partnership with Google, Yahoo! and DaimlerChrysler.
The Search & Send feature allows drivers to plot destinations, addresses and points of interest through the Google or Yahoo! Maps and then simply click on the “Send to Car” icon, enter your Tele Aid ID, and off it zooms to your in-car GPS. Once in the vehicle, just push the i-button of the Tele Aid system and it will download the destination and ask if you want to start route guidance immediately or save the route for later.
Sascha Simon, manager of telematics for MBUSA stated some of the best features of this new program, “The advantage to Search & Send is that customers can surf the Internet from their home computers — or from any Internet-connected device such as a PDA or cell phone — pick out where they want to go, utilize Google or Yahoo! Maps to get the directions and then send the information to their vehicle. Then they get in the car and go, without having to input addresses into the GPS system. They can also have friends or family pull down a destination and send the information to them in the car.”
Search & Send, which will be available September 5, debuts not only on high-end Mercedes-Benz models but also on the much-anticipated C-Class model line. The feature will then be phased in on additional Mercedes-Benz models during the coming year.
When they come out with the one that looks up its own directions and drives itself, I’ll be there!
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on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
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