Road and Driver

A car uses our cell phone to call a website and inform us that we’re being outsmarted.

BY JARED GALL

It’s over. Mankind has been the dominant species on this planet for a hundred thousand years, but our time is up. I know this because a Ford Fusion hybrid just used my cell phone to call a website so it could tell me the latest news. This included a report that Donald Trump has purchased the WWE’s Monday Night RAW wrestling program. So while cars and websites are chit-chatting and can find for us a sushi restaurant 3000 miles away, humanity is focused on billionaire reality TV stars becoming overlord to steroidal ape ballets. We are being seriously outclassed.

How Did We Sync to This Level?

While people have talked to their cars—mostly screamed at them, really—since the beginning of the automotive age, it wasn’t until Ford introduced Sync that the cars started responding coherently. Although Sync can’t make the car “please, just start!” after the lights have been left on all night, it does allow the driver to control his media player—iPod, Zune, etc.—or dial his phone by voice, all without ever taking his eyes off the road or his hands off the wheel. Just press a button mounted on the steering wheel and recite orders, and the phone or music player responds, usually appropriately.

Keep Reading: Ford Sync Services Review: Traffic, Directions, Information, and 911 Assist - Infotainment