Your Next Car May FORCE You To Save Gas!

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., last week unveiled the ECO Pedal, which they describe as “a world first technology designed to assist drivers to become more fuel-efficient.”   The official press release reveals how the system will work.

“When the eco-pedal system is on, each time the driver steps on the accelerator, a counter push-back control mechanism is activated if the system detects excess pressure, helping to inform the driver that they could be using more fuel than required.

Did you get that?  The car, if it thinks you’re accelerating too rapidly will actually PUSH BACK on the gas pedal.  Being a reformed long-distance commuter, I’ve witnessed the lead-foots and worse – incessantly darting, stopping, starting, recklessly weaving – well, you’ve probably seen it yourself on your way to Kroger.  But can a car compensate for human judgment?  Or should it?

Here’s Nissan’s vision as described in their words.  “In order to achieve reduction in CO2 emissions, Nissan takes a  triple-layer  solution that encompasses vehicle technologies, driving behavior and traffic conditions. The ECO Pedal supports the second-layer addressing driving behavior and is among a range of eco-friendly technologies being pursued under the Nissan Green Program 2010.”

Well, that’s comforting.  They’re doing it all in the name of their “green” initiative.

And that’s good news for the folks at Treehugger.com, who say “Feedback is very important. If you don’t know how you are doing, it’s very hard to improve. That’s why the big screen in the Toyota Prius helps you drive more efficiently, and that’s why we should make electricity meters easy to read and put them inside houses.  With the ECO Pedal, Nissan has come up with a new way to get fuel economy feedback while driving.”

“The way it works is simple. When the system is on, each time the driver steps on the accelerator, a counter push-back control mechanism is activated if the system detects excess pressure, helping to inform the driver that they could be using more fuel than required.   After a while of this Pavlovian regime, you can’t help but learn which behaviors the car “approves” of and which you should avoid.”

The ECO pedal has drawn negative commentary on the popular tech blog, Gizmodo.com.  One post reads “I’m all for exploring new technologies that help us save gas, but I think Nissan has gone a little too far with their “Eco Pedal.” Another said,  “As asinine and unsafe as all of this sounds, at least Nissan had the good sense to implement an on / off switch.”

I tend to agree with David Thomas of Cars.com who says “We have one major issue with this system: If you are in a risky situation and need to accelerate quickly to avoid it, you’re out of luck.

Nissan plans to commercialize the ECO Pedal during 2009. Research conducted by Nissan has shown that by using the ECO Pedal drive system, drivers can improve fuel efficiency by 5-10%*1, depending on driving conditions.

About the Author:
Ken Ivey is a veteran technology addict, consultant, author, web designer, and President of MidTN Technology, a marketing and web design firm.  For more information, call 615-278-9324 or visit www.kenivey.com

Online Trends - Digital Advertising

For years and years, advertisers have touted the potential of the Internet as a place where entrepreneurs could pinpoint targeted consumers. Now, finally, it appears that businesses are taking interactive advertising seriously on the Web - And beyond. Companies that have advertised on everything from billboards to newspapers to television are beginning to revamp all of their marketing strategies. They are beginning to see that Internet advertising can work despite some of the technology glitches and privacy issues that challenged the earlier waves of the technology.

Pointing to the success of Internet pioneers like Google, advertisers are eager to discover new ways to try and sell their products based on the kind of searches initiated by consumers into online search engines. It is becoming a sort of earth-shattering shift for many established advertising agencies, old-media style advertisers, which have often had trouble keeping up in the Information Age.

See, so many creative, but perhaps uninspired, advertisers remain stuck in a mindset that favors 30-second TV commercials, or old-school ads on billboards or newspapers. But the new shift is to the Internet. And the next wave has already been targeted - all-new forms of interactive ads that provide business with pinpoint tracking technology that measure the impact of advertising campaigns online.

Still, nobody should expect that the advertising business is about to change overnight. Some Internet advertising capabilities and the new form of web-based advertising are already beginning to garner new credibility and they seem to gain new accolades every day. Soon the Internet will be taking many, many dollars away from the old-school advertising outlets such as newspapers, billboards and other print publications.

As the demand for accountability rises, advertisers are certain to devote more resources to performance-based campaigns, which are most effectively launched via the Internet. That is why most experts predict that an ever-growing amount of web-based advertisements will be appearing in the years to come. One prediction you can bank on is that the Internet will continue to see an increasing percentage of the estimated $260 billion that is spent on all kinds of U.S. advertising each year.

Online Trends: Digital Advertising is written by Kevin Cantera for Uplayme | share music and video online Kevin Cantera is a free-lance writer based in Utah’s “Little Silicon Valley” - also known as Provo. He tries to keep his ear to the ground in the burgeoning world of digital music and Internet networking.

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