For a 5,360-pound pickup, the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 makes a surprisingly nimble mobile office.
While luxury automakers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi tiptoe into on-board Internet access, General Motors is loading most of its 2015 pickups, SUVs and cars with 4G LTE Wi-Fi as part of its latest OnStar service. On a recent long weekend with a $54,000 version of a 2015 Silverado with upscale LTZ trim — note the 18-inch bright-machined aluminum wheels — I daydreamed the possibilities:
*Pulling over to update a column on new-car technology with comments about the Silverado’s rump-thumping lane-departure warning system before sending it to my editors.
First plug in my laptop — the Silverado has a 110-volt AC outlet, just like home, on the front dashboard. Then connect to the Silverado’s Wi-Fi hotspot after pushing the OnStar Voice Command button on the rearview mirror. (Monthly data plans from $5 for 200 megabytes to $50 for 5 gigabytes.)
*Towing a 10,900-pound trailer of bananas — the truck’s limit — to the local banana-crazed farmers market.
Back to the reality of technology that’s making vehicles more like home, more reliant on the silicon chip and safer. Chevrolet’s engineers built camera, radar and ultrasonic technologies into Silverado’s safety-alert seat. The lane-departure warning system gives the driver a tactile buzz in the appropriate side of the butt when the vehicle drifts into an adjacent lane without a signal.
While adjusting to the pickup’s massive girth on a drive past New York City and onto Long Island, I received a full lower-quarters Silverado massage. Not sure I could live with that long-term, but the pickup’s forward-collision alert system is a keeper. It warns — with either tactile or audible signal — of an imminent collision ahead. The same camera behind the rearview mirror used for the safety-alert-seat gives this system a mid-range distance view to alert the driver to a potential crash.
Subaru’s latest EyeSight driver-assist technology in the 2015 Legacy sedan and Outback has similar lane-departure and forward-collision warnings. The range of visibility on the reworked dual-camera system is 40 percent wider and longer.
The camera senses color too. It detects red brake lights at a speed differential of 30 mph. It will either slow or stop the car automatically when it senses an imminent collision. It even alerts the distracted driver at a stoplight when the light turns green and the car ahead drives away. Eyesight also analyzes steering patterns to recognize if the driver might be falling asleep.
Apple’s Siri Eyes Free system is showing up in more 2015 models, including the Silverado via Chevrolet’s MyLink, Lexis IS, Honda Fit and all Buicks. By pairing a Siri-ready iPhone, you can use any Siri feature that doesn’t require visuals, including voice-to-text.
I didn’t drive the Silverado long enough to master parking the behemoth, close to 7 feet wide. Someday, maybe it will offer autonomous parking like the 2015 Lincoln MKC crossover SUV or the new Volvo XC90, which has 12 ultrasonic sensors around the car to navigate into a parking space.
A night-vision system in the latest BMW 7 series makes people and larger animals appear bigger, and thus more recognizable. In case of a potential accident, a warning shows in BMW’s Head-Up display. Brakes prime automatically in cases of imminent danger.
Think how much safer driving would be if cars could communicate with other cars and even road signs or traffic signals. Ford and General Motors have been working on a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system that sends speed, direction and location information to nearby cars.
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Vehicle-to-infrastructure communication would exchange information between cars and road signs for driver alerts and warnings. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says such “connected vehicle” technology would eliminate close to 80 percent of crashes involving non-impaired drivers.
Google, of course, wants to eliminate all human error with a self-driving car it has tested for more than 700,000 miles, so far accident-free. Even a driverless car looks day-before-yesterday, though, next to the flying car introduced in October by AeroMobil, a Slovak company. The AeroMobil 3.0, powered by a four-cylinder 100-horsepower engine, travels 430 miles in the air or 540 miles on land per tank of gas. The base package, incidentally, includes an emergency parachute system.