The DriveMaster Pro from Japanese manufacturer Hino is one of those products that's surely flying off the shelves, because who wouldn't want to pay good money for a device that sits on your dashboard and constantly reminds you that your driving style is so very environmentally unfriendly. Although once again our best efforts at machine translation are thwarted by in-graphic text, it seems that the DM Pro ships with a number of different sensors that are able to detect your speed, acceleration / deceleration, idle time, gear ratio, and emissions; if any of these metrics indicate that you could be outside the range of government-suggested levels, the info-packed display lets out audible and visual alerts that hopefully won't distract you enough to crash and kill a tree or something. No word on pricing, once again making it quite difficult for us foreigners to get our hands on the best Japanese gear.
[Via
Akihabara News]
posted March 6th 2007 2:02PM
Looks like a decapitated Johnny 5...
Hino is a unit of Toyota. This fits quite well with Toyota's environmental push, but also fits with Hino. They're a commercial truck maker, and this sort of device helps manage fuel consumption, which is really important to commercial trucking fleets.
I teach defensive driving and traffic school, and I'm impressed with this device, although It almost seems excessive. I'm not sure if most people understand that our driving habits are the most important variable regarding emissions and gas consumption.
www.thanksforspeeding.com
Yo Engadget Editors,
Why cast this product in a bad light? I strongly doubt that a well informed, market savvy company like Toyota is going to produce a product that exists only to "nag" -- hard imagine something like that selling much. And selling is, after all, the motivation for a company like ToMoCo to create a product. Instead, I suggest that this product might actually be addressing a need that people want, or else ToMoCo wouldn't go to the expense of producing it. For instance, I wouldn't mind at all a product that shows my MPG in real time; that would enable me to change my driving style to change gas, or switch to a different route that uses less gas. Less gas means more money for me, and if the money I save is more than the cost of the DriveMaster Pro -- well then hey, it was a sensible purchase after all.
Overall point: there's no sense in assuming that a product exists solely to nag -- why the hell would anyone buy that? There must be a need for such a product, or else ToMoCo wouldn't make it!
dwinokur says:
Overall point: there's no sense in assuming that a product exists solely to nag -- why the hell would anyone buy that? There must be a need for such a product, or else ToMoCo wouldn't make it!
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Apparently you've never used QuickTime/Norton/Microsoft/Alarm clock/a wife before?
I would not pay to get my ex-wife back, and I certainly will not pay for something that will back seat drive me just as bad.
Gas prices have shot up by over a third ($0.70 to 1.05 liter)... This thing might be handy on how to get you maximum use out of each drop.
Goodo of Toyota/Hino to come out with something like this. Now picture someone in a 'HEMI' trying to understand what the heck the fancy gadget is for.
"Miles per WHAT? Wooooo FLOOR IT!!!"
I'm sorry, but that is the coolest thing. I teach defensive driving traffic school, and i thought i'd heard about everything. I'm going to post that on my website. www.thanksforspeeding.com