“Where are my %&#*@( TIRES located”

I DID have one thing that learned, and it was amazing.
In a past life, I worked for corporate strategy for a large car company. Okay, it was daimler-benz. As a boy, the perks were INSANE, yes it was the cars. As I was living and working in Germany, the perks were made even MORE INSANE by the fact that I could drive at INSANE (but safe speeds) everywhere I went. I used to joke with people that my commute to work was 12 miles, and often it took me less than five minutes to get there! It was worth every sacrifice to work there for those years. (were there sacrifices)

Anyway, back to the perks. I had I must say, SWEET cars. They were not mine of course, but company cars. But hey, a free company car is a free company car. (the free company GAS CARD was another sweet perk which made complete sense in a land-continent of 5.00$ per gallon of gas. Heck, that would make sense HERE in THIS LAND about now.

ANNYYHOOOWWW

In one of the s-class prototypes I had, I had a pimped out version of what became the command system. It had everything that is FINALLY coming to the command system in the US these days, but this was a LONG time ago.

I had an RF id card, that was in my wallet, and it would of course recognize ME as the driver, or the one closest to the car, and then of course all MY settings would be updated. Radio, presets, mirrors, seat, address book for the built in car phone, AND, wait for it.

All my GPS data. Now, that doesn’t just mean my GPS address book, or destinations that I had been before, or what was HOME and what was WORK and what was BETTY, but historical usage, time of day, day of week etc.

What did this mean. Well, i’m gonna tell you.

Monday morning, 06:00 I would walk up the car, the doors would be unlocked, in the winter the engine was setup to start running, and WHAT was the DESTINATION ALREADY being suggested on the Nav System. WORK!

On saturday morning, every good little german has to GO to the MARKET because by 13:00 on Saturday afternoon, EVERYTHING SHUTS DOWN! Now, I am not German, but as a Texan I am big, and I HAVE TO EAT. So, off to market I would go with all the other neighbors.

So, Saturday morning, WHAT was the NAV system suggesting as the FIRST destination of the DAY? It was suggesting the MARKET of course.

Thursday nights I would frequent this lovely little Wein Stube, where in the summer time we would sip wine and knosh on cheese and such. At 20:00 I would leave the office and head to this location.

On Thursday nights, WHAT was the top suggested destination on the GPS? It was the Wein Stube in downtown Stuttgart of course.

I LOVED IT! Sadly, it has never been put into production. I have the feeling there is some concern that the WIFE might be one day driving the car with MY RF ID card (yes, her card would change ALL those settings automtically) and she would head to the MARKET at say, 14:00 in the afternoon and WHAT would the GPS suggest as the most frequent destination for that day and hour?

Well, MAYBE it would be the Hotel Intercontinental or something and wouldn’t THAT be a pickle?

So, the point of this long winded story is, they CAN learn. the future is going to be WAY cool. And, for boys like me, cool cars will most certainly be a part of it.