Beautiful 1987 Buick Grand National on 2040-cars

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As GM readies Alexa convenience for vehicles, we ponder its dark side

SEATTLE — On the 30th floor of AmazonÂ’s glass tower, in a room with a breathtaking view of downtown Seattle, thereÂ’s a beautiful bed that nobody sleeps in. ItÂ’s near a kitchen nobody cooks in, a living room couch that no one crashes on, a kitchen table that doesnÂ’t host any family meetings. ItÂ’s AmazonÂ’s Smart Home Lab, a place where every Alexa-enabled gizmo the company or its partners can produce is crammed into the same space, ostensibly for Amazon to test. The company invited us there to show us the companyÂ’s vision for consumer products to leverage AlexaÂ’s voice interaction software before taking us down to a demo of its latest implementation in a Buick Encore GX. In this eerie simulacrum of a fantastic luxury apartment, however, nothing went right the first time. ItÂ’s a challenging environment for Alexa to work correctly, our hosts noted, pointing to the fact that there were six wifi networks available for the devices to connect to. In a normal home, one wifi network controls all the devices, who can theoretically sort out for themselves which one youÂ’re actually trying to activate. In the Smart Home Lab, any unmuted Alexa device thinks itÂ’s in charge. Even so, the connected toaster wouldnÂ’t connect. The Fire TV Cube wouldnÂ’t play a song. Our handlers futzed with everything, muting and unmuting devices, repeating commands, making us feel better about our own struggles with similar technologies. If it doesnÂ’t work right at Amazon HQ, maybe itÂ’s not just us! ItÂ’s telling that down on the faux lawn, in between the gleaming Amazon spheres that host a billionaireÂ’s tropical garden and the Day 1 building that the Smart Home Lab resides in, the BuickÂ’s Alexa implementation doesnÂ’t use a “wake-word” at all. The familiar Push to Talk button on the steering wheel, which normally activates General MotorÂ’s own proprietary voice command system, can be set to default to Alexa when that rolls out to GM vehicles in the first half of 2020 via an over-the-air (OTA) update. Given the reluctance of Alexa to respond to its wake-word in the comfort of AmazonÂ’s own lab, we hoped that this was by design. Drivers are already familiar with Push to Talk, and a physical button is more reliable than the vagaries of contemporary voice recognition – not to mention the privacy and accuracy issues involved with always-on mics. Our experience with the not-ready-for-primetime Mercedes-Benz MBUX system is illustrative.

Ford, Toyota clean up in Best Car For The Money Awards

The U.S. News Best Cars for the Money Awards picks winners by looking at the average transaction price, five-year total cost of ownership, the regard a car has from the automotive press, reliability figures from J.D. Power and Associates and safety data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The result, according to the magazine, is "the best combination of critical acclaim and long-term value."
Ford nabbed six of the 21 categories that received awards this year, the Focus, Fusion, Fusion Hybrid, Taurus, Escape and Edge getting trophies. Toyota and its Lexus and Scion sub-brands took another five, the Tacoma and Tundra owning the two categories given to pickup trucks. The other ten awards were split between Honda with three, Buick with two, and one each for Subaru, BMW, Hyundai, Chevrolet and Mazda.
Follow the link to see all the winners and read about why they were chosen.

2014 Buick LaCrosse

A Nice, New Buick Aims For Middle Of The Road
Any time someone describes some portion of a car or a driving experience as being "nice," I want to either A) throttle them or B) run as fast and as far as I can from that vehicle. "Nice" is among the most insidious words in the English language - at best it's vague, and at worst, it conveys the exact opposite of its literal meaning. Yet it seems to be used with damnable frequency when it comes to verbally illustrating vehicles. "It looks really nice," or "These seats feel nice," or, heaven forefend, "It's got a nice ride," are all windy signifiers of absolutely nothing resembling a concrete opinion. "Nice" is the adjectival equivalent of meekly smiling and nodding your head.
Of course, I'm as guilty as the next person of having thrown English's least powerful descriptor around. There's even a chance that, rant aside, you'll catch me making nice in reviews to come. That's fine, but you should know that when you stumble upon such usage, past or future, that you've found a sentence in which I'm simply applying a bare minimum of effort to the task.