The other day, I was talking to an acquaintance who helps wire homes, specifically smart homes with broadband access. He puts the wires in the wall and makes everything work. Many of the houses he connects are old, some of them were built in the 1950s, for example. It’s time for those residents to upgrade and he puts all the new technology in for them.

It’s interesting these days, as people’s refrigerators are getting smarter than they are, and the same is happening with our cars, they will soon be driving themselves. In fact our cars are going to be so smart, maybe they can take our school exams from the parking lot, just kidding, you don’t want to get caught cheating. Okay, let’s talk a bit about some of the latest cool car gadgets.

There was an interesting article on March 28, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal titled; “Automakers try to address inaccuracies by measuring MPG,” which looks at how different drivers with different driving habits, different areas report different mileage results, some more and some less than the actual MPG on the label when they bought their car. As you may recall, there have been some high-profile federal regulatory lawsuits for false advertising and MPG estimates by automakers.

Ford is asking app makers to create something that streams real data to its cloud servers via smartphones according to that article. I think it’s a good idea, in fact I would like to have one, unfortunately I don’t currently have a Ford car, but I have owned Ford cars and trucks in the past.

Just think if you were at the beach and needed more pizza, beer, and snacks. Wouldn’t it be nice to just use your iPhone to call your car, text the request, and your car would go to the store, contact the clerk inside, take out all the goodies, and put them in the car? and pay for everything like you would with a payment application for iPhone?

Now, going back to the previous story, we all want to know what our actual average miles per gallon is, and we must be able to adjust our driving habits and behavior to optimize our fuel economy. By doing that, we can save money, and at four dollars a gallon of gas, everyone likes it. In the meantime, it will keep automakers honest and let us consumers know where we really are. In fact, I hope you will please consider all of this and think about it.