VW: UMPC on board

VW equipped a Passat with an UMPC. Fortunatley premium has to go premium so we prefer the combination of Audi and Apple instead.

Volkswagen engineers fashioned a form-fitting docking cradle inside the glovebox of the Passat. After docking, navigation screens and media are streamed from the computer to a 9″ touchscreen LCD headunit. Eric Jensen, Volkswagen's Project Engineer for Connectivity and Computing gave us a detailed demonstration of the UMPC's features.Most drivers will primarily use the UMPC for navigation. Using GPS and a WWAN Internet connection, the car can show real-time location and can give direct-to point of interest navigation. Navigation can be shown as a top-down overlay or on satellite imagery from the web. The car can also display traffic incident information, but Jensen admitted that navigation instruction and traffic cannot be shown at the same time. "In the future, we are looking to combine navigation and traffic, along with providing dynamic rerouting around accidents," said Jensen.

While navigation is important, media playback is where the UMPC really shines. The car can playback MP3s and videos in various formats to the two backseat monitors. For safety reasons, Volkswagen won't allow videos to be played on the front headunit. Music can be streamed from the Internet or played off the UMPC's drive. Drivers can also synchronize and playback podcasts. Jensen plans on adding a Slingbox feature to stream television from the driver's home

Related news: Foursprung, P4MR, VW, UMPC

Source: only UMPC

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