2005年NPR美国国家公共电台七月-High-Tech Perks, Not Horsepower, Tops wit（在线收听）

It was a great leap forward when cars got radios in 1929, then 8-track tapes then cassettes and finally CD players. But those seem downright quaint when compared with the entertainment amenities American drivers want today. And no wonder——the average American now spends about 100 hours a year just commuting to work.

Detroit Public Radio's Celeste Headlee attended the 2005 North American International Auto Show this week where she was one of the first to see the Ford Motor Company's concept car, the SYNus.

The outside looks like polished steel. The interior is creamy white with softly glowing orange accents. It has a 45- inch LCD flat screen TV built into the backdoor. And even the driver seat can turn around to allow everyone to watch a movie, listening to it, on an advanced surround sound system. This car will probably never get made, but it's a good example of a much more prevalent trend: cars designed to be little homes on wheels.

MR is an interior design engineer for Ford .He's sitting inside a new Mustang and he gestures to the center console.

"I'm from England. And when I came to America, I didn't think about cup-holders at all. But coming here, you realize you need to have cup-holders. You have to have amenities for families that are in the cars for longer, you know, the extracurricular activities that go on outside of school, outside of the normal working day, you spend a lot more time socially in cars.

Car interiors have gone a lot further than cup-holders. One idea for a Ford minivan integrates a microwave and a Maytag (商标名)refrigerator. Many high-end vehicles have not one but two video screens built into the back of the front seats. R says cars are no longer just a means of getting from point A to point B. They are a form of therapy.

It's why it's becoming more like your living room, you know. Interiors should be more calming. They should put you at ease more. They should entertain you and should give you something to do as well.

Automakers are spending millions developing more comfortable interiors with sophisticated technology built-ins.

Acura hired Grammy Award-winning record producer Eliot Shiner to design its custom sound system. Shiner says most people have a better audio system in their car than they have in their homes.

"It is a perfect arena to listen to surround sound. The speakers are predetermined and the seating positions are predetermined."

Shiner says Acura spared no expense to create an ideal listening environment.

"They went through incredible trouble to make the interior fairly dead so that the surround sound sounds great there.
The handles above the doors were wrapped in leather. They treated the windshield acoustically to keep noise from getting in and noise from getting out.

The Acura system is so good, Shiner says, the rock band the Foo Fighters listened to their mixes in their TL(Acura TL, 车名) while producing their new album. He says it was difficult to get vocalist David G out of the borrowed vehicle when it came time to return it. PN isn't surprised to hear that story, he is a director of infotainment at General Motors.

We sometimes think that the cars are just used to hang our electronics on it .

Nadow and group manager Bob Isaac are leading a tour of GM's Infotainment Department. Isaac gestures toward a sleek audio panel with a colorful touch screen used in current GM vehicles.

Somebody's driving the vehicle, they could be listening to the radio station in the front; somebody could have a set of headphones on with a * audio in the back listening to the music they want to hear. And then a third person could have the wireless headphones on watching the DVD.

A short time ago, these kinds of options were available only in luxury models. Isaac says he thinks they'll soon become standard in many cars.


And Paul Eisenstein says it's not going to end there. Eisenstein is the editor of the carconnection.com. He says drivers will soon see cars with hard drives that they can take into their homes, load with movies and music, and then take to the car and plug into the dashboard. And automakers are already working on taking this idea to the next level.

You can park your car in the driveway, and the car will have a receiver, and it will be able to download all sorts of things like MP3s, videos, eh, see,you don't have to take any of your audio or video out of the car, you simply transfer wirelessly.

Eisenstine says car entertainment systems are family savers on long trips, but they might be changing the way people travel. Families now make fewer stops at scenic vistas or historic sites so kids can stretch their legs. no more quick trips to see the world's largest ball of string . Eisenstine says you put the right movie in, and you can keep kids occupied and comfortable from Michigan to Florida, and he says some drivers seem to be more concerned with entertainment than with safety.

There's been an interesting trend. There is a lot of after-market equipment. People are taking out the driver-side airbag and mounting a TV monitor in the center of their steering wheel, so that they can watch TV while they are driving.

Some experts believe it's not just a craving for comfort that's transforming cars into well-equipped family rooms. Andy Ogdon is the chair of graduate studies in industrial design at Art Center College of Design in Carlifornia.

Feeling a sense of security and control in a post-911 world where now you can sort of keep everything with you just in case. I think having the car be a sort of Swiss army knife, that has every possible choice you might need just in case you feel like doing something, is part of the mentality we have towards all kinds of products.

The Ford SYNus concept car certainly fits that description. When the vehicle is parked, protective shutters come down over the wind shield and side glass; small windows on the flanks and roof are non-opening and bullet-resistent; the rear hatch has no window at all and looks like a bank vault; the door opens with a combination lock. Of course concept cars are simply ideas. Very, very few of them ever make it to the assembly line, but it seems clear that brand name and engine power are becoming increasingly overshadowed in the US by electronics and amenities. In the future, living out of your car may not be such a bad thing. In fact, some may even prefer it to their homes.

For NPR News, I'm CH in Detroit.

  原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/NPR2005/40566.html