How would you like to connect to your car and have a more customized experience? The new Toyota Entune, which was unveiled at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, is dubbed as an “in-car experience”. The mobile app will be available on select Toyota models in 2011, and it can help save gas and reduce unnecessary traveling. How eco-friendly is this new piece of technology? Let’s find out!
The Toyota Entune is a mobile app, so you can download it to applicable cell phones and access the apps right from your phone. Through touch screen or voice commands via the built-in Entune screen, you can browse through Bing, iheartradio, Pandora, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable and sports, stocks, traffic, news, weather and fuel prices.
Instead of driving from gas station to gas station to find the lowest prices, you can search right from your phone and get a straight shot to the cheapest fuel. The same convenience is at hand with OpenTable, which enables you to search restaurants from the road and even make a reservation from the driver’s seat.
In addition to helping drivers reduce pollution and conserve fuel, the Toyota Entune is a multimedia system that automatically upgrades itself. Because you can download apps from your phone and then connect to your car, the Entune isn’t a technology that will become obsolete anytime soon. It’s wirelessly upgradeable and requires no additional parts or devices.
The actual parts involved in producing the car’s interface are not well documented by the manufacturer, so it’s uncertain how recyclable the Entune is when the car reaches its end of life. At least there is some hope for recyclability with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Bluetooth phones you might be using with the Entune.
While the Entune has some eco-friendly perks, it might keep drivers in the car longer and therefore not offset the production and usage of the Entune. With so much hype about the functions included with this multimedia system, sustainability might have gone right out the window.
Eco-Friendly Assessment of the Toyota Entune
Toyota’s new in-car experience is tech-filled ride, but is it an environmental negative?