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Keeping Your Car Can Save You Money
October 3, 2011 | Author ratoxuha
Keeping Your Car Can Save You Money
(NAPSI)-The right answer to the question “Should you keep the car or trade it in for a brand-new vehicle?” could help put many motorists on the road to economy. So when you choose to keep your car rather than buy a new one, you’ll end up saving money.
“People who keep their cars, treat them as valuable investments and commit to regular vehicle maintenance end up saving a lot of money,” said Rich White, executive director, Car Care Council.
The most common maintenance procedures and repairs to keep your car operating safely and reliably while maintaining its long-term value involve checking the oil, filters and fluids, the belts and hoses, brakes, tires and air-conditioning. The council also recommends an annual tune-up and wheel alignment.
Over a four-year period, the difference in savings between keeping a car and buying a new one is $10,894, according to Runz-heimer International.
Cost Of Keeping The Old One
The cost comparison identified the expenses of keeping a 2003 six-cylinder, four-door sedan that gets 21 miles per gallon (mpg) and costs $19,727, versus buying a new six-cylinder, four-door sedan with 23.5 mpg that costs $23,451 and had a down payment of $10,158, the trade-in value of the older car.
At the end of four years, expenses on the used vehicle, including fuel, license, registration, taxes, insurance, maintenance and tires, were $16,548. A resale value of $3,759 puts the total four-year cost at $12,789.
New Car Costs
On the new car, expenses including the car payment, interest on the car loan, fuel, license, registration, taxes, insurance, maintenance and tires totaled $32,258. A resale value of $8,575 puts the total four-year expense of the new car at $23,683.
“We advise our clients that if they want to see an increase on their investments every year, they need to cut down on their expenses,” said Terry Mulcahy, vice president of investments for R.W. Baird in Mequon, Wis. “A new automobile is for most people their second-biggest investment next to a home, so a great way to save money and increase financial assets is to hang on to their current vehicle rather than buy a new one every few years.”
The Car Care Council is the source of information for the “Be Car Care Aware” consumer education campaign promoting the benefits of regular vehicle care, maintenance and repair to consumers. For a copy of the council’s consumer-friendly “Car Care Guide” or for more information, visit www.carcare.org.
A cost comparison shows that hanging on to your old car can save you money.
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Ford Sync Services Review: Traffic, Directions, Information, and 911 Assist – Infotainment – Auto Reviews – Car and Driver
September 13, 2011 | Author ratoxuha
It’s over. Mankind has been the dominant species on this planet for a hundred thousand years, but our time is up. I know this because a Ford Fusion hybrid just used my cell phone to call a website so it could tell me the latest news. This included a report that Donald Trump has purchased the WWE’s Monday Night RAW wrestling program. So, while cars and websites are chitchatting and locating sushi restaurants 3000 miles away, humanity is focused on billionaire reality TV stars becoming overlord to steroidal ape ballets. We are being seriously outclassed.
How Did We Sync to This Level?
People have talked to their cars—mostly screamed at them, really—since the beginning of the automotive age, but it wasn’t until Ford introduced Sync that the cars started responding coherently. Although Sync can’t make the car “please, just start!” after the lights have been left on all night, it does allow the driver to control his media player—iPod, Zune, etc.—or dial his phone by voice, all without ever taking his eyes off the road or his hands off the wheel. Just press a button mounted on the steering wheel and recite orders, and the phone or music player responds, usually appropriately.
The Fusion hybrid that informed us of Trump’s latest acquisition is equipped with a free—for now—update for Sync called Sync Services. Available on 2010 vehicles equipped with Sync but not a navigation system, Sync Services essentially uses the driver’s cell phone as a modem to access traffic and weather information, news, and turn-by-turn directions. Existing Sync customers can go to SyncMyRide.com, download the update to a USB drive, plug it into their car, and upgrade at no charge. No data plan is necessary for a cell phone to fully use Sync Services; the communication is done over a voice connection.
_______________________________________________________________ _ _______________________________________________________________ _ Each user’s Sync Services is managed by the website . There, users input their cell-phone numbers and manage their data. They can save up to 25 favorite destinations for turn-by-turn navigation, as well as set text alerts of traffic disruptions on their routes and save their favorite news topics. Pair your phone to the car with Bluetooth, press the Sync button, and say, “Services,” and the car will dial up your account and access the requested information.
Asking Your Car for Directions Navigation is the coolest and most useful of the services. Press the Sync button and say, “Directions,” and you can get guidance to any address or intersection as well as any of your saved locations. Sync can also look up businesses by location and category and get directions, call them, or have information about them texted to your phone. The voice commands are intuitive, and the system works quickly. When it understood our requests—not as reliably as it did during our
, probably because it was hot and humid and we refused to turn the A/C down from full blast—it worked perfectly. And because the Sync system uses a centralized, constantly updated database, it has far more luck finding businesses than onboard navigation systems, which can store only a limited number of addresses.
Since Sync Services is only available on cars without a nav system, the turn-by-turn directions are shown on the radio display, and Sync’s female narrator announces each upcoming turn, just as a nav system does. And since it’s integrated into the car, Sync can turn down the radio to be sure its instructions are heard, something aftermarket nav systems don’t do. Some street names can get a little difficult to understand, but the instruction displayed on the radio face rectifies the problem.
_______________________________________________________________ _ _______________________________________________________________ _ The operation ties up your phone line while you program your destination and route downloads to the car, but our call to find a Chinese restaurant 2.5 hours away and download directions only took four minutes, so it’s not a catastrophic shortcoming. The route download includes what Sync programmers call “microroutes” around your main path, so if you deviate slightly from the intended route, the car won’t automatically have to make another phone call to provide alternate instruction. However, if you manage to get hopelessly lost in an area without cell coverage, the nav functionality won’t be able to get you back to civilization.
Isn’t This Why We Have AM Radio?
The traffic function is pretty handy as well. Get in your car, connect to services, and say, “Traffic to work” (“work” being one of your SyncMyRide.com saved locations), and you get a rundown of known traffic backups on your route. This includes where the incident is, how far traffic is currently backed up, and estimated travel time. Granted, the system doesn’t monitor every road in the country, but listing every construction delay in Michigan would take all day anyway.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/09q2/ford_sync_services_review_traffic_directions_information_and_911_assist-infotainment