cars Archive

Last year at the NY Auto Show, I met with Ford’s social media director Scott Monty to find out more about their Ford Fiesta movement program. This was the program where they gave out a whole bunch of free Ford Fiesta cars in return for a ton of paid media impressions and reviews.

This week is the 2010 NY Auto Show at the Javits Center. I stopped by a Ford dealership earlier this week to find out how their 2011 cars will have more technology inside than ever before. It’s pretty amazing how far cars have come in terms of how they use technology. I wonder what comes first – the car or the technology? I am also wondering when Apple will enter the auto market.

One of Scott’s colleagues provides the video demo below of the Ford Sync technology inside the 2011 Ford Edge. I can’t comment about the quality of the car as we only spent time looking at the technology, which was quite impressive. The Sync technology that Jennifer demonstrates in the video is available in the mid- and high series models, with a smaller package of tech on the entry-level models.

I learned that Sync was actually built by Ford on top of the Microsoft Auto platform. Before this I was under the impression that Sync was built by Microsoft and Ford installed it inside their cars. Ford is calling their new Sync offering, “MyFordTouch”.

Continue reading “2011 Ford Edge – Sync Internet Features MyFord Touch” »

Earlier this month we reported on Canadian car sharing service CityFlitz as their website was removed and some customers were upset that they received no response to their customer service emails regarding their security deposits. The CityFlitz service concept offered car rentals for $1/hour (CAD) and the cars were wrapped with advertising.

Today I noticed that the CityFlitz website is back with the following unfortunate message:

We first covered Canadian-startup CityFlitz last September. We learned about the car sharing service via the FreshBooks blog. CityFlitz is a car-sharing service offered in Canada. The concept of car sharing, popularized by ZipCar, is based around many people sharing a bank of cars. I use ZipCar about once a week and think it’s a great service as they take care of everything and I just pay for the hours I use the car.

CityFlitz tried a more involved business model than ZipCar employs. CityFlitz wrapped each of their cars with advertising and then only charged members $1/day to use the car (gas not included). ZipCar has a maximum mileage per rental period while CityFlitz wants you to drive as much as possible so that the advertisements are seen around town. If you drive less than 30km per day with CityFlitz, you are charged a penalty. CityFlitz cars also come with WiFi inside the car which is pretty neat.

We received a couple of emails today about CityFlitz and that their domain name is no longer functional. When we load CityFlitz.com, we are redirected to what appears to be a web hosting provider. I’ve tried to email the company but so far no response. If I receive a response, I will update this post. In my initial review I wondered if the company would be able to sign enough advertisers to support the cars as a going concern.

In July, Esteban reported that CityFlitz was expanding to Montreal. He also noted that advertisers were paying $7,000 a month on average for advertising on the fleet of cars.

One member left a comment on our initial post noting that CityFlitz charged a security deposit of $350 (unsure if it’s CAD or USD) and the member has been unable to receive a refund. There are two additional comments on the CityFlitz Facebook page also regarding the security deposit. You can read the full terms using the Google Cache. Let’s hope this is just a temporary issue.

I like the concept that CityFlitz used and maybe the way to make it work is to charge a minimum fee for the car rentals that equals the bottom-line cost and use the advertising as the profit. I might be willing to drive around in a advertising wrapped ZipCar if I received enough of a discount to make it worthwhile.

By now I am sure everyone has heard of the cash for clunkers (official name CARS - car allowance rebate system) program run by the U.S. government. It’s a $3 billion dollar bailout program for the auto industry paid for by tax dollars. If you are new to the program, here’s how it works. If you have a car that’s considered a clunker, you can get up to a $4,500 bottom line discount on any new car.

In my new role I see a lot of websites that are clunkers. Many of the sites haven’t been touched in a decade, are broken, are out-of-date, missing any current functionality or aren’t indexed in Google. How many dollars of revenue are these businesses losing out on because their website is a clunker?

I am not even talking about any sort of social networking or social media optimization. Just simple updates so that the sites are usable and, more importantly, findable. By investing in creating better small business websites, the local economy will benefit which in turn will provide more jobs and strengthen local businesses for the long term. Some of the concept overlaps with Robert Scoble’s 2010 web concept.

With that I’d like to introduce the concept of the “Cash for Clunkers Website Edition”. I’ve posted my initial thoughts on the concept and program in my Information Week column. Have a look at the concept and let me know your thoughts!