GPS has made talking cars such an everyday occurrence that it's hard to believe no one's thought of tying the technology to the original talking car — Knight Rider's KITT — until now. The idea people at Mio have been hard at work on a Knight Rider GPS, which they just unveiled this morning, and they were kind enough to give DVICE a hands-on sneak peek yesterday.
Obviously, the navigator's design is inspired by KITT, and that would be the black Trans Am from the original series, not the Mustang from the new show that starts up in September. Besides a gloss-black exterior, it also has a couple of vertical LEDs that light up when it talks, sorta, kinda like KITT's. Pretty cheesy so far, yeah, but it gets better — the voice of the GPS is indeed that of William Daniels, who spoke KITT's turn-by-turn directions to David Hasselhoff in the TV show.
That's all barrels of fun, but is it any good? Hit the Continue jump for our impressions, along with price and availability information.
When the GPS starts up, the screen shows an image KITT's red Cylon-esque LED moving side to side, followed by the verbal prompt, "Michael, where would you like to go today?" The name, of course, is selectable, though there are only about 300 you can choose from. And when you're looking at the map's 3D view, the onscreen icon for your car looks vaguely like a black Trans Am.
Navigation works similarly to other GPSes… which is not praise. Sitting in the front seat, our DVICE cameralad Matt Romano — who owns a GPS — had trouble finding sifting through Mio's icon-based menus to find a simple New York destination. There was also a noticeable delay in response time when too many buttons were touched in a row. Keep in mind, though, that this is a preproduction model, and that the software was incomplete.
So when do production models arrive? That would be in the "August timeframe," and the Knight Rider GPS will go for $270. In the end, we wish it was sophisticated enough to understand speech or at least include Bluetooth (it doesn't) so the conversation wouldn't be so one-sided all the time, but the price is right. Yeah, we still want one.
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editor@dvice.com
By CJW at 12:47 PM ON 06/24/08
I am so bummed that the navigation voice is so different from the startup voice. I guess the latter is some kind of digitized audio rather than voice synth, and it wouldn't be practical to have an actor record every possible thing that a GPS can say, but still.
The iPhone 2 is bound to be my GPS. Hopefully they will port a Knight Rider interface over to it. Hahah
By bleepy at 10:13 AM ON 06/26/08
nice to see we are making sci-fi reality and especially with a favorate. lets hope in August the actual models will have more advance features than your everyday GPS currently on the market.
I loved the original kitt car and voice synth so this is a good thing. lets take it to the next level.
By KumarR28 at 10:57 AM ON 06/26/08
OMG how Cool its a bad ass must.
By albirn at 12:30 PM ON 06/26/08
Gentlemen
Unfortunately blue tooth is a necessity for me and I think it will hinder sales considerably. Otherwise I look forward to seeing it .
By Wolf at 7:10 PM ON 06/26/08
I like my Garmin StreetPilot. I set the voice to British so it sounds like Lara Croft is giving me directions!
By JLWSYLVESTER at 5:24 PM ON 06/27/08
This is totally cool, but will it make my car
bullet-proof
By Godleydemon at 5:33 PM ON 06/27/08
Warning will not make your car bullet proof, does not give your car artificial intelligence, does not warrant hot females to ride in your car, you may die if attempting a 300 ft jump, the knightrider GPS system is not maintained by Hosslehoff
By sbukosky at 9:56 PM ON 06/27/08
It'll get old in a hurry. I'd be impressed if it had voice recognition rather than the clunky touchpad.
By knightridergal2008 at 6:30 PM ON 06/29/08
wow this would be so cool !! hope they end up getting it in little ol nz
By JamesW at 9:31 PM ON 06/30/08
I found a website where I could download KITT's voice and commands to my TOM TOM and have had it speaking like KITT for months now!
By By Your Command at 6:24 AM ON 08/02/08
So why can't we get other options like a true Cylon interface? Imperious leader, Lucifer or others come to mind, hopefully some of these folks are still alive or can be recreated from existing snippets.
By Len Adams at 3:13 PM ON 08/11/08
I am a journalist working for Internews, a UK news agency. Can you send us a hi-res image of the Knight Rider. This is a good story for us.
Later we can send copies when published.
Thanks
Len Adams/Writer
By RDW1455 at 1:13 AM ON 08/12/08
So James....why didn't you list the web site where you downloaded the KITT voice? Being a Chump? If not post it bud-E
By m0rk at 7:50 PM ON 08/15/08
TomTom Kitt voice:-
http://gps-data-team.com/pda-gps-navigation/links/index.php
By andysuth at 6:56 AM ON 08/16/08
I was so dissapointed the Turbo Boost button didn't make my car jump over the bad guys who were heading to the same train station as I was.