CES 2008: Autopage lets you start your car from ANYwhere
Ever been sitting in a cafe in, say, Paris, and wanted to impress your new French friends by starting your car back in the States remotely? No, neither have we, but if the opportunity ever arises, Autopage can make it happen.We poke fun, but Autopage's new C3 system is actually pretty cool and won the 2008 CES Best of Innovations Award. After installing several of Autopage's various modules in your car, you are, virtually, Michael Knight. Using your most any smart phone, you can not only remotely start your car from anywhere you have service, you can also roll windows up or down, disable the starter and open your trunk.
But those are not the coolest things it can do. If your car moves more than 25 feet without your permission (stolen, towed, rolled into a lake after you forgot the parking brake, etc.) you will be notified via text message that sumthin's up. Then you can invoke yet another feature: GPS tracking via your mobile. C3 shows you a map updated every 5 minutes of your car's direction of travel so you can help the fuzz track down the perp who stole your ride. Or you can use it to keep dibs on your teenager who's headed to Vegas instead of the movie theater.
Speaking of teenagers, C3 will also alert you via text message if the car exceeds a set speed limit. So next time Junior takes the Camry over 90 again, you'll know it. Then you can lock the doors, disable the starter and know exactly where he is.
We didn't get a price on the entire system (it can't be cheap), but service plans (you didn't think all those fun things were free, did you?) range from $150 a year for a limited number of uses, to $250 a year for unlimited use.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Warren M 11:49AM (1/06/2008)
McLaren were doing that with the F1 a zillion years ago.
Still cool though lol
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Small Arms Race 12:30PM (1/06/2008)
What about manual transmission owners who tend to park their cars in gear? Oops.
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Arpad 7:54AM (1/07/2008)
Alarms with remote-start for manual transmissions have been around for years... It just can't be autostarted if it's not in neutral, easy as Paris.
Scott 2:48PM (1/06/2008)
Retail is $429.99 with a MAP of $399.99.....This is really cool stuff.
Here is a link to a short video off how it works.
http://serv01.clev10.com/~prvision/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=29
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Scott 2:57PM (1/06/2008)
Sorry everyone, looks like the link is down.
Scott
LoneWolf 3:01PM (1/06/2008)
Big Brother is watching you
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Rick Lyon 7:51PM (1/06/2008)
Pretty cool tech. I assume one needs power windows and locks? Is this something that can be user installed or dealer installed.
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tankd0g 5:30PM (1/06/2008)
They got best or innovations award for 2008 at CES for creating the technoligy behind 10 year old Onstar system? Is this a joke? set the bar pretty low for 2009.
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Arpad 8:33AM (1/07/2008)
It does quite a few more things than Onstar...
1. It sends your cellphone an SMS and emails you when the alarm goes off.
2. If the car is stolen without the alarm going off, it will send SMS and email as soon as it leaves a 1km radius around the original location.
3. If GPS is unavailable (covered garage) then it can triangulate location from GSM towers.
4. You can check the location by logging onto the website.
Viper had an alarm like this a few years ago, and so did MicroTrakGPS. Unfortunately, Viper's marketing didn't push the alarm so not many people new about it and it never sold well. MicroTrakGPS is still around (they advertise in SkyMall) but don't seem to be doing too well.
I just wish it could email you a picture of the driver via a hidden microcam...
tankd0g 9:38AM (1/07/2008)
If the SMS thing is not an Ontar option it would be easy to add. There's nothing innovative about this package. I would say for what you get it is a decent price though, you'd probably spend $1500 to get the same features over three different packages.
Arpad 8:33AM (1/07/2008)
The only problem I see with this is if somebody knows you have this alarm, they just have to carry a GSM jammer with them when they steal your car. :(
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