(Unrelated but weird: Tesla disclosed on Monday that it bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and wants to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its cars.)
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TIP OF THE WEEK
Making your car smarter — for cheap
While we imagine the cars of the future, The Times’s consumer technology columnist Brian X. Chen suggested ways to make our vehicles of today a little more tech-savvy.
Many people, including me, still have “dumb” cars — vehicles without internet connections and touch-screens. What a novelty! I prefer a dumb car, though. Without a jumbo touch-screen in front of me while driving, I have fewer distractions. Plus, I can customize my setup to be as smart as I want it to be.
Here’s what you need to add some smarts to your car for not much money:
A sturdy phone mount: Who needs an infotainment system when your phone is perfectly capable of displaying maps? You just need a place to mount your phone where you can see it without having to fumble with it. I use an iOttie mount recommended by Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation site. It inserts into my car’s never-used CD player.
A Bluetooth adapter: To wirelessly stream your playlists and podcasts from your phone to your car stereo, you need a Bluetooth connection. There are plenty of cheap Bluetooth kits that act as a wireless bridge between your phone and your stereo. The kit I use is now discontinued, but Wirecutter has plenty of newer options.
A phone charger: Beware of all of the crummy phone chargers out there, especially the ones sold at gas stations. You want a durable one that replenishes your phone battery quickly. Wirecutter recommends chargers from brands like Nekteck and Anker. If your car stereo has a USB port, you could instead plug a normal phone charging cable into that and skip buying a separate charging port for the car.
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