Volvo has recently announced that they are issuing a recall for 17,614 2008-09 vehicles including the S80, V70 and XC70 models.

The automaker says that there is an error in the on-board software’s programming that could potentially cause the engine’s cooling fan to fail. This means bad air-conditioner performance but more importantly could cause the engine to fail raising all sorts of safety risks.

Volvo says to head to their local dealership to get the car inspected and outfitted with a new fan control module, if necessary, free of charge.

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Ford, together with Microsoft, first announced their Sync system a few years ago and the system made its debut on the 2008 Ford Focus. Ever since its debut Sync has been offered in just about every Ford, Mercury and Lincoln model.

Well, Ford and Sync have come a long way as the automaker has recently stated that they have shipped their 1 millionth vehicle that was equipped with Sync. In fact, the millionth vehicle was given to Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, as a gift.

Futhermore, Ford also says that they have updated Sync’s software so that it can now check the weather, breaking news events, traffic reports and turn-by-turn navigation. Ford currently only offers the Sync system in English, Spanish and French but hope to expand it to German, Mandarin, Arabic, Italian, Dutch and Russian in an attempt to expand their market share.

It’s nice to see at least one US automaker is doing good in these tough economic times.

Read (KickingTires)

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Chinavasion Wholesale Ltd is now offering a line of GPS ready car DVDplayers. While an increasing number of factories and wholesalers in China are offering GPS capable car DVD Players, Chinavasion’s Rose Li warned buyers to pay special attention to the pre-installed software. According to Rose Li some Chinese car DVD suppliers offer sample or cracked software with their GPS car DVD players but fail to tell customers that they will not in fact get the fully licensed version of software. “The common practice of pirating GPS software by Chinese factories puts Car DVD importers in a difficult position,” according to Rose Li.

“Pirated GPS software is unreliable, cannot be updated, and can be illegal to import – that is why Chinavasion absolutely avoids such dubious practices.” Instead Chinavasion offers GPS ready car DVD players, ready to be loaded with the GPS software that suits the customers’ location and budget and gives the driver advice on how to find and install the GPS software. “At Chinavasion we are proud to give customers the information, technology and know-how they need to get from A to B”

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Technology as we know it will probably play an important part in future cars, and that’s not a secret. Hughes Telematics is a company that intends to bring that future even closer. By 2010 Hughes Telematics wants to bring us downloadable applications straight to the dashboard of our cars. Hopefully these apps will keep our eyes on the road and not on the future dashboard console. There’s no telling what this application will do, but they could pretty much do anything we’d imagine.

via Gizmodo

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