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Safety group pans GM’s new Marketplace in-dash shopping

When it comes to our cars, is the Internet of Things a godsend? Or a hidden menace that will create more problems than it will solve? On the same day General Motors announced it will equip newer-model cars with its in-dash Marketplace e-commerce app, a prominent safety group was shooting it down. National Safety Council President Deborah Hersman tells Bloomberg the technology will only contribute to distracted driving and hurt efforts to stem the tide of rising auto fatalities, which grew 5.6 percent to more than 37,000 in the U.S. in 2016. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says distracted driving was responsible for 3,477 fatalities and 391,000 injuries in 2015, the most recent year for which it has data. "There's nothing about this that's safe," Hersman told Bloomberg. "If this is why they want WiFi in the car, we're going to see fatality numbers go up even higher than they are now." Marketplace, developed with IBM, will allow drivers — or more often, one hopes, their passengers — to order coffee or food, find gas stations and reserve hotel rooms from their dashboard screens. The technology is set to be uploaded automatically to nearly 1.9 million GM vehicles model-year 2017 and later that are equipped with WiFi hotspots and compatible systems. By the end of 2018, about 4 million Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles will be equipped with Marketplace. The app will debut with a limited number of participating retailers, including TGI Fridays, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Starbucks, with more likely to join later. Online retail giant Amazon is also partnering with automakers such as Ford to bring e-commerce capabilities inside the car through its Alexa personal assistant. While convenience is nice, one other thing is becoming clear as the IoT wedges its way into our cars: It's taking aim at some decidedly first-world problems.Related Video: Image Credit: GM Buick Cadillac Chevrolet GM GMC Technology Infotainment in-car entertainment marketplace e-commerce

Book by Cadillac subscription service returns next year

Cadillac rolled out its subscription service Book by Cadillac at the beginning of 2017. On December 1, 2018, the automaker put the service on hiatus after having made a few revisions and learned a lot of lessons. Just a month later, brand president Steve Carlisle told GM Authority at this year's Detroit Auto Show that Book was definitely returning. A week after that, GM chief financial officer Deborah Wahl said Book 2.0 could be ready as soon as Q2 this year. It's taken a touch longer than expected to sort out the kinks, but Automotive News reports Wahl told an audience at the J.D. Power/NADA AutoConference L.A. that the real return happens in the first quarter of 2020.  When Book went on hiatus last year, the service charged $1,800 per month for insurance, maintenance, unlimited miles, the ability to swap into any Cadillac at will, and concierge-like vehicle delivery to your location with amenities like bottled water, umbrellas, and detailing. Good things came of it for the brand, such as the 70% of subscribers who'd never owned a Cadillac. Yet the drawbacks were too much. At one point, the carmaker said Book's halt was due to technical issues like "snags with the back-end technology used to support the service" that hampered customer service and increased costs. Cadillac managed the Book's fleet, as opposed to the dealers, and consumer choice — or a lack of it — played a role in the hiatus. In Carlisle's comments to GMA, he said that subscribers didn't swap out vehicles nearly as much as expected. Even though everything up to the full-fat V-Series models was in the catalogue, Carlisle said of the customers, "They wanted an XT5." The devotion to that one product changed the economics. "Are [subscribers] going to stay in that service if thatÂ’s what they realize they want?" he asked. "It is inherent in that model that we maintain more than one car per customer. And you got to think through the economic implications of that. Particularly if utilization is a lot lower than we thought because people are switching less than we thought." Wahl didn't offer any specifics on how Book 2.0 will differ from Book 1.0, only saying that there will be more "convenience, flexibility and value for potential subscribers." There will be less focus on swapping cars, and Cadillac will "base it off the dealer network." Since the brand's 900 U.S. dealers have the inventory, anyway, that should help both parties.

Cadillac confident attitude will attract the elite to ELR plug-in hybrid [w/video]

Cadillac is not going to pull any punches when it comes to promoting its plug-in hybrid ELR. In the real world, the company is showing off the Wreath And Crest's coupe with Chevy Volt technology at exclusive events with "groups whose members are affluent, green-minded and have an appreciation for design and innovation," says Automotive News. That evidently means young Hollywood celebrities and other well-to-do demographics. As Cadillac global chief Bob Ferguson recently told the industry publication, "If you live on the West Coast and you're an architect and you've given to environmental causes, you're probably going to hear about the ELR. We have sliced and diced who is likely to buy this vehicle." "We have sliced and diced who is likely to buy this vehicle" - Cadillac's Bob Ferguson In the realm of advertising, Cadillac evidently thinks a fast-talking, USA-USA-USA! Type-A personality is just the kind of guy who will convince those celebrities and architects to buy one. For proof, look no further than the star of this new ELR ad called Poolside that Cadillac is airing during the Olympics. There are almost no details about the ELR in this ad, just a whole lot of attitude mixed with humor (the "We got bored" line is funny). In fact, there's almost no indication that the ELR is an extended-range hybrid at all. Short of a brief moment where our hero, actor Neil McDonough, unplugs his car from its charging station, you'd probably never know it's got an EV mode at all. That's undoubtedly a calculated bet by Cadillac, whose ad execs have undoubtedly noted that most electric cars are not selling well with an eco-first message, so they appear to be going with style and swagger instead. Scroll below to see what we mean. The ELR has a starting MSRP of $75,000, and at that price, it's already out of reach for most Americans. Automotive News suggests that annual ELR production is likely to be just shy of 5,000 units, so Cadillac could be on stable ground trying to appeal to such a limited number of buyers. What type of buyers? Well, that remains to be seen. Related Gallery 2015 Cadillac ELR: First Drive View 25 Photos News Source: Cadillac, Automotive News - sub. req. via YouTubeImage Credit: Gallery images copyright 2014 Michael Harley / AOL Green Cadillac Electric Hybrid PHEV cadillac elr elr poolside