The IT Nerd

This part of the review covers the technology in the Dodge Dart Limited that I’m driving this week.

Let’s start with the safety technology. It has the usual Traction Control, Stability Control and ABS electronic overseers to keep you safe. But adding to that are 10 airbags. That includes two knee airbags and rear seat airbags. That makes this car pretty safe in the event of a crash. It also has a backup camera with rear backup sensors and cross traffic alerts. A nice touch, but there is a bit of a flaw to this. The backup camera is fully exposed to the elements which means dirt and crud can cover it making it next to useless. Now to be fair the Dodge Dart isn’t the only vehicle to have this problem. But when the Hyundai Elantra GT which plays in the same space and price point as the Dart hides their backup camera behind the Hyundai logo and deploys it only when needed it to keep it free from dirt and crud, it should make someone at Dodge rethink the placement of their camera.

This particular dart comes with remote keyless entry along with remote start and push to start. What does that mean? Tap the remote start button twice on the key fob and the car powers up. Let it warm up for a few minutes then walk up the car and pull on the drivers door handle. All four doors unlock and you can get in and push the start button (there’s no key that needs to be inserted). Fasten your seat belt and drive away. I leveraged that ability every day this past week as it was minus 11 C which is frigid and I wanted a warm car to drive in. I loved it but I will note this. There was one occasion where I did all of the above and when I went to push the start button, the alarm went off. I had to exit the car and I then pushed the panic button on the key fob to make it stop. I got back in and this time it did what I expected. I can only conclude that for whatever reason it didn’t detect the key fob in the car. I wasn’t able to replicate the problem, so I have to assume it was just one of those things.

Speaking of the key fob, here’s a hidden trick that it has:

It has a hidden emergency key. Nice!

Now let’s talk about the dash. As I mentioned when I looked at the interior, it’s highly customizable. You can have it display turn by turn directions, currently playing music. and fuel economy among other things. Speaking of the latter, one handy thing that you can do is to make it display the fuel economy with a flower around it. The more complete the flower on the display, the more fuel efficient you’re driving is. This isn’t new as I first saw something similar in the Ford Fusion a few years ago. But my wife who is a fan of this sort of thing liked this much more than the “leaves” that Ford did at the time. I have to admit that I can’t disagree.

Now, there’s the UConnect system that is powered by a massive 8.4 inch touchscreen. It controls pretty much every aspect of the Dart from the HVAC system, audio, phone, navigation, etc. Though I will note that there are redundant audio, and HVAC controls on the steering wheel and the centre console. I’m going to stick my neck out a bit and make a very bold statement. It’s the best and easiest system of this type that I have used. Period. Here’s why:

• The navigation system is from Garmin. Dodge makes no attempt to hide it and it and that’s a good thing as it gives people the “warm fuzzies” because consumers are already familiar with their aftermarket navigation systems. Not only that, it is superior to any other built in system in any late model car that I’ve driven recently. Why other car companies don’t do something similar, I have no idea. 
• The voice recognition was excellent. As long as I used commands that it recognized, UConnect had no issues doing what I told it to do. The command structure is simple and takes about 15 to 30 minutes to learn.
• Speaking of voice recognition, it doesn’t try to do everything. It only does the things it has to do. You can change radio stations, music tracks, phone your wife, enter directions into the navigation system. It doesn’t however adjust the HVAC system. I’m fine with that. I think that most people will be too.
• Pairing my Blackberry Torch was really simple. Ditto for my wife’s iPhone 5. In fact, you can pair 7 phones to it. I could then make phone calls easily and receive them easily as well. The sound quality was excellent on both ends of the conversation.
• I plugged my wife’s iPhone 5 into the USB port and it not only recognized all the tracks and playlists within 5 minutes. Then it played any song I threw at it. By that I mean AAC files and MP3 which was not the experience I had when I reviewed the Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus a month ago.
• The sound quality from the associated audio system was excellent. It was crisp, clear and had great range regardless of where you sat.
• The user interface is clear and easy to use. Anybody can walk up to this car and use it without having to crack open the manual. That’s a huge plus.

Was it perfect? No. The only thing that I did find wrong with this was that the system was capable of reading things like text messages and responding to them. But neither my Blackberry Torch nor my wife’s iPhone 5 could leverage that. I’m guessing that there needs to be better support of a protocol called Message Access Profile which makes all of this happen. Thus I’m sensing an update to UConnect is in the works. But having said that, both yours truly and my wife were able to use the system easily and within minutes of getting the car. I couldn’t say that with other systems of this type in other cars that I’ve driven which either took some time to figure out or just frustrated me to no end. Dodge (or more accurately Chrysler) needs to take this system (seeing a they have multiple versions of this system in different vehicles) and make this the standard across every car they make. Then they need to tell the world that this is what they’ve done and let people try it. I truly believe that they will find that people will make the choice towards the brands under the Pentastar. Whomever came up with this system deserves a raise. Seriously.

In the last part of the review, I’ll wrap up a few loose ends and give you my final verdict.

This entry was posted on January 28, 2013 at 8:57 am and is filed under Products with tags Dodge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.