Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation

Jonathan Crowe — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:34:36 +0000

The 1995 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight was the first production car in North America to be offered with an on-board navigation system, Guidestar. Car enthusiast website The Truth About Cars recently ran a six-part series on the road to that release, exploring General Motors’ earlier, experimental attempts at in-car navigation. The series starts with the very experimental, 1960s-era DAIR, which would have relied on in-road magnets; parts two, three and four of the series look at TravTek, a system combining (still-scrambled-for-civilian-use) GPS with road sensors that was tested on Oldsmobile rental cars in the Orlando, Florida area in the early 1990s. The series ends with a look at the background and development of the Guidestar system itself.

GPS Units: Still a Thing

Jonathan Crowe — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:57:02 +0000

Wirecutter’s Medea Giordano argues that even in the age of smartphones with built-in map apps, there’s still a place in your car for a dedicated GPS device: “there are cases when a phone just doesn’t cut it—say, in rural areas where coverage is questionable, or if you simply don’t want to drain your phone’s battery and data plan. Or when you’ve just found it frustrating to use a phone for long trips, like I have.”

satnav – The Map Room

Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation

GPS Units: Still a Thing