I would love Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) but I'm a little concerned about how we are reducing the amount of driving responsibility without eliminating it as we move towards fully autonomous cars. As the drive gets less and less to do, he could become less vigilant. Until we have fully autonomous cars, the driver must still react to emergencies.
If I do get ACC, I'm hoping to delay a purchase until ACC gets Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communications. Right now, ACC is just your vehicle reading it's surroundings. The next generation will still do that but it will also communicate with the car ahead of you. If the guy ahead barely taps his brakes, your car will act more like a shock absorber than an amplifier.
Currently, in a brake tap situation in heavy traffic, Car A taps brakes. Car B sees that and taps a little harder. Car C taps a little harder and so on until you have a full traffic jam for absolutely no good reason.
With ACC+V2V, Car A taps the brakes. Car B gets updates about just how much the brake pedal was depressed and for how long. It factors that against Car A's relative distance and takes the minimum action to remain safe. Car C probably won't even know what happened. No traffic jam.
This is done with Bluetooth using something called Angle of Arrival (AoA) where Car B can tell that a BT connection came from the car ahead based on the direction of the signal.
If I were buying a car today, I would definitely pay for the OEM backup camera. I have an aftermarket one on my XTerra (lousy visibility) and it doesn't include lines showing distance or the lines showing your backup path. I think you have to go with the OEM camera for that stuff.
Ditto on wanting CarPlay or MirrorLink (mirror my smartphone to the car screen). Check the HandsFree compatibility with your phone. There are big differences in how various car HandsFree kits work with various phones.
At the very least,
-- make and receive a phone call using the phonebook in your phone
-- send and receive a text
-- I would also test the kit to see how it works with two phones paired up.
-- With two phones paired and connected, play some audio from one phone and they try to initiate audio from the other
-- With two phones paired and connected, start a phone call and then receive a call from another phone and see how it interrupts.
And so on. You would need a total of 3 phones. Two paired and connected and one not paired.
You might also see what happens when you are talking on the phone and then walk into Bluetooth range with the car running. Do you lose the signal because the car took over your audio?