We were gliding down a short section of Pacific Coast Highway -- temporarily closed for us by the Highway Patrol, no less -- in Audi's wild, battery-electric e-tron show car, when its German engineer sitting next to me leaned over and asked the pay-dirt question: "So what do you think?"
I nailed the accelerator again to judge its acceleration (officially quoted as 4.8 seconds to 62 mph). Felt the brake pedal once more for any wobbliness in its transition from regen to friction braking (none that I could detect). And considered its other key EV attribute -- a range of 154 miles per charge -- and replied "I'm impressed. This is a beautiful automobile. Gorgeous in fact. But...you know, I just got out of a production Tesla Roadster Sport that hits 60-mph a full second quicker and easily travels 200 miles on a full battery." The long look I gave him punctuated my point.

Real-time traffic and voice recognition are becoming increasingly popular features among factory-installed navigation system owners, compared with 2008, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Navigation Usage and Satisfaction Study released Dec. 1, 2009.

The study finds that 26% of owners report having a factory-installed navigation system equipped with real-time traffic capabilities -- twice the proportion of owners in 2008 who said the same.