Honda Launches Short Film Series, Talks Success Through Failure

Honda is premiering three new short documentaries online as part of their relaunched “Power of Dreams” website. Director Derek Cianfrance filmed unscripted conversations with Honda associates talking about their approach to solving problems and finding solutions. The debut includes three films with more to follow every few months. The series can be viewed at the “Power of Dreams” website or on the company’s YouTube channel.Worth a view is “Failure: The Secret to Success” which depicts Honda’s belief in the importance of never being afraid to try something new. The film feature Honda designers, engineers, and members of the race team talking about failures and risks taken that helped lead to new innovations.

Ambient Feedback for Greener Driving

Source: Springwise

After we featured Fiat's ecoDrive, one of our spotters alerted us to Honda's Ecological Drive Assist System. Called Eco Assist for short, the system gives feedback on driving techniques, aiming to help consumers save fuel. Eco Assist also helps improve fuel optimization and battery charging. Recognizing drivers' love of a good challenge, Honda moves the goalposts by rating them on the eco-friendliness of their driving style. At the end of each journey, the instrument panel displays how well they did.

One of the system's smarter features is that it gives feedback by changing colour in real time, avoiding distracting statistics and numbers. Fuel-saving, smooth acceleration and braking are rewarded with a green glow, and aggressive starts and stops are reprimanded in blue. A positive alternative to the dearth of dry save-the-planet communications, the system's ambient communication makes its message easier to absorb: helpful for those multi-taskers who spend their journeys making phone calls, revising their routes and flipping through MP3s. Honda hopes the constant form of feedback will turn drivers' good intentions into subconscious habits.

The system will be included in Honda's American Insight hybrid as of spring 2009. Given that the easiest way to save the planet is to change our behaviour, how could your business put customers in touch with their actions? (Related: Visualizing energy use.)

Website: www.hondanews.com/categories/1097/releases/4878