Ford to Eliminate CD Players in Cars to Save Gas
Ford is looking to usher in a massive fuel saving campaign by becoming one of the first car manufacturers to nix the CD player that has been a staple in automobiles since the 1990s.
A designer for the company named Michael Arbaugh recently said that he was "looking forward to the day" when the designers will get rid of the CD player from car dashboards forever.
His reasoning behind this statement is that a CD player normally weighs around 2.2 kilograms, which can cause a car to burn more fuel while lugging the extra pounds around. By eliminating it, gas consumption will be slightly reduced for vehicles.
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And now this is possible since most consumers use MP3 devices including smartphones and iPods to access music in their cars.
"I think anyone under 30 is probably using all MP3 devices. They do not buy CDs," said Arbaugh.
He also hopes to motivate other car manufacturers to follow in his footsteps by eliminating physical media players in automobiles. This could mean the end of the CD player since many people use their driving time to explore new albums.
Ford has already done this with some of its cars including a European version of the Focus that did not come with a CD player when it was shipped last year.
Chevrolet also made a step in that direction by offering an optical drive in the Sonix RS that allows for MP3 and streaming music from sites such as Pandora.
According to data collected earlier this year by a research firm, 331,000 cars were sold with no CD player in the United States in 2012 and the firm expects those numbers to jump to 12.1 million cars by 2018.
