NEW YORK (Kyodo) Honda Motor Co. plans to start marketing in North America new vehicles equipped with a speech-recognition navigation system developed jointly with IBM Corp., according to the two firms.
Honda will be the first automaker to make a navigation system that can identify spoken street and city names a standard feature of automobiles sold in North America, according to IBM. In Japan, Honda cars are already equipped with the voice-recognition navigation system.
Honda will offer the new system as a standard feature of the 2005 Acura RL, set to be launched in October.
The system recognizes more than 700 commands and more than 1.7 million street and city names in North America.