Smart drive is fun

Last week, I bought MCC Smart K instead of Toyota Celica which I run around over 8 years. The main reason why I replaced my car is to reduce tax against car. In Japan, there are a few tax around having my own car. When you buy your car, it subjects to duty (Vehicle excise tax). When you run your car 1 year, it subjects to duty(Road tax). When you check your car health every 2 year, it subjects to duty(Automobile weight tax). I had paid about $1,000 every 2 years for my Celica. I will have to pay about $400 in next 2 years, so I will be able to save $600 ! MCC Smart is one of the smallest car in the world. I love this feature. I feel that my life is optimized in busy Tokyo. My friend said me just a little bit crazy, but I don’t care. I need not to bring any big baggage such as golf bag, tons of travel baggage, cannon shaped camera, and some servers. ;-) But Smart K I bought is started to sell about 10 years ago, so it lacks some important and contemporary feature such as ETC(Electric Tall Collection) and iPod connectivity. So I hacked a little bit and added such feature. Here is the room of my Smart after my hack. You will see tiny ETC device on the middle of dashboard. ETC is connected from fuse box located in passenger seat. I uses some fuse distributer which supply 24V direct current to ETC device. And I replaced default sound unit to alternative device which can accept line-input. I moved it from my old Celica. Finally, I placed iPod dock unit into accessory box and connect USB power and audio line. You will see small white feature in the middle of my photo. I can put my iPhone to that dock and listen some iPod and ShoutCast internet radio. Yes, I love ShoutCast !

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