Pros: small form fit and function piece of sophisticated automotive electronics
Cons: The flower animation does not do much!
I have owned a Kiwi when it first came out into the market in June, and I say I am very happy with it. I think Kiwi designer has put in a lot of thoughts into the product. Kiwi is more than a simple gas saving device. Its concept is to bring conscious and responsibility to the driver to be aware of his/her driving habit and to change it to drive more greenly.
I found many useful features builded in with the product. The neatest thing is it reports the cost of each trip for the driver to be conscious not to spend $5 worth of gas just to go buy a a pack of gum. It's also pretty intellegent that it automatically detects different OBDII standards in the cars and automatically adjust itself to work flawlessly with it, a truely plug-n-play. Once installed, it goes to sleep and wake up automatically every time you drive the car. It also give ability to keep track of previous several trips to show improvement or lack of improvement in MPG and your driving behavior.
I found that high MPG is not everything! Says you can take 3 different routes from home to work. Though you can take a freeway with report highest MPG but you have to drive longer, you may not necessary save gas more than the city route with slightly lower MPG. With Kiwi, I can drive 3 different routes and compare what it actually costs me in each route, so the route that saves most gas can be selected over the route that save most time, and vice versa.
I've already used Kiwi to reset my engine check light twice. I have an old Honda Prelude and a few months ago the engine check light came on. Kiwi reported a troble code P0113. I Googled it and found P0113 is air intake temperature problem. Checking the wire around AIT, I found a broken wire that goes to the AIT sensor. I reconnected the wire and reset the code with Kiwi, the problem went away.
Last week another code showed up when my engine check light came on again! Kiwi reported trouble code P0141 which is a 2nd O2 sensor (after catalytic converter) problem. I checked the wires, clean the plugs (with the hope that I do not need to replace the expensive O2 sensor) and use Kiwi to reset the code, the problem went away. The 2 incidents would have costed me several hundered dollars if I went to a garage and have someone diagnosed and reset the code for me. My Kiwi pays for itself after the first incident, and I feel my money was well spended on the Kiwi. :- )
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