Video: Driving Smart: Minivan Features

Minivans have gotten a bad rap as of late, but they still rise to the challenge with plenty of innovative features to keep the peanut gallery at bay. Let's check a few out. If the kids in the third row are horsing around, you can always threaten to pull over. But with the available Driver Easy Speak feature in the Toyota Sienna, you probably won't have to raise your voice. Press a button here on the Sienna's dashboard and Driver Easy Speak picks up your voice through this microphone here in the headliner and then projects it all the way to the third row speakers. It's kind of like some mysterious voice just popping up behind them. Luke I am your father, stopped kicking your brother. Nothing helps a road trip better than kids who are just plain asleep and with the optional first-class style lounge seats in the Kia Sedona, that should be pretty easy. These seats slide way back here. They've got a leg rests that come up here and extend. They even have airplane style head restraints that kind of curl around your head like so. Flip those window shades, those kids are gonna be snoozing in no time. Now, if they're wide awake, the Chrysler Pacifica should keep them entertained. With the Pacifica's available Uconnect theater system, you have two 10 inch screens that go on the back of the front seats here. You can have the kids hook up a gaming system or watch a Blu-ray on them. Or there's actually fun kind of kid friendly apps here. Everything from tic-tac-toe to Sudoku to solitaire. You can play one screen against the other screen. There's even a fun, Are We There Yet? app that shows in visual format how far you have left to go. Minivans have always been the place to find the latest family innovations. With this newest crop, all that travel should be a snap. (upbeat techno music)