What you drive past without ever knowing

A heritage database, not a list of shops

iCar's points of interest are monuments and notable places: castles, abbeys, listed churches, memorials, natural sites. Not restaurants, not petrol stations, not brands that paid to be there.

They come from public heritage inventories, matched to Wikipedia for a summary and a photo. Of the fifteen thousand records imported, close to eight in ten have an article, an extract and an image; the rest keep to their name and their town, rather than showing an administrative record of no use at the wheel.

Loaded ahead, readable in a tunnel

Summaries and photos are not fetched when the announcement happens. They arrive in batches covering twenty miles around the car, and the next batch is requested long before the first runs out.

That is what stops a tunnel, a valley floor or an underground car park leaving an empty panel at the exact moment there is nothing else to look at.

One button to read, one to go

The panel carries a "Read" button that opens the article framed, on top of iCar: the grid stays underneath, trip recording is not interrupted, and Back closes it. The article shows in its mobile version, the only one readable on a screen at arm's length.

If the place tempts you, a second button sends its position straight to the car's own navigation. Not a link to a third-party app: the destination appears in the Tesla system, with its route and arrival estimate.

Wikipedia, and the credit that comes with it

Extracts come from Wikipedia, photos from Wikimedia Commons. Both are shown with their credit and licence, and that is an obligation rather than a courtesy: an extract without credit is not a quotation, it is a lift.

A photo whose author or licence cannot be established is not shown at all. We would rather have a panel without an image than an image we could not attribute.

Included, no subscription

Landmarks are part of the free offer, like the bookmark grid and the trip log. There is nothing to subscribe to, and nothing that closes after a month.