2014 Honda Odyssey adds a Shop-Vac and auto tech (guess which buyers will remember)

the industry’s best and top-selling minivan to add a flurry of driver assistance technology. The most striking feature, however, is HondaVac. It’s a built-in vacuum cleaner in the cargo area that gathers in all the food and other junk that the occupants spill while on their way.

The vacuum feature will ship on the high-end Honda Odyssey Touring Elite, which will set buyers back around $45,000 when it goes on sale this summer. Honda was silent for now on whether it would be offered in cheaper Odysseys, which start around $30,000. Honda is unveiling the Odyssey at the New York International Auto Show, which runs Friday March 29 through April 7 (after two press preview days).

If you can get past the soccer mom image, minivans are most fuel-efficient, space-efficient way to haul seven or eight people around. The Odyssey is a solid highway cruiser with bonus driver aids and beefed up infotainment. Car buffs will appreciate the cylinder shutdown for fueleconomy and active noise cancellation.

On the Odyssey Touring Elite, at least, you get a host of standard features including lane departure warning, blind spot detection, rear camera and parking sonar, and forward collision warning. Honda will not offer the innovative passenger-side Lane Watch camera from the Honda Accord since blind spot detection for both sides is a higher-level technology than a camera for one side only. The HondaLink infotainment system offers Harman Aha, an integrator of online music, and Pandora, both via your smartphone. Kerry McClure, a Honda engineer overseeing R&D, says it’s upgradeable, so if a new application comes along, it can be integrated into the car’s offerings. No need to buy a new car. HondaLink also reads aloud Twitter feeds and Facebook upates.

The Odyssey is as good as it gets for long-distance cruising with as many as eight people aboard. The current, fourth generation Honda Odyssey arrived in 2011 and we named it one of the Ten Best Tech Cars that year for its passenger-hauling efficiency. Even so, there are some tech oversights Honda should have addressed in the 2014 refresh, most notably the lack of adaptive cruise control (ACC). McClure says the car does have forward collision warning, the warning of last resort from ACC, and it’s not clear passengers expect ACC in mid-priced cars. We suspect the $1600 stop-and-go ACC on the just-debuted Chevrolet Impala is the breakthrough product that will convince the industry to move ACC to the mid-market.

Minor tech lapses include just one USB jack to be shared among eight passengers, the inability to charge a powered-on iPad via the lone jack, and no seat coolers (another feature Honda claims isn’t yet a mainstream must-have). Tech and safety gains include a structural redesign that should enable the new Odyssey to pass the stricter US front offset crash test, more aluminum parts to reduce weight, and LED tail lamps. The unique 16.2-inch DVD ultrawide rear entertainment system continues on the Touring Elite model; it allows two programs to play side by side, either from the DVD player (in the front console), the HDMI input (in the second row), or the RCA input (third row).

HondaVac: 8 minutes to a spotless car

The vacuum, officially known as the HondaVac, was built in conjunction with Shop-Vac. It runs for up to eight minutes when the car is off, longer if the engine is on. The motor and dirt collection basket are in the inside bulkhead just behind the left right wheel. The hose and accessories store inside so nothing is visible when it’s put away. Honda says it’s a dry-vac, meaning if someone spills soda, you couldn’t suck that up with the HondaVac. The hose reaches to the very far reaches of the front footwells, about a dozen feet away. In demonstrations, the unit was quieter that most shop vacuum systems. As it should: Honda imputes “several hundred dollars” of components and value in HondaVac.

Honda will detail which of the Odyssey Touring Elite features will be offered on lower trim lines. One knock on Honda Odyssey in the past is that if you want options that are becoming more desirable on mid-price cars, you have to run up the pricing chain. To get onboard navigation, you need to buy the $38,000 model, about $8,000 more than the entry-level Odyssey.

HondaVac can only help minivan sales. They peaked at 1.4 million in the US in 2000 and are now selling at half that level.