Patent ID: 7801283

Claim:
A hands-free telephone system for a vehicle, the system comprising: a vehicle appliance having a microphone for receiving vocal communications including voice commands from an operator of the vehicle, the vehicle appliance being connected to a speaker of the vehicle for outputting vocal communications to the operator; the vehicle appliance further including a controller associated with an input, a voice recognition module, a communications module, and memory; the voice recognition module being operable for receiving and recognizing voice commands stated by the operator into the microphone; the communications module being operable for wirelessly communicating with a portable phone located in the vehicle, the portable phone being operable for wirelessly making a phone call with a phone external to the vehicle; the memory being operable for storing a list of account names and associated account numbers, wherein each account number includes a plurality of digits; wherein during a phone call between the portable phone and an external phone the controller is operable, upon the operator actuating the input, to respond to a voice command from the operator in which the operator vocally states an account name by accessing the memory to locate a stored account number associated with the account name and then causing the communications module to wirelessly communicate DTMF tones corresponding to the digits of the account number to the portable phone for the portable phone to transfer to the external phone during the phone call; wherein the memory is further operable for storing a list of call recipient names and associated telephone numbers; wherein the controller is operable to respond to a voice command from the operator in which the operator vocally states a call recipient name by accessing the memory to locate a stored telephone number associated with the call recipient name and causing the communications module to wirelessly communicate the digits of the associated telephone number to the portable phone for the portable phone to dial to make a call to the phone having the associated telephone number; wherein the vehicle appliance further includes a voice synthesizer operable for generating vocal communications for output by the vehicle speaker; wherein the voice synthesizer generates vocal communications including the call recipient name for output by the vehicle speaker for the operator to hear prior to the portable phone dialing the digits of the telephone number associated with the call recipient name.