Tag: CARS

What's more embarrassing than a burglar accidentally dialing 9-1-1 on herself? Accidentally calling the police while she's in the middle of giving a lecture on how to escape the police. As 19-year-old Stefanie Vargas and her 13-year-old male accomplice were in the middle of robbing cars in Daytona Beach, Fla., the cell phone in Vargas' pocket "accidentally" called 9-1-1, allowing dispatchers ...

To most city-dwellers, the concept of "gas mileage" means about as much as "cow tipping." But, for the driving and eco-conscious people of the world, getting the most fossil-fuel bang for your buck is pretty darned important. And, in the great race to build the most fuel efficient car in the world, a group of students from Cal Poly may have just raised the bar to insurmountable heights. In ...

Seat belts are the foundation of automobile safety, and they are receiving a high-tech makeover from none other than Ford Motor Company. According to a Ford press release, rear passengers in the company's 2010 Explorers will be the first to experience inflatable seat belt technology. The seat belts look just like traditional seat belts, but inflate within 40 milliseconds following a crash ...

Everyone has an iPhone app nowadays. The Hut, Starbucks, our friends of TUAW, even car sharing service Zipcar are now part of the club. So who was left sitting around without a cheaply and poorly developed, multi-touch doodad, that they could slap their brand on? Apparently Mercedes-Benz, and as expected, the luxury car maker couldn't wait any longer to hop on the bandwagon. This isn't the first ...

The iPhone may not be as big in Japan as it is in the States, but that hasn't stopped Nissan from developing an app that shows the residents of Yokohama City, Japan how to drive better. The new program is part of a trial service called E1 Grand Prix. Here's how it works: The app connects to your car's On-Board Diagnostics (OBD), and extracts information in real-time to determine how efficiently ...

Apparently all those studies and advertisements about the dangers of texting while driving are getting through to the American people. According to Motor Trend, Ford recently commissioned a survey that found 93-percent of the participants support a nationwide ban on texting while driving. It looks like the automotive giant surveyed a bunch of cynics though -- because only 42-percent said they ...

Earlier this year, Ford announced significant tech-related upgrades to its bellwether Taurus, and, according to Wired, models with one significant addition will hit the market this summer. While adaptive cruise control is already available in certain foreign cars, the Taurus will provide a more affordable, and domestically produced, alternative. The radar-aided cruise control accelerates and ...

When times are tough, people turn to schemes and scams to solve their money woes. And as drivers are having an increasingly hard time dealing with gas-consuming vehicles that require monthly payments and insurance fees, some have fallen back on a good old-fashioned solution: insurance fraud by setting fire to, intentionally crashing, or ditching their own rides. The Los Angeles Times reports ...

New Jersey drivers, already banned from using cell phones while driving, may also be banned from programming their GPS units. Just fifteen months after a state-wide ban on behind-the-wheel talking and texting took effect in March of 2008, one New Jersey legislator wants to up the ante, according to the DailyRecord. On June 8th, Harvey Smith, a Democratic Assemblyman from Jersey City, introduced a ...

We once asked a friend why they bought a Hummer and their response was, "If you're gonna go big, go big." Well, it seems that Raser Technologies, a company specializing in electric motoring, has taken those words to heart -- only it's going in the opposite direction. Set to be unveiled next week, the Raser H3 is a converted electrical-hybrid version of the gargantuan SUV retrofitted to get up ...

On a cold, frosty morning, having to go out and start your car a few minutes early to get the de-icer working is a drag. So, too, is breaking out the window scraper and hacking away, causing your fingers slowly to go numb. A new tech could remove that delay, literally blowing the ice off of your car in seconds with a 20,000-kilowatt electro-pulse! The tech is currently being used on the ...

And we're not talking about that 3.5mm-to-3.5mm trick, either. No sirree, we're referring to bona fide iPod integration, and 2009 marks the first year where over half of all US-bound automobiles are expected to offer optional support for Apple's prolific PMP. When looking at 2008 model year vehicles, just 39-percent offered tight iPod integration, but according to Phil Magney, vice president of ...

The only thing worse than getting a punctured tire is trying to use a flimsy scissor jack to change it. Break down on a dirt or snow-covered road and you probably have as good a shot at losing your hand as you do fixing a flat. Not so with the Titan, which may look like an exhaust-powered whoopee cushion, but can actually haul cars (even lifted rigs) up into the air on nearly any surface. Just ...

This isn't so much a technology story as a super-sized, impress you with the audacity story. A giant billboard in Moscow, stretching up and across approximately 1.5 ACRES (no, not a typo), features real BMWs affixed sideways to appear as though they are racing across the advertisement's expanse. In the Western World, we know they do things big in Texas, but this enormous ad tops anything we've ...

Getting rear ended sucks. Chances are it's happened to you, and maybe you've even done it to someone else. Quite often these fender-benders are caused when someone stops suddenly. If you happen to be paying attention close enough that you can stop in time to avoid the person in front of you, there's a good chance the person behind you wasn't, meaning you get creamed. To improve auto safety in ...