Tag: CARTECH

Our most common objection to green cars, whether electric, hybrid or alternative-fuel, is that they are -- always it seems -- plagued by goofy looks, poor performance and featherweight construction. Though not an exception to any of those rules, the T.25 is still impressive in that it gets a whopping 74 miles to the gallon, and that it costs -- right off the showroom floor -- no more than $9,000. ...

Surely to become the vehicle of choice for environmentally-minded celebrities and athletes, an electric Range Rover with a whopping 200-mile range will become available in the U.K. later this year. According to the Telegraph, the E-Range, which was developed by Liberty Electric Cars, is the world's first totally electric SUV. The vehicle tops out at 110 mph, thanks to six Lithium Polymer ...

Share When it comes to finding prime parking spots in the middle of dense, concrete jungles, even the most mild-mannered of drivers can revert to their more primitive, animalistic roots. As summer road warriors jockey with each other for curbside position, tempers flare, heart rates rise, and torrents of expletives gush out of driver-side windows. That inherently cutthroat atmosphere, however, ...

A researcher at Yale University has developed a car-safety system that uses touch, rather than sight, to warn drivers of potential danger. According to Tech News Daily, John Morrell lined a car seat with a bunch of cell-phone vibration motors that warn drivers of approaching vehicles. The motors continuously (and lightly) vibrate as the driver cruises down the road. When another car ...

The Directly Downwind Faster Than the Wind (DDWFTTW) debate provides one of the most entertaining geek arguments of all time, and that's a hardy feat, given the glut of endless discussions about preeminent sci-fi franchises, video game violence and Internet addiction. A (brilliant) kill-joy, Rick Cavallaro, may have just rendered the debate obsolete, though, as his wind-powered car recently ...

Not content to rule the PC market, Intel is trying to shoehorn its chips into everything it can find. The latest target of the chip giant is the automobile, which it hopes to make truly "smart" by way of processors, sensors and wireless transmitters. At the company's latest Research Day event, it showed off an electric vehicle equipped with cameras and sensors that stop just short of turning it ...

Texting while driving is one of the undeniable scourges of the road, and some studies have even suggested it's more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. We've seen various attempts to thwart or discourage drivers from firing off SMS missives or placing calls -- ranging from high-tech, GPS-equipped systems that intercept calls based on your movement, to silly thumb socks that make typing on a ...

California legislators might soon turn motorists' license plates into mobile digital ads, a measure proposed by Senator Curren Price that could help the state's cash-strapped economy. The AP reports that California could soon become the first state to use electronic license plates that flash ads when a car is stopped at a red light. These plates, developed by San Francisco startup Smart Plate, ...

Judging by past experiments, Volkswagen believes autonomous features are the future of the automotive industry. According to Engadget, the auto manufacturer's 2011 Phaeton has a dash-mounted camera that reads street signs and adjusts to lessen glare from oncoming headlights. Once a street sign has been read, the information (e.g., traffic information, speed limit) is displayed on the car's ...

Real-time traffic updates delivered to your GPS or cell phone are not particularly new. But, as Scientific American points out, there is a major limitation to these systems. Namely, most drivers are already on the road, and often already stuck in traffic, when they receive these alerts. This is because they're little more than live traffic reports and cannot predict what traffic may look like in ...

With hopes of preventing traffic accidents, IBM's latest patent could actually take control of your engine. As scary as that sounds, according to Engadget, the patent application is for a stoplight system that tells a car when to stop and go by sending remote signals to its engine. When you roll up to a red light, IBM would send a "stop-engine notification" to your vehicle. We're assuming there ...

Share As cars are increasingly equipped to wirelessly access the Internet, the potential for security breaches grows. According to The New York Times, computer security researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have proven in a study that it's possible to remotely control many of a car's functions by hacking its computer. The researchers ...

Based on observations made during our daily commute, people have trouble parallel parking. But, thanks to a project between Volkswagen and Stanford University, humans might not have to worry about squeezing into those small spots anymore. Our friends at Autoblog report that engineers have developed a car that can autonomously reverse power slide into a parking space. Originally part of the ...

When's the last time you actually sat in your room or office and listened to FM radio? Be honest. Thanks to Internet radio services like Pandora, it's probably been quite a while. According to The New York Times, drivers, too, could inch further and further from traditional radio as automakers and car stereo manufacturers partner with mobile devices and Internet radio. The obvious draw here is ...

We know what you're thinking: "It's been way too long since I've heard a good GPS fail story." This latest tale is actually an incredible double fail where poor judgment only served to make the failure of the GPS system even worse. A group of South Korean tourists found themselves stuck in a gully in the Australian wilderness after following their GPS's direction off-road. The group can be ...