Car Tech
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Carbon fiber is seen by many in the auto industry as one of the most effective ways of reducing vehicle weight and thus improving acceleration, braking and handling while simultaneously curbing fuel consumption and emissions. But the expense of the material and finicky production process has mostly reserved its use for high-end cars. That’s now starting to change. CHECK OUT: New Inside Koenigsegg Episode Shows How Carbon Fiber Wheels Are Made: Video A number of cars with price tags of less than six figures are now fitted with carbon fiber components, and with the arrival of the new Ford...
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Google's Waze enters ride-sharing game: Is Uber doomed?
Here's some news that isn't likely to sit well with the Uber brass: Google is getting into the ridesharing game. Details come from The Car Connection, which writes that Waze—the traffic app Google acquired in 2013—is currently testing a service called Ridewith on its home turf in...
John Coyle -
2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class To Expand Safety, Self-Driving, Self-Parking Capabilities: Video
The 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan will be officially unveiled next January at the Detroit Auto Show, but from the number of spy shots already published, it's pretty obvious that it'll have a strong family resemblance to the S-Class and C-Class before it. The company showed off its own...
John Voelcker -
New GoPro HERO4 Session Drops Some Features To Get Small
GoPro has announced a brand-new camera for its lineup of capture-anything-and-everything video devices. It's called the HERO4 Session, and it's smaller and lighter than the standard Hero 4 Black or Silver models already offered. CHECK OUT: Hand-Crafted Bike Builder Steals The Jay Leno's Garage...
Jeff Glucker -
BMW Shows Off More Vehicles With Power-Boosting Water Injection
BMW held a presentation at its test center in Miramas, France during the past week where the automaker showed off a number of its upcoming powertrain technologies. The highlight was an i8 technology demonstrator fitted with a hydrogen fuel cell, and alongside it BMW showed a fuel cell-powered...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
BMW Shows Off Fuel Cell-Powered i8 And 5-Series GT
In late 2011, BMW signed a memorandum of understanding with Toyota for collaboration on a number of projects, one of which was development of a new sports car platform to spawn a replacement for the Z4 as well as a spiritual successor to the Supra. Another crucial area for collaboration was...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Like most other automakers in this expensive space, Ferrari offers up a more bespoke automobile for its more discerning clientele. The program is called Tailor Made, and its latest creation made its debut during the recent 2015 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The creation is this Bianco Italia and Blu Hellen California T. ALSO SEE: Ferrari At The 2015 Goodwood Festival Of Speed: Video The idea behind the Tailor Made program is one that would already be familiar to buyers of wares from Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, and a number of other specialty automakers. These exotic machines are...
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BMW 1-Series Predictive Gear Shift Reads The Road: Video
BMW's Predictive Gear Shift is unquestionably trick technology. First appearing on the company's Rolls-Royce Wraith, and later on its BMW 7-Series, the system uses satellite navigation to read the road, automatically downshifting before turns and upshifting upon exit. You know, just like a driver...
John Coyle -
DM Blade lays claim to being first 3D-printed supercar
You may remember that Local Motors recently went out and created a 3D-printed car. Over the course of 44 hours, the Local Motors printer whirred and processed and then spat out a nearly complete vehicle. Components necessary for movement were then added in, and this included bits like the...
Jeff Glucker -
Thinking Inside The Gearbox: How A Manual Transmission Works
The future of the stick shift looks dim. Performance icons like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren no longer offer traditional manuals. Even on enthusiast models like the Corvette, less than half of buyers opt for a third pedal. But all is far from lost. Alfa Romeo's new Giulia will allow drivers to...
John Coyle -
Audi Joins Moon Mission
There’s a high-stakes X Prize competition running, and this one’s to the moon—literally. We’re taking, of course, about the Google Lunar X Prize, which has been running since 2007 and pits teams against each other in a race to launch, land, and operate a rover on the...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Samsung Builds A Truck You Can See Through, Sort Of
We've seen some pretty interesting applications of camera tech lately—see Land Rover's Transparent Hood and Jaguar's 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen. Yet Samsung's Safety Truck seems particularly clever. Compared with the Jaguar Land Rover applications, Samsung's effort is decidedly simple...
John Coyle -
Hawthorne, California is hardly Tatooine—but if entrepreneur and Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] CEO Elon Musk gets his way, both will boast pod racing. Plenty of details are still to come, but SpaceX, which is also headed by Musk, has announced a competition to challenge universities and independent teams to design pods for the Hyperloop concept outlined two years ago. The system is akin to a train running in a pneumatic tube, and powered by a combination of magnetic force and air pressure. In theory, it would allow passengers to travel at up to 800 mph. After a review by SpaceX, the pods...
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The Rotary Engine's Inner Mysteries Explained: Video
While Motor Authority has written plenty about the rotary, or Wankel, engine over the years, our stories have generally gone in two distinct directions. The first flavor cites either official sources or informed—and hopeful—speculation to debate the question of whether Mazda will ever...
John Coyle -
Jaguar Land Rover Shows Off New Remote Control System: Video
BMW’s new 7-Series going on sale this fall will feature a world-first remote control system that will allow you to park in tight or tricky spots by getting out of the vehicle and then controlling it with the key fob. Jaguar Land Rover has now showcased a similar system that it says would be...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Ford F-150 Halo Sandcat Is One Wicked Off-Road Rig
As part of a promotion for the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians release, the Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] has released photos of its F-150 Halo Sandcat, a wicked off-road rig inspired by the immersive first-person shooter. ALSO SEE: 500-Horsepower Rezvani Beast Revealed In The Carbon Fiber: Video Now...
John Coyle -
Chinese rival to Google working with BMW on autonomous car, prototype to launch this year
Google isn't the only tech giant in the autonomous car game any longer as Chinese search engine giant Baidu is hoping to start testing of a self-driving car this year together with BMW. Baidu signed a partnership agreement with the German automaker in 2014 to develop autonomous car technology and...
Motor Authority -
Ford Releases Four Printable 3D Vehicle Models For Download
The Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] is on a hot streak—and it's eager to bring that enthusiasm to your home in a particularly 'cutting-edge' way. The video announcing the 2016 GT's aspirations for Le Mans greatness made legions of enthusiasts start looking at tickets to France, and the clip...
John Coyle -
Tesla's next big advancement in reducing range anxiety was its battery-swapping solution. The technology was announced in 2013 but has only made it to one Supercharger station as of today. During a recent shareholder meeting, the same one where it was announced the Model X SUV was coming soon, Elon Musk shared that Tesla was not seeing a high take rate on customers swapping batteries. Musk’s comments likely mean that battery swapping won’t be supported much going forward. Musk stated that Tesla sent invitations to all California customers to try out the sole battery swap station...
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New E-Class To Feature Much More Capable Autonomous System Than S-Class
Mercedes-Benz’s latest S-Class is the first production car to be able to steer itself, though only in certain situations. Right now the system can handle low-speed traffic on roads with gentle curves and preventing highway lane changes when a car is in your blind spot, but a more advanced...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Fully Automated Parking: Coming Soonish To A Garage Near You
Self-driving cars might have a great track record safety-wise, but truly autonomous rides are likely at least a decade away from the market. Because even if the technology was perfected tomorrow, reams of legislation remains to be written to govern how consumers can use them. ALSO SEE: Jaguar Land...
John Coyle -
Bloodhound SSC's Tailfin Is A Project In Itself: Video
Calling the Bloodhound SSC ambitious is the height of understatement. Its mission is to be the first car to break the sound barrier. On the way there? It'll smash the current world land speed record—a record driver Andy Green currently holds. And as you'd imagine, the specs are insane. The...
John Coyle -
Mercedes Starts Sales Of Tesla Powerwall-Rivaling Home Energy Storage
Well, that escalated quickly. Just a month after Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] announced its new Powerwall battery-based energy storage system, Mercedes-Benz has come out with a rival system that's already available for pre-order in Germany. Deliveries are scheduled to commence in September and right...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Jaguar Land Rover's 'Pothole Alert' Warns About Hated Hazard
Every driver knows major metro areas are peppered with potholes. The severity can range from the merely cringe-inducing to the decidedly dangerous, and in attempting to fix them, municipalities face a perpetual game of Whack-a-Mole. ALSO SEE: Hell's School Bus: Mansory's Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6x6...
John Coyle