Car Tech
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Honda's Super Cub motorcycle is one of the most important motor vehicles ever made. With more than 60 million produced since 1958 it's done more to get people moving than any other motorized vehicle in history. Honda's electric Uni-Cub has done none of those things but its ethos is the same--personal mobility for all. And strange though it looks, Honda sees it a project worth investing in, developing it into a second-generation model for the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show. Uni-Cub β features a series of improvements over the model we lightly ridiculed back in May. It's smaller and lighter...
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Battery Lessor For Electric Renault Zoe Can Halt Recharging Remotely
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is either the scourge of the digital age or a necessary evil to ensure people who create content get paid for it--depending on who you believe. It's essentially a collection of technologies that determines how you can use digital content or technology after you've...
Antony Ingram -
Bio Batteries: Researchers Use Viruses To Improve Electric-Car Energy Storage (Video)
Researchers at MIT say that a benign virus could be the next step in improving lithium-air battery technology. Viruses typically have negative connotations--think seasonal flu or malicious files sent to your computer--but biological technology is an increasingly important research topic and one...
Antony Ingram -
Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2014: Technology Trends
Yesterday we listed the nominees for Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2014 award: two battery-electric vehicles, one hybrid, one diesel, and one very fuel-efficient gasoline car. But what do our nominees say about the state of green-car design this year? Overall, they highlight four trends to...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Cars To Use AT&T Wireless Internet Service
AT&T will support the many Model S functions that rely on wireless Internet connections.
Stephen Edelstein -
Volvo Develops Structural, Supercapacitor Nanobatteries For Future Electric Cars
Batteries in electric and hybrid cars--and this may not come as much of a surprise--are large, and they're heavy. Reducing the size and weight of these vital components is priority number one for scientists all over the world, and Volvo is among them with its latest technological development. Using...
Antony Ingram -
The 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid has no transmission. To be more precise, there's nothing in a form we'd normally recognize as a transmission—no conventional automatic transmission, no automated dual-clutch system, no belt-and-pulley continuously variable transmission (CVT) either. There's no torque converter, either—not even a drive clutch to slip the engine from a standing start. Enough about what the Accord Hybrid doesn't have; here's what it does have: In addition to a lean four-cylinder engine, there are twin electric motors (each purposed and configured differently), a compact...
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IIHS Unveils First Frontal-Crash Protection Ratings; 13 Of 74 High-Rated
The IIHS is now rating systems that autonomously intervene to help prevent crashes.
Stephen Edelstein -
Lighter Composite Wheels Cut Weight Of New 2015 Audi A8
Lighter wheels could help improve this big luxury sedan's fuel economy.
Stephen Edelstein -
Mentioning Moore's Law For Electric Cars: Sign Of Ignorance
You see and hear it all the time, sometimes from people who really ought to know better. It's the notion that electric cars are going to improve incredibly, amazingly, unimaginably fast ... "because of Moore's Law." If you see or hear that statement, folks, you should view the entire report with...
John Voelcker -
Volkswagen's Future Engines: All Turbo For Gasoline & Diesel
Volkswagen will eliminate the last of its naturally-aspirated engines as models are refreshed or redesigned.
Stephen Edelstein -
More Efficient Electric-Car Motor? Startup KLD Claims It Has One
KLD Energy Technologies says its redesigned motor and battery pack will improve efficiency.
Stephen Edelstein -
Nissan announced Tuesday that it will build an autonomous car by 2020. It is not the first carmaker to make that promise, but Nissan is hoping that a car that doesn't rely on connectivity could be what makes autonomous driving a reality.
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Are Smaller, Better Sensors The Key To Cutting Electric-Car Battery Cost?
Electronic sensors don't occupy a huge amount of space in electric car battery packs, but conversely, making sensors smaller could make the packs themselves much more compact. According to the MIT Technology Review, the U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)...
Antony Ingram -
BMW i Genius: Artificial Intelligence Answers Electric Car Queries
It takes customers a little while to get used to any new vehicle, but for new vehicles like the BMW i3 and upcoming BMW i8 sports car it could take a little longer than most. As electric vehicles, and uniquely-styled and equipped ones at that, there's plenty to learn. Just how do the cars work?...
Antony Ingram -
Armadillo Electric Car: Fold It, Park It With A Smartphone
They aren't practical for all, but some of the ideas for future urban electric cars are certainly intriguing. Renault was the first to take the concept seriously with the Twizy, but since then several Japanese companies have had a go, and Europe has also tackled the urban congestion problem with a...
Antony Ingram -
Chinese Electric Car Maker Dubs Its Top-Secret Tech 'Snowden,' After You-Know-Who
Sometimes, you just can't make them up. A small Chinese electric car firm is currently seeking permission to name its new electric car technology 'Snowden'--named for the former U.S. intelligence contractor now in political asylum in Russia, after leaking top-secret mass surveillance details to the...
Antony Ingram -
Will Audi's Next Sports Coupe Use E-Tron Quattro Hybrid Tech?
It seems strange that Audi has so far failed to capitalize on the huge success of its R18 e-tron quattro endurance racing cars. They're without doubt some of the most technologically-advanced race cars of the modern age, yet the Ingolstadt automaker has made only token references to the R18 with...
Antony Ingram -
Companies that convert regular gasoline cars to electric, or add a plug-in option to regular hybrids, are nothing new. The same can't be said for companies taking electric cars and turning them into range-extended electric vehicles with small gasoline engines--but that's exactly what Hyperdrive, from the North East of England, is developing. The idea is sound, based on the reasons cars like the Chevrolet Volt exist in the first place: range anxiety. Most electric cars are still limited by their range for many drivers. Cars like the Volt get around this by using a gasoline engine as a...
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Nickel-Zinc Replaces 12-Volt Lead-Acid Battery In Peugeot Start-Stop System
Some of the most exciting hybrid technology isn't coming from Japan or the U.S. these days, but France. The PSA group, comprising Peugeot and Citroen, has already attracted plenty of attention for its hybrid-air technology. Now, it's looking for ways of improving the batteries in "micro hybrid"...
Antony Ingram -
Want To Improve Manual Gas Mileage? Haptic Shift Knob Tech Could Help
The humble automatic transmission has come along in leaps and bounds over the year, and modern systems are often more efficient than their manual equivalents. For the manual gearbox itself, economy is still very much down to "the nut behind the wheel", so anything that optimizes a driver's shift...
Antony Ingram -
Know How To Shift A Stick? Mini Explains Manual Transmissions For You
While automatic transmissions are more efficient than ever before -- and many now beat manual transmissions on gas mileage -- fans of stick-shift gearboxes are quick to point out that guiding your car into the right gear with your right hand is a sure-fire way to give you an enjoyable, efficient...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Cash Prize For Tech To Reduce Oil Use From DC Lobbying Group
Among the many advocacy and lobbying groups that weigh in on automotive and energy policy matters in our nation's capital, Secure America's Future Energy (SAFE) isn't necessarily among the most high-profile. But now the group is offering something that should make civilians sit up and take notice...
John Voelcker -
Could Liquid Catalyst To Replace Platinum Make Fuel Cells Viable?
Fuel cells are often considered a significant part of the future energy mix, though that future always seems to be a few decades away. That's partly down to the inefficient and rarely particularly green methods used to produce hydrogen, but it's as much about the cost of developing fuel cell...
Antony Ingram