Antony Ingram, Contributing Writer
Articles
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Light weight will soon be big business at Ford.
The company's F-150 truck, going aluminum for the first time with the 2015 model, sheds 700 lbs over its predecessor, thanks to its new construction....
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Canada Gets Two Cars Below $10,000: Mitsubishi Mirage, Nissan Micra
There's a price war going on at the bottom of the Canadian car market. At one side, Nissan's new Micra--a small car long sold in the European and Japanese markets, but now invading the North American continent--albeit available only in Canada. On the other, the Mitsubishi Mirage. This is available...
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Watch The BMW i3 Electric Car Park Itself, As Owner Reacts (Video)
Parking is one of those maneuvers that we all screw up now and then, no matter how experienced we are at driving. And there's nothing worse than having an audience just as you're trying to squeeze into a space. Even professional athletes can't experience that much pressure, surely? But what if your...
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2014 BMW i3 Vs 2014 Mercedes-Benz B-Class: Luxury Electric Car Comparison
This summer, buyers will have the option of two electric cars that on the surface, offer very similar attributes. Both are from Germany, for a start. Each has a very similar price tag. Each offers four doors and a liftback-style luggage area. Those cars are the 2014 BMW i3 and the 2014...
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Natural Gas For Long-Haul Trucks: Which Version Makes More Sense?
LNG or CNG? If that just looks like a jumble of letters to you, we're talking about liquefied natural gas and compressed natural gas--and so is the trucking industry. Natural gas has, to a degree, been overlooked in the passenger vehicle industry while companies look towards electrification (in...
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2014 Mitsubishi i-MiEV: Arriving At Dealers, Updated, Cheaper
There are times when being first to the market with something just isn't enough. Take the Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car. It may have launched as long ago as July 2009 in Japan, but worldwide sales have been just a fraction that of Nissan's Leaf--and in the U.S, total sales are still in the low...
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How do you make the world's cheapest new car more appealing? Make it more expensive.
Sounds crazy, but that's the strategy Indian automaker Tata is using with its new Nano Twist. And there's a very...
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Japan's Automakers & Government Move To Dominate Fuel-Cell Vehicles
Battery-electric, or fuel-cell? Japanese automakers are divided on the subject--Nissan and Mitsubishi brought electric cars to the market early, but Toyota and Honda have dragged their feet, concentrating instead on developing fuel-cell vehicles. The Japanese government is now on their side, as the...
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Lithium-Ion Batteries: Soon, Woven From 'Yarn' That Carries Energy?
Could your car seats become large, comfortable batteries? If experiments by scientists at Fudan University in Shanghai, China become reality, perhaps they could--as the group has developed battery technology that can be woven into fabrics. According to Phys.org, researcher Wei Weng and his...
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Diesel RAM Review, Model S Aero, Top Gear Goes Electric: The Week In Reverse
In our new feature, The Week In Reverse, we take a look back at the most significant story we published each day of the previous week--collating them all in a single article for you to review, ogle, ponder, or simply catch up on any you may have missed. From electric cars to diesels and more, these...
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Plug-In Porsche 911 Proven By Patent Drawings? Not Quite
Hardcore Porsche enthusiasts are a picky bunch. The 1970s 914 sports car is not a real Porsche, according to them. Nor was the 924. Nor the Boxster, which saved the company in the 1990s. Or the Cayenne, and--God forbid--its diesel and hybrid variants, which have propped up Porsche's balance sheets...
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How Do You Cut City Traffic, Pollution? Move Cars Underground
Figures vary year-by-year, but London constantly hovers near the top of Europe's most polluted cities. Like many of its European counterparts, it sprang up long before the car was invented, leaving little space for roads and the growing number of cars owned by its 8.3 million inhabitants. Pollution...
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Aerodynamics are a vital component of automotive efficiency.
The more air you have to push out of the way to reach or maintain a certain speed, the more energy you're using. And the more energy you...
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Efficiency, Performance From Audi's Electric Turbo Prototype
"Turbo" was the word to have on your car in the 1980s. Preferably in huge, bright script, completely out of correlation with the car's actual performance. Now, it's more often used as an indication of efficiency--take Ford's Ecoboost brand, for example. Audi has used them for many years on its...
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BMW: China Biggest Electric Car Market By 2019, i3 On Sale Soon
BMW has become the latest in a growing list of automakers to put its faith in the Chinese electric car market. The Chinese automobile market is huge: 18 million passenger cars alone were sold in 2013. That's ten times that of similarly-populated India, and around 2.4 million more than were sold in...
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Solar Roadways Smashes Crowdfunding Target, Still Raising More
Earlier this month, we asked whether solar roads could generate enough energy to serve some of the nation's power needs. With tens of thousands of miles of solar-power generating roads, parking lots, sidewalks and other open spaces--without needing to clear space in untouched, natural areas--it...
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Why CVTs Won, Direct-Shift Gearboxes Lost Fuel-Economy Fight
If you're reading this in North America, the vehicle sitting on your driveway probably has an automatic transmission. So do around 95 percent of other new vehicles on the U.S. market right now, though the Canadian figure is slightly lower. The numbers don't lie: Drivers just aren't buying cars with...
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Google's Electric, Autonomous Test Car Looks Happy, Has No Steering Wheel
This is probably not the car you'll be whisked around cities in, in the future. Which is either a good or bad thing, depending on how much you like cars that look like koala bears on a substance recently legalized in Colorado. But it is Google's latest, dedicated test vehicle for its autonomous car...
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MINI has been a huge success story for its parent company BMW. Customers all over the world have fallen for the car's retro looks and wide range of models.
But recently, it's fair to say MINIs...
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How Do You Make Start-Stop Systems More Pleasant For Drivers?
Stop-Start systems are the low-hanging fruit of city gas mileage, but like many fruits, they can be an acquired taste. General Motors has attached such a system to its 2015 Chevrolet Impala with the base 2.5-liter Ecotec engine, and has worked hard to ensure it's actually a system drivers will want...
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Top Gear's James May To Buy 2014 BMW i3 REx Electric Car
You know Top Gear, right? The UK car show with a trio of presenters who hate fuel-efficient cars, think electric cars are useless and like to scream around airfields in gas-guzzling supercars? Well, not quite. James May has always been a little different. He often drives to the studio in a...
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2015 Honda Fit: First Deliveries Delayed From April To June
It's not a good week for getting your hands on innovative Japanese cars. Following the news that Mitsubishi has delayed its plug-in Outlander yet further, Honda Fit customers will now have to wait until June to get their cars--following an original April 14 release date. There's no solid reason...
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Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In Hybrid: Quick Drive
Aside from the all-electric Toyota RAV4 EV, there's a distinct lack of plug-in crossovers and SUVs on the market right now. Mitsubishi was hoping to change that with its Outlander Plug-In Hybrid, but battery issues and legislative delays mean it could be early 2016 before the car hits American...
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2014 BMW i3 REx Window Sticker Revealed, 39 MPG On Gasoline: BREAKING
Yesterday we reported on the delay getting range-extended versions of BMW's 2014 i3 electric car to the market, pending the confirmation and fitment of their EPA-approved window stickers. That wait may not be much longer--and now we know the car's official EPA-rated mileage. The 2014 BMW i3 REx is...
Antony Ingram