Europe’s car market may still be in the dumps, but our favorite maker of plucky Romanian low-cost transportation is doing just fine, thank you very much.

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Those of you wondering exactly how Tesla’s battery swap technology works, here’s your answer. The fully automated system, said to be akin to a carwash, supposedly takes just 90 seconds. To prove the point, Tesla did a side-by-side comparison with an Audi A8 at a fuel pump. It should be noted that the A8 has an enormous 23.8 gallon tank. As Bertel points out, the battery swap system isn’t cheap – but for the folks who are buying a Model S anyways, it’s not a big deal.

Now that Better Place went belly-up,  Tesla  joined the battery-swapping lifestyle.  As promised, Tesla unveiled a system to swap battery packs in its electric cars.  According to Reuters, Tesla “will roll out the battery-swapping stations later this year, beginning along the heavily-traveled route between Los Angeles and San Francisco and then in the Washington-to-Boston corridor.” (Read More…)

My reference point for “old cars” is an old MGB, owned by my friend Paul. Passed down from his father, Paul’s MGB has less than 70,000 original miles and every conceivable part that needed replacing had been swapped out for new during its relatively easy lifetime. When Paul offered me a chance to drive it, it took me all of two seconds to agree on waking up at 6 AM on a weekend just to do so.

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Now here’s a car that represents a weird little corner of automotive history— one of Malcolm Bricklin’s many moneymaking schemes. A few years before Bricklin started importing Yugos, but after he started importing Subaru 360s, he took a shot at bringing Fiats into the United States after Fiat fled the market in 1982. (Read More…)

Feds delayed  -again – a requirement for all new cars in the U.S. to be equipped with backup cameras, Bloomberg says.  Regulators want time until 2015 to deliberate whether it might be better to simply give better safety ratings to vehicles with the gizmo. (Read More…)

Derek writes:

Where do you find a clean, unmolested Integra Type-R in Toronto? In somebody else’s driveway.

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It started innocently enough: Derek Kreindler posted the above photo on Facebook for nothing more than a few social media lulz. Which triggered a memory on my end of Al Gore’s Internet: of a cellular phone residing in the console of my Lincoln Mark VIII. Even worse, it reminded me of the way-cool hack to make it work in the digital age. The conversation went downhill from there, and the boss man suggested I blog all about it. Won’t you join me in the cellular madness? (Read More…)

The first source of performance numbers for the new C7 Corvette is, not surprisingly in this day and age, GM itself. Some of the numbers are extremely useful, others less so.

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In January 2010 a Swiss court handed down a $290,000 fine on a traffic violation. To be sure , the violation in question was a big one and involved speeds approaching 180mph. Police say that, once they rolled in behind the speeding car, it took it nearly a half mile to come to a complete stop. Apparently the driver had avoided earlier detection by radar controlled cameras because his speed was so high that it exceeded the cameras’ ability to measure the car’s velocity. Despite the severity of the offense, it was not the car’s speed that caused the severity of the fine, it was the driver’s income. That’s an idea I think I could get behind. (Read More…)

The internet is abuzz with Volvo’s newest You Tube video of an autonomous self-parking car. The website Motorauthority is even going so far as say this feature will be offered on the upcoming 2015 XC90.

The system, by the way, is not truly autonomous in the sense that your car will wander around seeking a spot until it finds one. It will, rather, work with specific parking garages set up with an interface that will guide the car to open parking places. An in-car system will notify the driver if the service is available and if there is an available space. Sensors in the car will allow the vehicle to interact with other non-autonomous cars and people.

Naturally this whole thing adds further fuel to the fire of autonomous cars and the regulatory implications of a vehicle operating without a licensed driver behind the wheel. In this author’s opinion, Volvo is clearly pushing the envelope if they plan on including this feature on a vehicle in the next few years. Likely this system will first see operation in large parking facilities located on private property to avoid the various legal issues that are sure to crop up. Still, the future must start somewhere and, as I have said before, I welcome the better, brighter future our new robot masters are set to deliver.

Konnichi wa: Hackenberg at the Tokyo Motor Show 2011, the same day Toyota announced its alliance with BMW

Uh-oh:  Audi is running out of good ideas. Last year, Audi’s  R&D chief Michael Dick  (his real name) was sacked and replaced  by Wolfgang Dürrheimer. Now Dürrheimer has to go. Hackenberg is dispatched to whip Audi in shape. (Read More…)

“Fewer drivers will take to the road during the Independence Day holiday in part due to a sluggish economy, but also because people will take less time off,” the  AAA told Reuters.

Gas is around 10 cents a gallon higher than last year, but that’s not what’s keeping Americans off the highways. (Read More…)

Remember these names: Detective Steven D’Agata  and Officer Melvin Gorr of the Liberty, New York police department, as well as Town of Liberty Justice Brian P. Rourke and Assistant DA Joe Drillings. I want you to remember their names because regardless of the outcome of  Barboza v. D’Agata & Gorr in United States District Court, those men all deserve to be roundly mocked. Frankly, they deserve to be fired and in the case of Rourke and Drillings, disbarred and then prosecuted for violating their oaths to act constitutionally. I’d call for some tarring and feathering as well, but at a time when those in government mostly use the levers of that government to help those they like and harm those they don’t, at a time of concern over partiality at the IRS and snooping at the NSA, one doesn’t want to be perceived as threatening those on the other side of the thin grey line. You might find yourself prosecuted for criticizing our public servants, just like Willian Barboza.

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For many years, U.S. automakers warned against the red menace of millions of cheap Chinese cars flooding a helpless American market. It never happened.  What finally got the Chinese export machine going a little bit was GM, which started shipping Made-in-China Chevrolet Sails. The Sails convinced buyers around the world that those Chinese cars aren’t as bad as thought, and now China exports around 5 percent of its production. GM expects to export between 100,000 to 130,000 vehicles from China this year, and wants to more than double the number by 2015.

Ford chief Alan Mulally today joined the ranks of people calling for increased Chinese car exports. He’s ready to  export Fords  from China.  (Read More…)