Call it the Ford Narc.
In the near future, police cruisers could detect drug labs just by sniffing the air as they drive down a street, CBC DFW reports (via Autoblog), all thanks to a device built by a team from the University of North Texas.
The highly sensitive mass spectrometer, calibrated in the clean air climes of Antarctica, was installed in the front seat of a Ford Fusion Energi sedan eight months ago. Read More >
Maybe 2016 isn’t Takata’s year.
The airbag manufacturer at the heart of the largest automotive safety recall in history is poised to double the number of airbag inflators it needs to fix, Reuters reports.
A number of people close to the issue said the beleaguered company will soon announce a massive expansion in the scope of the recall, which has already seen 28.8 million airbag inflators recalled in vehicles from 14 automakers. Another 35 to 40 million units require fixing, the sources say. Read More >
Don’t expect ride sharing.
It seems, some days, that everyone and their sister is working on autonomous vehicles, but a NATO security expert just confirmed that even ISIS is getting in on the technology, Britain’s Express newspaper reports.
Not interested in giving drivers a chance to stretch out while returning emails, Islamic State militants are instead planning a much more sinister (and very predictable) use for their self-driving cars. Read More >
The trial has all the ingredients needed to garner a nation’s attention: a young female driver, a speeding Mercedes, a dark, rain-slicked highway, a carelessly wielded phone, a potentially dangerous social media app, and a hard-working man left permanently disabled.
The lawsuit against Snapchat and motorist Christal McGee by Wentworth Maynard, the driver of the Mitsubishi Outlander rear-ended by McGee’s C230 outside of Atlanta last September, alleges the social media app’s speed filter played a role in the collision. Read More >
Hoping to access and remotely take charge of a vehicle’s operating system via your laptop? Expect to shower with strange men in a place where the Wi-Fi sucks.
Life behind bars is the penalty proposed by two Michigan senators seeking to regulate the state’s connected and autonomous vehicle industry, Automotive News reports.
The bills introduced yesterday make it a super-duper felony to intentionally access a vehicle’s electronic system for the purpose of damaging it or gaining control of the vehicle. Read More >
Yeah, yeah, one day you’re going to put skis up there.
Automakers go to great lengths to make vehicles aerodynamic, adding grille shutters and painstakingly shaving off excess weight, but drivers are just blowing away the hard work with their roof racks, a new study reports (via CNET). Read More >
After admitting it fudged fuel economy data for the past 25 years in Japan, Mitsubishi Motors wants the Environmental Protection Agency to know that its U.S. vehicles are A-OK.
The automaker claims it conducted an internal audit on vehicles from model year 2013 to present and contrasted that data with figures it had previously submitted to the EPA. The conclusion? The information’s fine. Read More >
Rival automakers salivating at the thought of snapping up a castoff from Volkswagen’s brand portfolio will have to sit and wait.
Amid grim fourth-quarter financial data and ongoing expenses linked to the diesel emissions scandal, the company is standing by its assets, but admits they might have to jettison some if unexpected expenses crop up. Read More >
The phrase “disruptive technology” has long since been co-opted to mean “a new iPhone app for people to share photos of their meals” but it has an original and genuine meaning as well: any technology that matures faster than society’s ability to use it constructively. The list of disruptive technologies includes entries as diverse as mustard gas and the automobile itself, but the advent of the connected world has unleashed a diverse cornucopia of unintended consequences ranging from Amazon’s destruction of brick-and-mortar retailers to the corrosive effect that the various “reunion” and “classmates” websites have on American marriages.
TTAC has covered the world of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) several times, most recently discussing a company that assists police with collecting outstanding court costs and fines against motorists in traffic. We’ve also discussed the fact that governmental use of ALPRs amounts to a sort of camel’s nose under the tent.
Here’s the rest of the camel.
If you want your nefarious plan to stay on the down low, try not to make a PowerPoint presentation on it.
That’s an obvious takeaway from the New York Times report that details a bombshell discovery made by investigators probing documents and laptops related to Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal. Read More >
It just posted its largest loss ever and is up to its eyebrows in scandal-related expenses, so what’s an automaker to do when the hands come out asking for more?
That’s the situation in Wolfsburg, Germany, where the scandal-rocked Volkswagen and its workers’ labor union find themselves engaged in an uncomfortable dance, according to Automotive News Europe.
The union, IG Metall, says the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal is no excuse for holding back raises to its 120,000 staff members, and Volkswagen says, “What? Sorry, can’t hear you — we’re driving into a tunnel…call back later.” Read More >
Mitsubishi’s fuel economy scandal blew up yesterday after the automaker admitted it has issued misleading mileage data since C+C Music Factory was at the top of the charts.
The scandal that started with inflated mileage numbers on a single minicar one week ago now extends to all Japanese market Mitsubishi vehicles sold over the past quarter century. Reuters is reporting that the automaker compiled fuel economy data using U.S. standards, rather than the Japanese standards that factor in much more city driving. Read More >
Uber isn’t having the best week.
In two separate legal disputes, Uber will pay out a total of $111.4 million. However, the larger of those two payments — $100 million to settle a class-action suit with drivers — is being considered a win by the ride-sharing company.
The heavy financial cost of Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal is becoming clear.
After reaching a settlement yesterday with U.S. consumers and regulators, the automaker is more than doubling the size of its “make the problem go away” cash pile, Bloomberg is reporting.
Volkswagen set aside 16.2 billion euros ($18.6 billion) today to deal with the scandal’s fallout, up from the 6.7 billion euro ($7.6 billion) figure previously stated. Read More >
Update: I made a decimal flub. The math is corrected. Thanks to commenter ChemEng for pointing it out. We’ll post a new piece on Monday.
There’s no denying it: Volkswagen cheated. It confessed to the crime of emitting up to 40 times over the legal limit allowed for NOx. We learned yesterday (and the day before, to some degree), that Volkswagen will fix the vehicles that can be fixed, if owners so choose.
But what happens to all those diesel cars, which are perfectly good aside from emitting more NOx than they should, if owners decide to cut and run? And what happens to all those vehicles that can’t be fixed? Volkswagen has vowed to buy them back from customers — to which I ask, what then?
There are few options Volkswagen can employ to unload the massive windfall of cars coming its way, and none of them are particularly environmentally friendly.
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