Two years ago, The Guardian found a strange barrier for the acceptance of EVs: Iugophobia, or the fear of plugging in. “Consumer research revealed that 61 percent of potential electric car customers were most worried about the inconvenience of recharging.” As an answer, connectorless inductive charging has been developed both in Japan and in Germany. The same electromagnetic field technology used to charge an electric toothbrush can charge an EV in a special parking bay without the need for wires. The Germans, usually not overly excited about EVs, did what they do best: They created a standard for inductive charging. Read More >

As the luckless inventor of interactive video (at least when it comes to car shows), I usually avoid electronic attractions. But then, amongst TTAC’s Best and Brightest is Perisoft, developer of bitchen race simulators, and I absolutely had to test-drive the thing. If you are at the Shanghai Auto Show, it is at the Ford booth, in the left corner. Perisoft can remote into the machine from the U.S. to China, and we discussed cheating enhancing the performance of the simulator. We dropped the idea, because we didn’t want Perisoft to lose future business.

The simulator consists of three screens (made by Dell) and a cab that moves around. There also is a button that says “Motion Stop” – in case you get car sick, I guess. Before they let you drive, you need to sign a release form bigger than what I signed when I drove offshore race boats – a truly murderous undertaking at times. Read More >

Some of Nissan’s Leaf cars were beset by the opposite of the alleged sudden unintended acceleration:  Sudden unintended arrest. Once started and turned off, the Leafs refused to start again. Which of course would turn the Leaf into a PR embarrassment: Who wants the first serious mass market EV to be a non-starter? After having received complaints both in Japan and the U.S., Nissan decided to do something about it. Read More >

Toyota and Microsoft will host a joint live webcast tomorrow, Wednesday, April 6 at 1 p.m. Pacific. “Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., to discuss a collaboration between the two companies.,” says Microsoft. Read More >

As a rally driver, you have a navigator in the other seat. What do you need him for? He knows the road ahead and tells you how to drive in the fastest and most efficient manner. As in “you want to take that turn at around 80. When you come out of the turn, stay in low, there’s another sharp right turn right behind that.” Or fewer words to that effect.

When I met Jutta Kleinschmidt, Volkswagen’s Touareg Dakar Rallye driver, she had this lithe Italian woman as a Navigator. “She’s a skinny little thing,” said Frau Kleinschmidt in her usual don’t-mess-with-me style, “but at least she doesn’t weigh much.”

BMW will do one better. Soon, BMW will give you a navigator that weighs just about nothing. As for the skinny little thing – let’s just say that you won’t be interested in the navigator of someone who lists her homepage here. But let’s not get sidetracked. Read More >

Quoth Thilo Koslowski [via AN [sub]], principal automotive analyst at Gartner Research (and coiner of TTAC’s favorite new phrase, “the trough of disappointment”):

First of all, the car doesn’t really make a good personal computer, and, secondly, consumers don’t have to have a PC on four wheels. Ultimately, any type of Internet access in the future has to support the ownership experience of the vehicle; this is not about enabling me to have the same experience I have on my laptop

Which is precisely why we find Nokia’s “Terminal Mode” protocol so compelling: it “lets cars be cars again.”

The Autochannel in the UK is talking about a long wheelbase Audi A8 with built-in LTE 4G connectivity. That shouldn’t be a big feat, it’s new technology, but it can be bought off the shelf. The Autochannel pistonheads however are deeply in awe: “LTE technology offers data transfer speeds of up to 100Mbps, which is similar to a fixed-line broadband connection. This means passengers in the prototype can use the LTE broadband connection to stream music, high-definition videos and other data on up to six computer or mobile phone devices with ease.” Sure, and Ferdinand Piech invented the Internet. Read More >

With the proliferation of in-car connectivity systems like SYNC, MyLink, MyFordTouch, Blue&Me, etc, the ability of a car to play MP3s, read out text messages and update social media accounts has surpassed such traditional attributes as power, efficiency and handling for many car buyers. And though many of these OEM-branded systems are underpinned by identical software architectures from Microsoft or Garmin, they are taking an ever-more important place in the marketing of new cars. Differentiating these differentiators, then, takes a huge amount of development effort on the part of automakers and their suppliers, and the result is another electronic system with the potential to go out of date with the same speed as a cellular phone. Wouldn’t it be smarter to just create an open-standard connection between your phone and your car so that you don’t need to replace your car when its onboard connectivity electronics go out of date? That’s the goal of the Car Connectivity Consortium, which is aiming to explode the OEM-branded in-car connectivity model.
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I’ve dispatched one of TTAC’s writers to get to the bottom of the copyright fight that’s surrounding Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” tagline, as Reuters reports that Chrysler’s claim to the line may not actually hold up.
Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

[Moda’s] attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”Chrysler applied to trademark the slogan for use on clothing, bags and other wearable items in January. An attorney for Pure Detroit said the company did not start selling the T-shirts until after the ad aired in early February.

But the attorney, John VanOphem, said Chrysler cannot trademark the phrase because it is “merely descriptive.”

“Our position is that Chrysler is trying to claim ownership of something it doesn’t have a right to own,” VanOphem said. “They do not own any exclusive rights to the ‘Imported from Detroit’ phrase.”

Meanwhile, another battle over automotive copyrights may yet be brewing: Saab has introduced its own answer to SYNC and Onstar, named IQon, a term which may be in conflict with Nissan’s display technology used in the Juke, named I-Con. Hit the jump to see a video of the Nissan system in action, and let us know if you think Saab is going to have to come up with a new name, or if copyright law will let both of these naems coexist.
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The Lexus SC430 is not a car that leaps to the minds of automotive enthusiasts as being particularly significant, but it seems it has one last claim to fame. The NYT reports that with the passing of the last model-year for the SC, the 2010, tape decks are no longer available on any US-market car. What, you didn’t realize that any new cars still had tape decks? Remember, the SC first came out in 2001, so it’s been around quite a while. Also, Sony only just stopped making the cassette Walkman last year. So, if you can’t bear to part with your tape collection, you have to buy used. And now, rather than just being an overfed boulevardier that outstayed its welcome, the Lexus SC430 is now a historical bookend to the era of magnetic tape in cars. Time to convert your Milli Vanilli to MP3…

A GM NVH engineer brags:

[GMC] Terrain measured quieter than the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 in our on-road interior noise tests. At 70 miles per hour, Terrain’s interior is quiet enough to allow conversation in normal tones of voice.

How did they manage that? Hours of engine tuning, right? Wrong.

When GM engineers set out to deliver segment-leading fuel economy on Terrain they chose to lower the 6-speed transmission’s gear shift points to enable the Ecotec 2.4L four-cylinder engine to run at lower rpm torque. In this “Eco” mode, which the driver can activate with a click of a button on the console, the torque converter clutch engages at lower engine speeds to help save gas. While the engineering action improved fuel efficiency by up to one mpg, it also created an objectionable low-end frequency boom. To counteract that boom the engineers turned to active noise cancellation technology.

Terrain’s noise cancellation system relies on two microphones embedded in the headliner to detect the hum and prompt an onboard frequency generator to create counteracting sound waves through the audio system’s speakers and sub-woofer. The system also reduces higher rpm engine noise at highway cruising speeds to help keep the vehicle interior quiet.

OK, that solution may not satisfy our desire to imagine engineers slaving over the details of engine tuning, but hey, it’s a solution. Too bad GM’s Theta CUVs have yet to live up to their MPG ratings in real-world testing.

With GM’s announcement of a new SYNC-competitor system, the issue of whether or not in-car connectivity systems are compatible with the government’s desire to reduce distracted driving has raised its head once again. So we put the question to you, our Best and Brightest: will the government ever step in to regulate in-car electronics? Should it? After all, distraction comes in all shapes and sizes… from fast food to in-car Facebook updates. Can the government draw a line between acceptable distractions and unacceptable ones? Will any government action actually make a difference in the statistics?

Wards Auto reports that Ford now has more dealerships than Chevrolet “for the first time in years.” Not that this is a sign of growth on Ford’s part… it simply cut fewer dealerships (62) last year than Chevy, which wiped out some 372 at the behest of the government and its consultants. Chevy, meanwhile, has struck back at Ford by offering its version of Ford’s SYNC system… some 3 years after Ford built the only real brand in what is now the crowded field of in-car connectivity options. Of course, Chevy hasn’t released a date or price for MyLink sales, but at this point, what’s the rush? Besides, Ray LaHood is going to really roll up his sleeves and take on the “epidemic” of distracted driving any minute now… right?

Between Nissan’s Esflow concept and this BMW Vision ConnectedDrive concept, it’s becoming pretty clear that “clean fun” is the theme of the forthcoming Geneva Auto Show. But BMW isn’t just signaling the production look of its EfficientDynamics sportscar… the Vision ConnectedDrive also demonstrates BMW’s dedication to managing the coming information overload created by ever more technologically-dependent automobiles. Autocar reports:

BMW knows that the day is rapidly approaching when on-board sensors will deliver so much data to the driver that innovative ways are needed to present the information so it can be absorbed and acted upon quickly.

Intended to replace the conventional instrument cluster, the next-gen HUD will display info like road speed and sat-nav directions in three-dimensions.

This tech allows different information layers to be superimposed on top of one another, in turn allowing the driver to display the required data in the foreground, while ghosting less significant info into the background.

By providing this ‘optical depth of field’, BMW reckons it can provide the driver with multiple additional information sources without having to redesign a car’s fascia to take an additional display screen.

Just another step towards the day when Graphical User Interfaces become as important to cars as styling and performance.

[UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!]

Ford brought two pieces of good news for their dealers at this year’s NADA meeting: The dealers will get more cars. And they will get more cash. But wait, there will be less … Read More >