While everybody is dreaming  (or shuddering at the thought) of masses of electric vehicles hanging off the grid at night, while that last ICE is donated to the Smithsonian, Volkswagen is taking a completely different tack. Forget the grid. Get your very own power plant. And guess what: It’s ICE powered. Read More >

It’s a well-kept secret, which will give the willies to people who are (at least publicly) worried about intellectual property: Microsoft has one of their best R&D centers in China. Located in the silicone gulch in the north of Beijing, MSRA (Microsoft Research Asia) is working on advanced technologies, mostly in the visual area. I worked with them once, and they are NFSWing good. They just had another great idea: Why not mine the knowledge of cab drivers when it comes to proposing the best route on your in-car navigation system? Read More >

George Orwell said it would happen in 1984, but better late than never. The European Commission decided that from 2013 on, every new car sold in the EU must have a system called eCall. What is eCall? Think of it as a government-mandated OnStar. If your car crashes, eCall will automatically send an S.O.S.  to emergency centers. It will send your GPS-derived coordinates, the number of people on board, impact sensor data, airbag deployment and other data which probably only the EU and the carmakers know. Read More >

This summer I had the pleasure of touring Volkswagen’s advanced research lab at an industrial park near Stanford University. VW is developing a number of advanced technologies at this Silicon Valley facility, including its autonomous driving systems and electric battery packs. But in one corner of the lab, VW techs have a driving simulator set up with cameras aimed at the driver’s face. Using these cameras, VW developers measure driver attention and focus, testing just how much the latest Google Maps-based navigation system distracts drivers, and whether a car could offer features designed to keep the driver’s attention on the road.

These are doubtless worthy goals, but this ad for the Hyundai Sonata Turbo made me wonder whether VW pays much attention to changes in facial features based on changes in performance. Surely the kick of a turbo at full boost focuses the driver away from the gadgets and gizmos that VW (and every other automaker) is trying to integrate into its vehicles, and reconnects them with the original automotive “killer app”: a compelling driving experience. Technology, it seems, is being used simply to integrate more technology while minimizing distraction. When will car companies start using that technology to assist their vehicles in providing a more engaging, emotionally-rewarding driving experience?

Automotive News [sub] hasn’t received the memo that EVs need good news, badly. Instead, AN hammers the last nail into the electric vehicle’s coffin. If range anxiety, the lack of 220V outlets at your curbside parking spot, and high prices aren’t enough to keep you away from an electric car, how about “an Orwellian future where faceless international corporations track your every move. Drop by the bar after work, call in sick to go to the beach, visit your mistress’ house. The all-seeing eye of Big Brother knows where you’ve been.”

That’s what will happen when you drive an EV, says Automotive News [EN]. Your green friend will snitch on you. 24/7. Read More >

Four driverless, autonomous vans finished a trek most drivers would never think of driving: From Italy through Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Gobi Desert, all the way to Shanghai, China. They arrived there last Thursday, just in time for the Expo that closed last weekend. It was a long 8000 mile way, and they never got lost. Read More >

Researchers at Rice University have developed and successfully built the world’s smallest car. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across. No idea how small that is? It’s slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. You can build a 20,000 lane highway for these cars on a strand of hair. Read More >

A week and a half ago, when asked about automaker plans to bring in-car access to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told Bloomberg

I’m absolutely opposed to all of that.That would be the biggest distraction of all. All of that is well beyond the idea that you’re really trying to avoid distracted driving.

Regardless of LaHood’s ongoing campaign to curb distracted driving, the government-owned General Motors is pushing ahead with plans to integrate voice-activated Facebook and Twitter updates into its Onstar system. Onstar CEO Chris Preuss takes on LaHood’s perspective on in-car Facebook updates in the Detroit News, arguing

No, that’s not a Google Street View Prius being piloted down the 101. The roof-top device is Lidar, part of the sensors that allow it to drive by itself.  Perhaps out of a desire to solve a problem they helped create (texting, mobile web use, etc.), Google has come ever closer to  perfecting autonomous cars. NY Times reports that Google has a fleet of seven cars plying the highways and streets of California, with paid “sitters” behind the wheel to confirm that everything is ok, as well as to conform with CA law.The cars have driven up to 1,000 miles without any human intervention, even down twisting Lombard Street, and have racked up 140k total driver-less miles. The only incident so far was someone rear ending one of the Priuses at a red light. All we need now is for judges to mandate them for lousy drivers. Read More >

OK, so the basic functionality of the Car & Driver/Chrysler “Txt U L8r” app is fine: receive a text message while you’re driving, and it will read it aloud and automatically reply that you are driving and cannot respond immediately. But the industry’s fundamental ambivalence towards distracted driving quickly rears its head in the form of a “paid upgrade” that allows voice-activated replies by the driver: distracted driving is not a problem to be solved, but a money-making opportunity to be exploited. As a result, the message that C&D and Chrysler send with this new app is “Texting while driving is bad, bad, bad… unless you shell out for our perfectly safe app.” Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is bullshit.
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It used to be that you paid for your car keys.  If BMW gets its w ay, you will pay with your car keys. Automobilwoche [sub] reports  that BMW ist developing the “car key of the future.” Oddly enough, it won’t unlock revolutionary new features of the car. It will replace the credit card, a train ticket and a room key at the hotel. Say what? Read More >

Given the rush to load up cars with the latest technological gadgets, you’d think that in-car television would have taken off by now. But Chrysler, the pioneer of in-car live TV, has sold only 850 units of its FLO TV system since it began offering the $629 (plus installation) MOPAR accessory last year, according to the Detroit News. And now Qualcomm is winding down its FLO TV business (likely due to low sales, reports the LAT), leaving Chrysler with only the Sirius TV subscription service to offer consumers who want live TV in their Grand Caravan. Chrysler is

BUMP.com: Who BUMPed Me? from BUMP on Vimeo.

Cars may be battling with communication technology for the hearts and minds of the youth, but at least we’ve got a handle on the downsides of our internal-combustion (or, increasingly, not) friends. Cost, pollution, risk and overall coolness deficits can, given a responsive industry, be battled. On the other hand, we’re only just learning about the endless creepiness that comes from limitless connectivity (stop me when I start sounding like someone who just enjoyed a week away from the internet). Take, for example, the latest attempt to fuse social media with cars: Bump.
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Volvo, now in the hands of China’s Geely, may revolutionize the way electric and hybrid cars are built. Currently, you have to shove a big honking battery into an electric car, and a simple honking battery into a hybrid. This adds weight, and obesity is a killer when in come to mileage.  Volvo, working with the Imperial College in London has a wild idea: Why not dispense with the big honking battery and use the whole auto body to store electricity. Say what? Read More >

Having told the world that Onstar will allow users to update their Facebook profiles and listen to Facebook news feeds from their cars, bosses at the GM subsidiary reveal that they haven’t actually determined if these features are safe yet. Onstar Marketing boss Sam Mancuso explains the situation to AdAge

Today people are texting while they are driving. It’s not legal and it’s a very bad idea; 47% of people who are texting say that they have done so in their vehicle while driving. To do a normal text message takes 4.6 seconds, and at the speed of 55 miles an hour, someone can travel the length of a football field. We know that people want to use technology, but we are working on using it in ways that they don’t have to be distracted. Our goal is to minimize that distraction to virtually zero.

The litmus test we use is “Keep your eyes on the road, your hands on the wheel and your mind on the drive.” If we find that the texting service or Facebook audio update capability causes people to be distracted we’re not going to do it. We’ll vet those things out internally…We’d be very proud to talk to you, others in the media or family and friends and say we tested it, developed it and it’s not safe.

Does anyone actually believe that this will be the outcome, now that GM and Onstar have begun hyping these features?
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