Hat tip to Engadget for this one. Audi is rumored to be working on a system that will tell drivers “how fast to drive to catch a green light.” Traffic signals in Ingolstadt, Germany have been configured with sensors that send information to allow traffic patterns to shift around for “optimum light switching.” The […]
Posted on July 29th, 2008 by Shorty
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Last night my housemate and I went out to the drive-in. While we ate our less than healthy but every so tasty meal, we engaged in our usual habit of trash talking the SUVs that came driving by and approvingly noting the compacts and hybrids. We both pointed to a yellow Mini with white racing […]
Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Shorty
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Prius to Catch Some Rays?
In an interesting development, word has it that Toyota has plans to add solar panels to the roof of its popular Prius hybrid. The panels, built by Kyocera, will be used to run the air conditioning. It will be two or three years before the Prius line gets a retooling, at […]
Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Shorty
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Just this week General Motors announced a commitment of $5 million for a five-year joint venture with Carnegie Mellon to work on driverless tech. The press release talks about a vision of folks eating breakfast and checking their email while the car does the driving, but the real goal is to merge existing monitoring systems […]
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Shorty
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Plug-in. Those just seem to be the magic words in the automotive world these days. The latest on the bandwagon, going up against the Chevy Volt destined for showrooms in 2010 and the long-rumored Prius plug-in is venerable VW. Yep, Volkswagen has cooked up a “Twin Drive” Golf sporting a diesel engine with 122 hp […]
Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Shorty
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I haven’t succumbed to the iPhone temptation yet. Even though the shiny new second generation models to be released shortly are very tempting. Oddly enough, I have a lot of loyalty to my carrier because it’s the one tech company that has never driven me to near madness with incompetence. That deserves some reward. But […]
Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Shorty
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Well, hang on to your hats for innovation to come. Tata Motors of India has signed up to compete for the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize to be awarded in 2010. And they are the first bona fide automaker to do so. The goal is for participating teams to build cars that will get […]
Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Shorty
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Electric Audis
According to Reuters, the top brass at Audi thinks electric cars represent a great opportunity and within ten years their company will be offering cars with zero emissions. Ruper Stadler, an Audi executive speaking to the German publication Welt am Sonntag predicted both diesel and battery tech will be the dominating factors in automotive […]
Posted on May 13th, 2008 by Shorty
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In the midst of lawsuits and the like Tesla Motors has still managed to get its first dealership open in Los Angeles at the busy intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sepulveda. Currently the company has sold 600 of their two-seat roadsters on pre-order with a waiting list of 400. Here’s the rub — they’ve […]
Posted on May 2nd, 2008 by Shorty
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Last week Microsoft introduced a web-based service backed by a new technology called Clearflow that will deliver driving directions to help users get around traffic jams. A group of researchers in the field of artificial intelligence spent five years locked away in their Microsoft research labs applying techniques of machine learning to the omnipresent problem […]
Posted on April 15th, 2008 by Shorty
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