Automotive Blog

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 idea appears to be to get on top of time and fuel wasted in idling, which causes pollution and contributes to incidents of road rage. (You know, the guy who is sitting on his horn if you don’t move the nanosecond the light changes?)

Obviously this is just another aspect of the kind of vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication research that is fueling projects like the joint venture between Carnegie Mellon and GM to create driverless technology, a kind of automotive autopilot. Systems already in place that fit this mode of networked car control strategy include:

- Lexus Intelligent Park Assist
- Mercedes-Benz Attention Assist
- Volvo Blind Spot Information System
- Nissan Around View Monitor System
- Mercedes Night Vision Assist

VW’s Pyrobrake was developed along the same line of thought since it uses sensors to detect an unavoidable collision and triggers a brake piston that applies almost 1500 psi of force in 80 milliseconds, making it faster than any Brake Assist system out there.

And to think we were excited at the idea of hard drives in the car to hold more MP3 tracks!

Posted on July 29th, 2008 by Shorty
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Finally! Some word on the merger of Sirius and XM. Federal regulators have reached conditional approval of Sirius’ purchase of XM, mainly since both companies are ready to shell out millions to make charges of past rule breaking go bye-bye. (Read “voluntary contributions” to the U.S. Treasury totaling about $19 million combined.)

The five-member Federal Communications Commission, with three Republicans on board have, according to Automotive News, “agreed in principle to vote in favor letting the deal proceed as long as the companies agree to conditions to protect consumers and settle the FCC enforcement matters, a source familiar with the agency review said on Thursday.”

So, assuming it all goes forward, that’s the last hurdle in the regulatory circus. Remember, this all started in February 2007. Never let it be said the federal government acts in haste. Even though the traditional radio industry is up in arms that the deal is anti-competitive, the resulting programming ought to be darned interesting. I mean really, Oprah and Howard Stern on the same network? How’s that for something to take your attention off the road?

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by Shorty
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For all the corporate cutbacks and economic woes, at least one General Motors dealer did something pretty exciting this week in a majorly green way and the home office was more than ready to cash in and celebrate to pick up some good press. The event in question was the re-opening of a new $15 million dealership in Suburban Detroit, LaFontaine Automotive Group’s Buick-Pontiac-GMC-Cadillac facility — all 64,000 square feet of it.

The design works to pull in every energy advantage possible. Eighty-five skylights open up to capture natural light and reduce the electric bill, while natural materials have been used when possible, like doors fabricated of wheat and corncobs. The facility will recycle 85% of its car-wash water and collect rainwater for irrigating the landscaping. For heating and cooling, 64 in-ground wells capture energy stored in the earth.

The cost of renovating the dealership rose about $2 million to reach the level of green street cred they’ve attained, more than enough to qualify for a certificate of Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design from the U.S. Green Building Council. The return? Energy savings of 54%. They’ll make back the expense in five to six years at current rates.

So what about the green performance of GM’s vehicles? Frankly, I’m still giving them an “eh.” For instance, the 2008 Buick Enclave gets 24 mpg on the highway. Get that up to 35 and I’ll jump on the band wagon. But this dealership? Fantastic job and the direction we all need to go.

Posted on July 18th, 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 stripes at the same time. Since my housemate is handicapped and we have to haul a wheelchair around, a Mini wouldn’t be a good choice for us, but we like them — alot.

Now it looks as if those lucky green-living Californians are going to get first shot at 500 all-electric Minis currently being assembled in Oxford, England (batteries and motor installed in Munich.) It’s all pretty hush-hush, with no word on pricing or exactly when the gorgeous little babies will hit the street, but since gas hit $4.114 on average today, “all electric” is the buzz phrase of choice. Consumers are abandoning their gas guzzlers in droves and the buying public is forcing a highly accelerated development and delivery of hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles.

On the way home we pulled up behind a car — and I confess I don’t remember the make and model — and right there on the trunk was the proclamation “biofuel.” The car wasn’t snickering and pointing at the gas guzzling dinosaurs, us included, around it, but you got the sense it would have liked to. So even with increased crude oil supplies seemingly pushing the per barrel price downward (about $11 in the last two days) to around $133 a barrel, the American driving public has had a taste of what high fuel costs can do to their lives on all levels. I don’t think this sea change in automotive preference is reversible and even though my pocketbook is hurting like everyone else’s, I think this may have been the kick in the pants America has needed to start doing something about our dangerous dependence on petroleum products, especially foreign oil.

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 which time the panels will likely be added. Green purists are grumbling about the fact that the collected solar power won’t be used to actually drive the car itself, but this strikes me as a perfectly reasonable way to introduce solar power into an overall automotive package, rather like the ubiquity of solar-powered water heaters in Australia. There’s a lot to be said for starting small and getting an idea popular accepted. Solar technology still has a long way to go to be a stand-alone power option in a vehicle, but every practical use will only lead to improvements in the overall efficiency of solar power generation.

Tesla Drivers, Makes Sure You Have the Right Plug

And, in further Tesla news, owners (none of whom have as yet received the roadsters they pre-ordered), will need to make provisions for an 8 hour charge a day from a 220v / 80A circuit like those used to send juice to home appliances. Try to “fill up” via the 110v / 15A route and you’re looking at 30 hours per charge.

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 into a cohesive package that makes the car smarter and more “aware,” thus cutting down on deaths and injuries in accidents.

GM has been working on V2V — vehicle to vehicle — systems for some time now. For instance, experiments with radio signals have focused on allowing two cars to maintain a proper distance from one another via adaptive cruise control. And certainly there are a lot of systems out there feeding info to the driver including:

- Lexus Intelligent Park Assist
- Mercedes-Benz Attention Assist
- Volvo Blind Spot Information
- Nissan Around View Monitor
- Mercedes Night Vision Assist

If the GM / Carnegie Mellon partnership is successful, the kinds of monitoring concepts will be merged into a vehicle-wide system that will give drivers an unprecedented amount of data about what’s going on around them — even to the point of the car taking over when necessary. Basically, this ain’t your Daddy’s rear view mirror and you may never have to worry about forgetting to check your blind spot again. Definitely a program to watch for interesting developments.

Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Shorty
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Tesla Motors, is all over the news this week, with three different announcements of new developments, all released yesterday.

First, they’ve introduced the new Model S, a fully electric five-passenger sedan that will be able to go about 225 miles between charges, and comes with a pricetag of about $60,000. If that seems a lot, consider that their original model started at more than $90k. No images have been shared with the public, but the rumor is that this will be produced at the new Tesla plant being opened in Northern California.

Second, Tesla’s own Elon Musk has begun open discussions about the development of electric car technology that will allow the price of such vehicles to come down to $30,00 - or lower - but don’t hold your breath, because he also said it would be at least four years, and probably longer before such a thing comes to fruition.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a rumor that Tesla has made a deal with Daimler AG to supply lithium-ion batteries for Daimler’s planned foray into electric vehicles. Daimler’s CEO said that the company was open to leasing battery technology in order to release an electric Smart car in two years, and the word on the street is that the German company is planning to give up on gas completely by 2015. Of course, given Tesla’s rep for being uber-picky about their partnerships, and less than easy to work with, this may or may not actually happen.

Posted on July 1st, 2008 by QueenMab
Filed under: alternative fuels, buzz | No Comments »

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 and an electric motor with 82. Like the Volt, the new VW is expected to appear in 2010 — roughly 18 months off.

The project is seriously spendy, with the company ponying up $769 million and getting a boost up from a $23.5 million government program in Germany for the development of a plug-in. The idea is that the car will rely on the electric motor as its primary power source with the diesel for backup. Regenerative braking will supply more power and with lithium-ion batteries by Sanyo, the goal is roughly 31 miles on all-electric. That’s going to come in about 9 miles under the Volt’s goal of 40.

Forty is the magic number in this class of vehicle as that’s the guess on what most people knock off in a day of normal urban driving. Read the fine print, however, and you’ll discover that the range of any “all electric” is going to be reduced depending on how you drive it — the same factor early adopters of the Prius discovered. Given all that, is it still a good idea? Well, do the math. We’ll keep it simple. If your car gets a lousy 20 miles a gallon in town, with gas at $4 that’s $8 a day or $240 a month. Run that out to a year, and you’re saving $12,480.

Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Shorty
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Just a few things that have been lingering in my RSS reader . . .

Electrics from Mercedes

Rumor has it that Mercedes-Benz may have an electric model and an electric Smart by 2010. Zero details on this, but the company already has a fleet of 100 electric Smarts in London. You can read just a bit more at BenzInsider.

Enclosed Motorcycle

With oil and gas prices continuing to climb, alternative vehicles are popping out of the woodwork. Let’s just hope this really butt ugly enclosed motorcycle Engadget reported on Sunday is not a portent of things to come.

Rethinking the Cost of a Hybrid

Lifehacker has an excellent piece on rethinking the cost of a hybrid, comparing upfront pricing with long term maintenance and coming out with an overall cost to own figure. The results may surprise you.

Driveable Airplane

And just for kicks and giggles, don’t miss Terrafugia’s flying car / drivable airplane. The very idea would send Driver’s Ed teachers screaming in terror.

Posted on June 24th, 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 anyway, the ubiquity of any device can be judged by whether or not it finds its way into our cars. My Dad’s old 1940s vintage Ford pickup had a Coke bottle opener mounted on the dash. Not a bottle opener, a Coke bottle opener. Said so right there stamped on the metal.

Now it’s iPod jacks and increasingly iPhone jacks as evidenced by Mercedes’ latest iPod integration kit. (See Engadget for photo and their review.) The unit integrates controls on the main nav screen and it recharges the phone at the same time you’re dialing up folks and listening to tunes. What really got my attention though is that the unit increases the iPhone’s reception via the vehicle’s antennas. Nice, very nice. Looks like the whole thing will set you back $385 and right now you can only get in Germany, but hey, that’s what international shipping is for, right?

Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Shorty
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