Hasta La Gadget!

After an August tease the all-electric Kia Pop concept car is now getting a proper reveal at the Paris Motor Show. Pop is a three-meter long three seater featuring a number of futuristic touches like rear-view cameras in each door, a full length glass roof, and an otherwise transparent OLED panel that displays all your instrument readouts only when the car is running. A second touch panel to the right of the steering wheel controls the vehicle’s other functions including audio, sat-nav, and climate. Under the hood you’ll find a 60-ps, 190-Nm motor powered by lithium polymer gel batteries capable of charging in just six hours. Combined we’re looking at an 87mph (140kph) top speed and 100-mile (160-km) max range. Of course, knowing the auto industry, by the time it hits the assembly lines it’ll likely resemble an unimaginative shoebox using whatever off-the-shelf parts Kia can find. But a boy can dream can’t he?

Continue reading Kia Pop recharges in 6 hours with 87mph top speed and 100-mile range

Kia Pop recharges in 6 hours with 87mph top speed and 100-mile range originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What if you could plug any smartphone into your car and control your GPS, music and apps with large, vehicular controls? That’s the entire idea behind Nokia’s Terminal Mode. We trekked over to Volkswagen’s research laboratories in Palo Alto, California to test the first working prototype actually integrated into a car — a VW Passat, to be precise — and got to put some German pedal to the metal with Ovi Maps guiding our every move. What did we think? Not bad for a product that’s nearly two years away. Find out why (and get a video tour!) right after after the break.

Continue reading Exclusive: VW’s Terminal Mode prototype with a Nokia N97 at the helm, we go hands-on

Exclusive: VW’s Terminal Mode prototype with a Nokia N97 at the helm, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the most frustrating parts of owning a car is finding parking in giant garages. Driving aimlessly around until you find a spot, and then forgetting where you parked when you finally return to find your car, are experiences all drivers unfortunately have to deal with. But, drivers trying to find a spot in the parking garage in “The Cube” in Birmingham, England, can breathe a sigh of relief: a machine will park your car for you.

Finding parking in the Cube, a 23-story building that houses flats, offices, shops, restaurants, and a hotel, could be tricky; a special kind of parking garage was in order. The garage — only one of two of its kind in the world — is 65 feet underground and cost nearly $3.2 million to build.

The driver simply pulls into the garage, and swipes a special key chain, which identifies each car. The driver them pulls into an elevator, and gets out of the car. The vehicle is taken down by the elevator, and then special robots take over and gently move the car to an open spot. The automated system is so fancy, it even spins your car around so that it’s facing the right direction when it’s returned to you. 

It’s unclear how much it would cost to park in this garage, but, by the looks of it, I’m guessing it’s not cheap.

Check out a video of the garage in action at the BBC’s Web site.

Well, I guess if you’re going to get hit by a car, you might as well do it with a little bit of style, right? In the various instances that I’ve been hit, bumped, and lightly dinged by motor vehicles, I’ve never been particularly impressed with what the person was driving. Now a Bentley, with that little winged “B,” that’s something to brag about.

Of course, no one wants to get hit by anything, and sometimes you take a lot more with you than bragging rights.

British car manufacturer Bentley this week announced that it is recalling the hood ornament from 820 cars. A Bentley dealer reportedly discovered that the spring mechanism underneath the Winged B has a tendency to malfunction and may not retract during an accident.

A spokesman for the company called the recall “rather theoretical,” since the ornament has yet to injure anyone.

Welcome to the future, dear readers, where boring black tires are replaced with bright orange and yellow ones and where your car can dynamically expand or contract. This is the X-Frame Folding Vehicle, a concept from the Nagoya Institute of Technology that was first shown at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show, but rolled out of hiding again for the city’s recent Good Design Expo. The car changes shape to offer seating for either one or two and can raise or lower itself dynamically based on terrain, speed, and proximity of Clown Gang members when you’re cruising in Neo-Tokyo. No word on when or if it will see production, but don’t let a complete lack of crash-worthiness get you down on this vision of tomorrow.

Nagoya Institute’s folding X-Frame car lacks S-foils, hyperdrive, rolls on a big orange ball originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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