Hasta La Gadget!

Yes! Another reason to write about the darling and awesomely-named Wheego Whip LiFe! This time, it’s good news indeed, as the all electric micro-car has received EPA certification. The cars, which are priced at a reasonably affordable $32,995 (or $25,495 after the Federal tax credit), are now simply waiting for final approval from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration before they can roll into dealerships. It looks like the cars will ship at the beginning of the year now, with production well underway for the past few months. We’ll take two, please.

Wheego Whip LiFe grabs up EPA certification originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no doubt that the Boattail Racer is gorgeous, its “aerodynamic” lines recalling automobiles designed before the wind tunnel, built to look fast rather than be fast. What is also certain is that it takes a lot of promotional bullshit to get away with selling a wooden toy car for $350. Yes, $350.

Let’s decode the marketing speak:

The Boattail Racer is handmade from materials that time cannot easily erode.

What?

The wooden bodywork is sculpted from rugged 13 ply Baltic birch.

It’s plywood

The muscular stance comes courtesy of the 77.5 millimeter carnelian-core industrial grade wheels, which float effortlessly on precision bearings.

In-line skate wheels with hippy-stones inside.

Solid stainless steel axles and fasteners ensure faithful service for generations to come.

Ah, stainless steel, second only to gold and platinum in its preciousness.

Your Boattail Racer arrives protected by a custom archive box handcrafted from black-core 4 ply acid-free museum board.

Comes in a cardboard box.

And that, ladies and gents, is how you take a toy car made from plywood and inflate its price tenfold. It even comes with a certificate to remind you how authentically you were swindled.

Boattail Racer [Auditorium Toys Co via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Motormouse Looks Like a Toy Car
• Death Race 2000: Model Hearse Toy Car
• Speed Racer Slot Car Set is Go
• Video: Smart Car Monster Truck Looks Like a Tonka Toy
• Photos: Tiny Smart Car Secured with Giant Bike-Lock

As if the iGrill thermometer wasn’t enough to convince you that pretty much every gadget will be replaced by the iPhone, what about this? The O’Car – despite sounding like an Irish, erm, car, is in fact a car stereo which uses the iPhone as its display and control panel.

The O’Car comes from Oxygen Audio, hence the “O” on the name. As befits a dumb head-unit, it does almost nothing. Apart from the iPhone slot, there is an RDS radio tuner and an 4×55-watt amp, so you can still tune in to something when you forget your phone.

But plug in the iPhone and you get everything. The O’ar will hold the phone vertically or horizontally, so you can use any app, turning this humble stereo into a GPS navigator, Pandora radio, or even – should you feel like killing some other road users while you drive distracted – Angry Birds.

The integration goes further. The iPhone charges when it’s docked, and you can make and receive calls via the integrated Bluetooth hands-free kit.

O’Car is set to debut at CES next month, when the price will be announced. Given its lack of, well, anything, it should really be pretty cheap.

O’Car product page [Oxygen Audio via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• Remote Control Your Car With Your iPhone
• Magellan Launches iPhone App and Car-Kit
• Useless Car Cassette Deck Makes Perfect iPhone Holder

Hertz is getting serious about its about-to-launch, by-the-hour plug in car rental service Connect by Hertz. Set to launch on December 15th in New York City, the company has plans to extend the service into San Francisco, Washington D.C, Texas and London by the end of 2011. The list of cars in the fleet which will be available to rent now includes the previously announced Nissan Leaf, the Volt, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, the Tesla Roadster, the Smart ED, and the Coda Sedan. The program will start extremely small, with only 20 total vehicles available to rent to begin with, but with a plan for between 500 and 1,000 by the end of 2011. The Hertz EV rental program has a fee to join up, and the cars will be rented on a first come, first served basis, but you can sign up now if you’re ready to get behind the wheel of one of the aforementioned silent bad boys.

Hertz plug-in rental program to boast 1,000 vehicles, including the Tesla Roadster originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In January, Kevin Richardson won Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory, a contest for ideas to make obeying speed-limits fun. Now, less than a year later, his entry is in use in Stockholm, Sweden.

Is it possible to make road-safety fun? Yes, it turns out. Kevin’s idea is both smart and simple. As well as ticketing you when you run through a speed-radar too fast, Kevin’s “Speed Camera Lottery” also notices you when you come in at or under the speed-limit. It then automatically enters you in a lottery. And here’s the really smart part: the prizes come from the fines paid by speeders.

This would probably never work in the U.S, where speeding fines and red-light cameras exist as revenue streams for the police rather than as deterrents to bad driving, but the Swedish National Society for Road Safety, which worked with Kevin, has found it to be a success. The average speed of cars passing the camera dropped from 32km/h before the experiment to 25km/h after. Now, if only there were a way to pay car-drivers to be polite to cyclists.

Speed Camera Lottery [Volkswagen via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• Adaptive Traffic Lights Could Achieve 'The Green Wave'
• Concept Traffic-Light is an Hourglass for Traffic
• Triangle, Circle, Square: Odd-Shaped Traffic-Light Concept …
• Laser Wall Replaces Traffic Light
• New Study Says Traffic-Light Cameras Cause Accidents
• Art Lebedev Reinvents the Traffic Light