You accelerate, hit maximum velocity and the world blurs. Whether you’re driving a sports car alone or a moped packed with your entire family, this week’s Shooting Challenge participants always made the experience epic. The results: More »
Nissan has responded to rumors that high demand for its Leaf EV in Japan could cause the company to limit delivery in the United States to just around 3,000 units by the end of March, 2011. That rumor sprang from comments made by a Mossy Nissan general manager, and luckily for electric vehicle lovers in the States, seem to be wholly untrue. Mark Perry, Nissan’s director of product planning says that the statement from Mossy Nissan was “purely speculative,” and that product allocation is decided based on customer orders. Furthermore, he says the company is still targeting around 25,000 units for the US by the end of 2011. So now we can all sleep better: the nightmare has seemingly ended.
Nissan rep confirms delivery of 25,000 Leaf EVs to US by the end of 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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First of all, don’t worry, the spontaneously combusting Nano isn’t among the pair of newly Euro-bound EVs from Tata. Going slightly more upmarket, the Indian company will be launching the Indica Vista EV hatchback for eco-conscious Brits and Scandinavians early next year, alongside the somewhat less exciting Ace, a commercial mini-truck. The Indica Vista has clearly had a few trials and tribulations in coming to market in an all-electric form, having originally been promised to Norwegian tree huggers for 2009, so let’s just hope that this schedule is the one that sticks. It’s about time this whole EV movement got some more affordable options.
Tata bringing two all-electric cars to a Europe near you by March originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As a cyclist, I see parking meters as nothing more than a place to chain my bike. For motorists, they are hungry monsters that need feeding regularly, if you can even find a free one to begin with. San Francisco’s new meters are set to change that, adjusting the prices automatically depending on demand.
Part of the two-year SFpark experiment, the new meters will detect how in-demand are the spaces they govern. Based on this info, the prices will be adjusted up and down, from 25-cents up to $6 per hour. The plan is to price parking at a rate that keeps around 20% of spaces free. This will mean that you can always find a spot, and will in turn mean less people are driving round and round the block looking for a space.
The prices won’t fluctuate wildly during the course of a day. The changes will be slow and self-leveling: the prices will change once a month or less, and then only by 50-cents at a time. You’ll be spared running into a store to make change, too: the new meters will also accept credit-cards and soon, an SFMTA card.
It seems that everyone will win here, although I’m a little worried about one of the new machines being introduced. Along with the traditional meters on sticks, there is a new meter which sits at the side of the road, governing all the spots on a street. It’s more efficient for cars, but where will I lock my bike?
Demand-Responsive Pricing [SFpark via Switched]
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Volkswagen Beetle converted to run on methane headed for the UK streets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
On Friday, during a visit from President Obama to its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, GM announced some good news for all the Volt fans out there. Production from 2011 to 2012 for the electric vehicle — originally slated at around 30,000 units — has been boosted to a projected 45,000 units, a 50 percent increase. The Volt, which has a range of 340 miles (on gas — it goes approximately 40 miles on battery alone) is being produced at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which received $336 million in investments to prepare for the production. The full press release is after the break.
Continue reading General Motors upping Chevy Volt production by 50 percent in 2011
General Motors upping Chevy Volt production by 50 percent in 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
You might not have expected the future to look like your granddad’s groovy camper van, but take a closer look here and you’ll find that this is indeed nothing like your forefather’s people carrier. The VisLab team from the University of Parma have taken a fleet of Piaggio Porter Electric vehicles, strapped them with an array of cameras, lasers and other sensors, and topped them off with solar panels to keep the electronics powered. Oh, and lest we forgot to mention: the vans are (mostly) autonomous. VIAC (or VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge) is the grand name given to their big demonstration: an 8,000-mile, 3-month tour that will ultimately find them arriving in Shanghai, China, having set off from Milan this Tuesday. You can follow the day-by-day development on the blog below, though we’re still being told that practical driverless road cars are a measure of decades, not years, away.
Continue reading Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video)
Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Line up 24 cars in a desert, wind 1,000 feet of welding cable through them and throw one-hit-wonder Gary Numan into the mix and the result is a cool, fun video that turns all the cars into one big musical instrument.
Syyn Labs, a Los Angeles-based arts and technology collective, worked with Zoo Film to create the video as a commercial for DieHard, a maker of car batteries.
Over three days in the desert, a team of six engineers worked on 24 cars and removed the batteries from each. Instead, they connected them all together to a central computer and a keyboard. The horns inside the cars were removed and instead an MP3 player was used to tune it. The entire set-up was hooked to one DieHard battery.
As Numan hit each key on his keyboard, the software turned on the lights and sound for the corresponding car, says Brent Bushnell, who works at the Labs. Since the stock car horns in each car couldn’t be tuned, the group inserted their own horns into each car. The horns were tuned using MP3 players. When Numan pressed a key, a signal was sent to a controlling computer which called on a relay to activate the horns and lights simultaneously.
“Everything in the car, the keyboard and the computer was powered using a single DieHard battery,” says Eric Gradman, one of the engineers who worked on the project. “Overall, we consumed just about 31.3 amphours.”
The Labs’ previous project was a Rube Goldberg machine whose action perfectly meshes with a song from pop band OK Go.
And if you are wondering what song the cars are blaring, it is Numan’s 1979 hit ‘Cars.’
Video: Syyn Labs
Intel’s latest Research Day has sprung up a new vision for “smart” vehicles; a vision that frankly chills us to our very geeky core. Cameras and sensors attached to an Intel Connected Car will record data about your speed, steering and braking, and upon the event of an accident, forward those bits and bytes along to the police and your insurance company. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn’t it? Don’t get us wrong, the tech foundation here is good — having cars permanently hooked up to the ether can generally be considered a good thing — but what’s being envisioned is as obtrusive as it is irritating. Oh, didn’t we mention that the cars can become self-aware and overrule you if you try to bend the rules of the road? Because they can.
Intel Connected Cars will record your bad driving for posterity, take over if you’re really screwing up originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Driving in California could get a little more annoying in the coming days. The Legislature of the state that brought you Brody Jenner and Spencer Pratt is now considering a bill which would allow the beginning of research into electronic license plates for vehicles. The new-fangled plates would look just like regular ones when a vehicle was in motion, but would flash awesome advertisements and other messages when stopped for more than four seconds. One San Francisco based startup, Smart Plate, is already hard at work on developing just such a device, but they’re not in production yet. The measure is seen largely as a money making scheme for California, which — like nearly everywhere else in the world — is heavily in debt after several years of hard partying and irresponsible shopping trips. Parties interested in advertising on the plates would apparently contact the California DMV directly (then wait in line for 12 to 14 hours before submitting their preliminary application for ad space). If approved, the DMV will be required to submit its research and findings to the Legislature by January of 2013. Here’s to the future!
California considers electronic ads on license plates, we consider never moving there originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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