The Cadillac ELR is an important car for quite a few big reasons. Cadillac itself admits it has been playing catch-up in the luxury sedan market, pitching the ATS and CTS as more virile US alternatives to the typical options from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi, but with the electrified ELR it’s finally an opportunity to […]
We already knew that Nissan’s eye-catching electric car concept looked fit for a superhero, but it’s honestly not just comic-book premise. A Nissan spokesperson told us that the BladeGlider is a very early prototype aimed towards for-real vehicle production. To its credit, with some geometry skills and practice, you could probably fit two BladeGliders into a standard parking space. Perhaps even more incredibly, the BladeGlider also apparently uses less energy than Nissan’s eponymous Leaf EV.
The car draws on a lot of design cues from the DeltaWing, a car that Nissan worked on and one that previously did the rounds at Le Mans, among other raceways. Development then judiciously plucked design and engineering pointers from the ZEOD RC, its hybrid electric race car. As you’d expect from a car that’s striving towards the future, the twin doors rise upwards rather than swinging out. Sure, we’ve seen that before — 30 years earlier — but in this concept car the entire cockpit also pitches to the side to make space for the driver’s exit or entrance. It’s no solo car, however, and there’s space for two passengers in the back. And that shape: the front of the car is a meter wide, opening up to 1.8 meters along the back. There aren’t many cars out there like the BladeGlider — check out a shot of the HUD after the break. %Gallery-slideshow122433%
Filed under: Transportation
When we reviewed the Leap Motion controller earlier this year, we found the application selection to be a bit lacking. Since then, the number of apps has doubled from 75 to around 150, and the Airspace store’s newest edition is the coolest Leap app we’ve yet seen. It’s called Free Form, and it’s a 3D sculpting app (not unlike 3D Systems’ Sculpt) built in house at Leap Motion that lets you manipulate and shape digital objects using your fingertips. David Holz, company co-founder and the man who figured out the math behind Leap Motion’s technology, gave us a demo of the app and talked a bit about why Leap built it. Additionally, he showed us a new developer beta software that does 360-degree tracking built to address some of the original Leap shortcomings.
Filed under: Peripherals
Toyota’s new one-person EV even managed to draw our attention away from cars that look fit for superheroics, Announced at the Tokyo Motor Show 2013, the FV2 concept practically slaps you around the face with how much future…ness it’s been plied with. In its ‘parked’ state (measuring 90cm high), it looks a lot like a Tron cycle also-ran, but once the door / roof is raised [seen above], this all changes. Once that happens, you can steer (pilot?) the FV2 while standing: by shifting your body weight to the left or right, it’ll tend in that direction. The vehicle only carries one, but distributes the weight across four wheels, which are arranged in a cross layout. There’s one at the front, one at the back and two primary drive wheels underneath the driver. This pair, alongside the tail section of the FV2, are coated in light-up displays, able to cycle through colors and patterns, although we’re not entirely clear what degree of customization you’d get if the concept eventually made it to retail. We know some people’s tastes are pretty out there.
Accompanying the vehicle, there were several touchscreen displays that allowed you to… cycle through some custom paint jobs. That’s not where the technology ends, however, as that raised windscreen will reportedly act as a augmented reality display, offering up driving advice on traffic conditions, soccer scores and the weather. A spokesperson told Engadget that this information could be gleaned from surrounding vehicles and other wireless data points — well, we’re talking about the future, remember? For a closer glimpse at what Toyota thinks the mirai will look like, take a look through the galleries below. %Gallery-slideshow122419%
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Filed under: Transportation
Fuel cells are very much back on the energy agenda. It’s not smartphones this time, however, but vehicles. From Toyota, no less. The company’s fuel cell program is about to bear fruit and it’s revealed a sleek, shiny concept design that’s promising a range of “at least” 500 km and a refuel time comparable to good ol’ gasoline vehicles.The eventual production model car is planned to go on sale in 2015, which would ensure Toyota keeps the promise it made way back in 2010. The blue color scheme and softened design curves are meant to evoke the “key characteristics” of fuel cell cars: turning air into water. There’s even a wave motif fuel cap — it’s all about the details. Once filled and plugged into a compatible home, the FCV is also apparently capable of providing enough electricity to power an average Japanese home for over a week (10 kWh). To accomplish this, two high-pressure hydrogen tanks are stored along the undercarriage, but if you’re depending on the FCV to function as, well… a car, then you’ll be happy to hear that it can carry around three passengers, alongside the early-adopting driver. %Gallery-slideshow122474%
Filed under: Transportation
Qualcomm’s nightmare has finally come true. Earlier today, MediaTek officially introduced the world’s first true octa-core mobile processor, MT6592, and the first devices to feature it are expected to arrive as soon as end of year. This 28nm chip packs eight low-power Cortex-A7 cores, and courtesy of the Heterogeneous Multi-Processing use model on top of ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, all eight cores can operate simultaneously — at up to between 1.7GHz and 2GHz, depending on the bin.
MediaTek pointed that Chrome can already make use of all eight cores, and likewise with some map apps, video players plus multi-window function. According to the company’s figures, the MT6592 manages to beat what appears to be the quad-core Snapdragon 800 in benchmarks, power consumption (as low as 40 percent) and temperature. You can see the full detail in this article’s gallery. %Gallery-slideshow122456%
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile
Back over the summer when Toshiba refreshed its tablet lineup, it appeared that the company was pulling out all the stops: two of its new models had super-sharp 2,560 x 1,600 screens and made use of NVIDIA’s new Tegra 4 chip. At the high end, one even allowed for pen input, thanks to a pressure-sensitive Wacom digitizer. There was, however, at least one glaring omission: there were no smaller-screened tablets in the lineup, and none of them cost less than $300. Well, lest you think Toshiba was giving up on the budget space, it just started selling the Excite 7, a 7-inch Android slate priced at $170.
This is something of a full-circle moment for Toshiba. If you recall, the company’s first 7-inch tablet suffered from cheap build quality and short battery life. Then, Toshiba overcompensated by coming out with the Excite 7.7, which rocked a vibrant AMOLED screen and featured what was then a top-of-the-line Tegra 3 processor. It cost $500, the same as nice 10-inch tablet, and not many people bought it. Now, the company’s back with the Excite 7, and it clearly falls in that first category, if only because the price is so low. Heck, who are we kidding? The specs are low-end, too. For the money, you get 8GB of built-in storage (expandable via microSD), along with a quad-core 1.6GHz Rockchip processor, 1GB of RAM, dual 3MP/0.3MP cameras and a 1,024 x 600 display.
Filed under: Tablets
Source: Toshiba
The iPhone has already propelled casual gaming into one of the biggest app segments in the industry: now, with iOS 7 and the Logitech PowerShell gamepad, those apps are getting the controller they’ve been crying out for. Building on the new MFI (“Made For iPhone”) controller profile that’s part of iOS 7, the $99.99 pad […]
Remember that fuzzy-looking iOS 7 gamepad that leaked back in June? Turns out it’s called the Logitech PowerShell Controller + Battery (a mouthful, right?), and it’s one of the first iOS 7 certified gamepads on the market. Compatible with Lightning-equipped iPhones and iPods, the controller juts off of your device’s top and bottom edges, adding four face buttons, a d-pad, two shoulder buttons and a 1,500 mAh battery that charges your phone while you game. It’s also one of the least obstructive gamepad accessories we’ve ever used.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Mobile, Apple
Exactly a day after gracing the Fire line, Amazon-owned Goodreads has arrived on the Paperwhite — if you’re willing to take a little initiative and download yourself, that is. And in all honesty, this was the upgrade we’ve been waiting for since the acquisition was first announced. It’s nice functionality to have on the Fire, certainly, and folks who own multiple Kindle devices will appreciate being able to use it across the tablets and readers, but the addition of social reading means a lot more on e-readers, where things tend to be a lot more locked down, due to hardware limitations. Overall, we were a bit underwhelmed by the implementation on the HDX. With a few exceptions, Goodreads feels more like an app than an integral part of the ecosystem. Given that the Paperwhite offers a less open platform, however, we had higher hopes for the e-reader.
And indeed, once installed, Goodreads is front and center — well, slightly to the right of center, added to the homepage toolbar, sandwiched between search and settings. If you’ve already tied your Amazon account to the social network — as we did with yesterday’s Fire update — you should be good to go. Tap the “g ” icon, and you’ll bring up the Goodreads app, which has been styled to match the rest of the Paperwhite UI. The app’s front page shows you updates across your network, including ratings and who wants to read what. From there, you can like and comment on statuses and mark those titles and “Read” or “Want to Read.” Up top, the My Shelves link lets you see your own collection. From that page, you can also click through to add books from your Amazon library, a nice way of back filling all the electronic and physical books that you’ve read over the years. It’s the next best thing to inviting people over to your place to see your real life bookshelf.
Filed under: Amazon
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