Jalopnik
offbeat news
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Car2Car Forum
Audi Shows Cars Can Play Nice, Talk With Each Other To Save Gas, Lives
Yesterday at the second annual CAR2CAR, a forum on, you guessed it, car-to-car communications, Audi revealed a future where its cars would play nice and talk to others. Specifically, the multi-ringed German brand showed off three examples where their system can talk to cars from other brands to receive warnings from approaching emergency vehicles, to emit data after a crash and to warn other vehicles of a potential collision. But that's just the car-to-car side. The really interesting stuff is on the infrastructure-to-car side. Audi was touting the results of a study experiment in Ingolstadt, where the timing of 46 traffic lights was optimized by equipping three with WLAN-based communications technology to facilitate communications with vehicles heading toward the lights. Calculations provided by the Technical University of Munich, a venture partner, suggest a 20% reduction in stops at traffic lights post-optimization. That's obviously good for those of us looking to save time, but it also helps in the pocketbook as well because the reduction creates a corresponding improvement in fuel efficiency. Just assuming an hourly volume of 1,000 vehicles in Ingolstadt –- the stop reduction reportedly saves around 185,000 gallons of fuel annually. Not too shabby if you ask us. Hit the jump for the full release.
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alternative energy
"Car of the Future" Nova Episode Stunk, But Here's The Interesting Part
Yeah, so, that Car of the Future episode of Nova with Click and Clack just wasn't all that good, sorry about that. The episode should probably have been called "Moments of forced laughter from two funny old guys in between John Lithgow talking down to the viewer about the car of the future". However, buried in the muck and mire of that episode was an interesting segment about the Rocky Mountain Institute and their work with lightweight materials, like in their Hypercar above, built with all carbon fiber superstructures and components. More » -
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clickety-clackety
This Is What An Animated Click And Clack Look Like
As we reported earlier, Click n' Clack are getting a cartoon on PBS starting next summer. We just wanted to make sure we were clear here for anyone who's "excited" about a Car Talk television show — these guys have faces made for radio. As we're now able to tell — they can't even make Tom and Ray Magliozzi look good as cartoons. We feel like maybe kids are going to get scared watching this on Saturday mornings [Photo Credit: newscom] -
Car Talk's "Click and Clack" are headed to TV as an animated series starting summer 2008. [Reuters]
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