Maps are among the essential items to take whenever you're in a car. These days they mostly come in GPS form, but back in the day there were times when you'd have to figure out exactly where you are based on nothing but the surrounding features and a map.

Yesterday, the annual numbers for car sales in the United States came out, and for the most part, there was plenty of reason for people who make and sell cars to be happy and tip big. Sales were up, overall, by 13%, with nearly 14.5 million cars sold. That's a lot of cars.

This TEDx Dublin talk from Aris Venetikidis is pretty fascinating, especially to the design geeks out there. In the talk, he covers how the maps we build in our heads are usually pretty wildly different than the actuality of the terrain, simplifying streets to be straight, turns to be 90° or 45°, and attaching…

Trouble with Apple Maps? Being led down the wrong road, or worse, down roads that don't even exist? Don't worry! All you need are some good ol' fashioned Apple Maps directions to set you straight.

We've talked plenty about the flaws inherent in Apple Maps, and where it differs from Google Maps on paper. But how wide is the disparity between the two in actuality? We stacked two iPhone 4Ses side-by-side (one running iOS 5, one running iOS 6, both on wi-fi with GPS on), and let the two mapping apps do battle.

The U.S. Interstates as a Subway Map infographic is a subway-style map of America's interstate highways, and it's pretty handy for quickly planning a cross-country trip. You can see at a glance how the highways connect and the major cities along the way.

Six months before Saab the car company went under the last time, Apple, in complete secrecy, bought a futuristic mapping spinoff from Saab the defense contractor. The secret is now out and maps on mobile devices will never be the same.

If you've lived in the Big Apple for any amount of time, you've more than likely taken the Subway. You've also probably wasted plenty of time staring at the map. Our video editor Matt Toder threw together a video of the Subway map's evolution, beginning with a map crafted 100 years ago.

If your travel plans for Thanksgiving involve sitting behind the wheel for a few hours until you get to your destination, there are still a few things you should do before you leave to make sure that you get to your destination quickly and safely.

If you're wondering how road traffic's gonna slow you today, don't turn to Google Maps anymore—the site's killed its estimates. Not because it wasn't popular. It turns out those road calculations didn't exactly correlate to, you know, reality.