Earlier today I wrote about the latest version of the Ariel Atom, and I have to say the one thing I wasn’t expecting to be that impressed about on the car was its instrument cluster. But, as usual, I was wrong! The new Atom 4 has a fantastic instrument cluster, an all LCD one that’s not hampered with needless and…
Have you ever wondered about the electricity that courses through your car? Do you suspect that there’s a captive bolt of lightning held in a magic jar? Of course you don’t. You’re not a Neanderthal. You know there’s a battery and an alternator. You may even know your battery provides DC current that the car uses, but…
The first thing that happened when I drove a Tesla on Autopilot was an instant, unsettling feeling of not being comfortable in the car at all, thinking it’s always a moment away from crashing. Slowly, I got used to it and calmed down, just like everyone else I’ve talked to who has used Autopilot. This video from a…
Chrysler has somehow managed to highlight the Chrysler Pacifica’s biggest flaw in this commercial featuring actor Kathryn Hahn. That biggest flaw, as we noted in our review, is a shifter dial that can easily be mistaken for a volume knob, and Chrysler appears to show Hahn doing just that in this commercial.
This clip from a 1971 episode of the BBC television show Tomorrow’s World has so many appealing details to me, most notably the featuring of a lovely UK-spec 1962 Volkswagen Beetle, but the true star of it is the remarkably forward-thinking navigation system the Beetle is fitted with. It uses some cutting-edge…
California has approved the biggest innovation in license plate technology since science figured out how to trap wild letters and numerals onto a plate of metal: the electronic license plate. The state claims they could save up to $20 million per year on postage, but there’s some pretty huge questions about that, as…
Hot damn, everyone, it’s that special time again! It the time we display an image of a car’s chassis for you here—via computer—and you use your eyes to send an image of the chassis to your brain—via optic nerve—and then you use your brain to try and figure out what car the chassis is from! Are you ready? Good.
Uber informed “about 300” workers of their termination earlier today as part of plans to shut down its self-driving car testing program in Arizona following a fatal crash in March, where one of the company’s test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian, according to The Arizona Republic.
If we’re going to be talking and thinking about autonomous cars, self-driving cars, robo-cars, drive-o-droids (copyright pending) or whatever the hell we want to call these things, we should get a sense of exactly what they do and how they do it. How do they know what’s around them, and how can they potentially be…
Our own Kristen Lee took a trip to Prague earlier this year, where she presumably danced around on cobblestone streets and said “woo woo look at me, I’m Kristen!” and slapped waiters with cold cuts or whatever the hell it is Kristen does to relax. She won’t tell me. But, she did show me some pictures she took at the …
I’m not really a fan of proximity keys, or keyless-entry non-keys, or smart keys, or whatever you want to call the things that aren’t exactly keys anymore but are used to open and start your car without having to be in actual contact with the car. Still, I don’t think I realized how bad they could be.
You’re a gearhead. You know to chuckle knowingly and condescendingly when some dumbass refers to the “V4" in their Honda Civic. You know your stuff. You know what a flat engine is, too. It’s an opposed-piston engine, right? Sometimes they’re called boxer engines, like what Porsche and Subaru use. Same thing, right?…
If you’re like most people, you spend most of your nights awake, pacing your home, a quivering, sobbing, obscenity-shrieking wreck because you can’t stop wondering just how the cargo capacity of automobile trunks are measured. That’s why I’m happy to tell you there’s an answer, and that answer involves eight very…
Drag racing seems simple at first, but the more you look into the sport where whoever crosses the finish line before the other wins, the more complicated and fascinating it becomes. One such example is called “spindle stagger,” or why top cars in drag racing don’t have front wheels that line up exactly.
Today’s carmakers are thrilled with all of the new features they can integrate into their digital dashboards but all I can think of is how Toyota put a working TV right in front of your face all the way back in the Bubble Era. Well, not in front of your face exactly.
Here’s the story: a man owns a Fiat Tempra, but finds that the car just isn’t running as well as it should be. Something’s clearly up, so he decides to investigate and give the engine a thorough looking-over. Eventually, he removes the head from the engine and discovers three normal, metal-alloy pistons, happily…
With the increasing popularity of hybrid and electric cars, the number of cars that you can buy with two independent motors capable of turning some kind of energy into spinning tires has increased dramatically. Even so, all of these current multiple-powerplant vehicles owe thanks to the addition of electric motors. If…
We live in exciting times: The new Nissan Altima is replacing its big 3.5-liter V6 for a 2.5-liter four, and it’s making up the difference not just with a turbo but also with a 2.0-liter variable compression engine.
Now, I know that as humans we’re bipedal, but when we’re in a car, driving, we’re really being true quadrapeds. All four of our ropy, mammalian limbs are in use. And, in an automatic, its’s just three limbs, which means one limb is just being lazy. There’s a lot to control in a car–should we be giving more for that…
Police in Tempe, Arizona, have released video of a fatal crash involving an Uber-owned self-driving car that fatally struck a woman on Sunday. The clip includes footage from two cameras attached to Uber’s Volvo, and shows the car’s safety driver looking away moments before the collision. The victim, contrary to…
