new-car-technology
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Whether you're texting, calling, updating your social media networks, or simply pressing buttons on your stereo or sat nav, in-car technology can be quite a distraction from the actual process of driving. Now it turns out that it isn't just Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe who fall foul of distractions - it's officers in police squad cars too. An article on Fridley Patch reveals that a study from St. Mary's University of Minnesota puts technology in squad cars to blame for 14 percent of crashes. This manifests itself as $1,188,660 of damage between 2006 and 2010 for the Minnesota forces. When you see...
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Nissan's Future Safety Tech: Reducing Accidents, Injury
For years, we've wanted more from our cars. More power. More performance. More luxury. More gadgets. More recently, we've wanted less, at the same time: Less weight. Less expense. All the time carmakers have been giving us more of some things and less of others, cars have continued to get safer...
Antony Ingram -
Want To Beat The Traffic Jams? BMW's Real Time Tech Can Help
By the time you're miles deep into a huge queue, traffic information on the radio or warnings on the sat nav can seem like a bit of an insult to your intelligence. That's why the most effective solution is one that BMW will be offering to all new European BMW buyers as part of its ConnectedDrive...
Antony Ingram -
Can You Count To Ten? Hyundai's Next Automatic Gearbox Can
If anything is going to make you feel old it's remembering you grew up with four-, or even three-speed gearboxes. In the 1980s a trend for five-speed manual transmissions started to develop and automatics followed close behind, and from the late 1990s and early 2000s manual and automatic 'boxes...
Antony Ingram -
Tomorrow's Nissan Reads Your Mind, Predicts Your Next Move
If you think your car is sometimes a little slow to react when you turn a corner or push pedal to the metal, some future technology from Nissan might be right up your street. In-car safety and technology systems have got pretty advanced recently. You can buy cars that adjust their speed according...
Antony Ingram -
Infrared Technology Measures Blood Alcohol Before You Drive
As in many aspects of life, ignoring a problem such as drink driving doesn't make it go away. That applies whether you're willingly letting an intoxicated friend drive, you've had a few beers yourself and think you'll be fine anyway, or whether you're using an app to deliberately avoid DUI...
Antony Ingram -
It may not be fast and it may not even be pretty, but the Urbee car is important for other reasons. The potential for 166 mpg is clearly a number to raise eyebrows. Using a combination of electric motors and a small, single cylinder, 8 horsepower engine running on ethanol, high economy was never going to be a problem. The aerodynamic, low profile shape and narrow wheels see to that. At between 60 and 70 mph flat out it certainly isn't quick but an electric motor and batteries that take their energy from solar panels mean that it's quite green. The most unique aspect of the Urbee though is the...
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More Future Fuels: Bacteria To Power Hydrogen Fuel Cells?
Hydrogen fuel cells for automotive use are one of those "great in theory, flawed in principal" ideas for the future of car propulsion. New technology using bacteria could eventually change that. Fuel cells have several advantages over pure battery-electric power, for example. Firstly, hydrogen has...
Antony Ingram -
Shhhh! New Tech Lets 2011 Chevrolet Equinox Get Better MPG
Improving fuel economy and reducing noise can occasionally be mutually compatible - the smooth aerodynamics of a 2011 Toyota Prius making it a refined highway cruiser, for example. However, GM is trialling a technology in the Chevrolet Equinox that makes quietness an outright necessity for...
Antony Ingram -
Mercedes Safety Systems Simulator At Frankfurt: We "Crashed"
Modern racing videogames are getting pretty good these days, with handling and graphics capabilities that allow for a pretty realistic driving experience. It's also cheaper than racing for real, not to mention safer - "Life has no 'reset' button", they often say. We were glad of that little detail...
Antony Ingram -
Kia's Next-Gen Telematics Tech Now Under Development
The last few years have seen a step-up in in-car telematics, with more connected systems than ever now available to drivers and their passengers. Kia is currently developing its next generation of telematics, to expand on the first-gen UVO system found in its current 2012 range of cars. The new...
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Does Chevy's Small-Block V8 Have a Future? GM Thinks So
In an age known for its electric vehicles, hybrid drivetrains, clean diesels and alternative fuels, you might not think there's a place in the world for a pushrod V8 with architecture dating back to the 1950s. GM disagrees though, and is currently making a case for continuing the lineage of one of...
Antony Ingram -
Ammonia: Useful in fertilizers, cleaning products and fairly unpleasant in direct human contact. Used as a fuel for vehicles? Certainly not impossible, according to an article in New Scientist. John Fleming and Tim Maxwell at Texas Tech University are developing a system to produce ammonia that can be installed in filling stations. What are the benefits? Rather than using hydrogen to power fuel cells and the associated high-pressure storage problems associated with this, Fleming and Maxwell would use water to produce hydrogen from electrolysis, and this is then combined with nitrogen from the...
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Volkswagen Debuts Cylinder Shut-Off Tech In 4-Cyl Engines
Cylinder deactivation has been with us for several years in big V8 engines. Both GM and Chrysler have used it and Audi now offers it on its S range. Rather firing on all cylinders during steady freeway driving, the units use cylinder deactivation to save fuel when the power demand is low, shutting...
Antony Ingram -
Move Aside LED Lighting Tech, BMW Is Firing Up The Lasers
Sometimes the pace of development in the automotive segment has echos of Moore's Law, the trend for power in the computing world to double every two years. No sooner have manufacturers such as Audi started ditching halogen and HID lighting for intelligent and ultra-bright LED light clusters in some...
Antony Ingram -
Stress-Free On The Freeway: BMW's Latest Self-Driving Tech
We love self-driving cars here at All Car Tech. It's not that we don't like driving ourselves as there's nothing better than having the open road to yourself, but even in the comfiest of cars some traffic conditions make us wish we could simply teleport place to place. In the absence of Star Trek...
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Latest RoboCar Prototype: Ugly, But High Tech And Autonomous
Some cars are beautiful. Others are fast. Some others are incredibly practical. Some other cars are none of these things, but their importance isn't in their looks, speed or usability but the technological advancements they'll offer to the car industry as a whole. The RoboCar MEV-C is one of these...
Antony Ingram -
Connected Vehicle Tests To Begin In Official NHTSA Trials
Over the last few months the race to develop connected vehicles that "talk" to each other as they're driven along has picked up the pace, with several technology companies and carmakers developing systems to make our roads safer. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is...
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Solar panel technology has, thus far, not been of much use for automobiles. You may be able to specify a small solar panel on the 2011 Nissan Leaf or 2012 Toyota Prius, but it's mainly used to top up the energy needed to power accessories such as your air conditioning or in-car entertainment. As a system for charging electric vehicles from your home however, solar is much more effective, particularly for those in sunny climates. Houses have much larger areas to which solar panels can be mounted. As it turns out though, they aren't as efficient as they could be, thanks to a discovery made by a...
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Thorium Powered Cars: A Million Miles Without Refuelling
It reads more like a 1950s space race vision of the future than a pragmatic 21st Century theory, but we could now be a step closer to driving a nuclear-powered car. In light of the recent events in Japan following the tsunami that caused meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and previous events...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Hyundai Equus Loses iPad Manual, Goes Back To Paper
We're so used to seeing carmakers taking leaps forward in in-car technology and mobile innovations that it comes as a shock when progress takes a step back. When the 2011 Hyundai Equus luxury car was launched it gained high praise from all quarters for offering huge levels of equipment at a price...
Antony Ingram -
Flake Supercar Has Carbon "Fur" Airbrakes, D-Shaped Wheels
List of materials commonly associated with supercar construction: Carbon fiber, aluminum, fur, titanium, gold... Hang on, fur? Sounds ludicrous, but automotive designer Da Feng's latest supercar creation The Flake makes use of bodywork that acts in a fur-like manner to enhance aerodynamic...
Antony Ingram -
Ethernet May Reduce Cost, Improve Vehicle Communication Tech
If ethernet brings up images of 1990s technology and its use in cars suggests a spaghetti of cables like your office, then think again. Freescale Semiconductor is one of several companies now exploring ethernet technology in an automotive communications and networking environment, and it could...
Antony Ingram -
Nissan First Carmaker To Use QR Codes On Window Stickers
You can't fail to have noticed the abundance of Quick Response (QR) codes on products and services these days. They appear on everything from soda cans to billboards, websites and TV adverts. The curious little pixellated codes have become a great way for companies to offer information to anybody...
Antony Ingram