new-car-technology

Audi Sport has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the La Sarthe circuit in Northern France in one of the closest races in many years, but were it not for the strength and safety of the R18 TDI sports prototype, the weekend could have been very different. Less than an hour into the race, star driver...

When you're developing cars on roads that aren't unknown to feature the odd moose around the next corner, preventing drivers colliding with wild animals is understandably quite a priority for Volvo. To this end, Volvo has been developing a system based on its Pedestrian Detection and Full Auto...

You might not think your jeans have the capacity for causing much damage unless you're one of the unlucky souls to have once caught part of their anatomy in the zipper, but they can actually be responsible for undue wear to your car seats. A light-colored leather interior can look absolutely...

If you were to set out to design a vehicle, you might not choose a frog as your source of inspiration. Sure, we've heard of the old Austin-Healey "Frogeye" Sprite from the 1960s, but that was more of an affectionate nickname due to a coincidental likeness than through any design inspiration. Tell...

If you love a steering wheel festooned with handy buttons, and even if you don't, this might be the steering wheel for you. Engineers at the University of Stuttgart in Germany have been hard at work on a new prototype steering wheel that takes interaction with your car to a new level. You may think...

What electronic feature would you most like from your next car? That's what J.D. Power and Associates asked 18,000 vehicle owners, and 55 percent were interested in a vehicle diagnostics service. A system that allows your vehicle to send and receive information on car troubles to an engineer was...

One of the benefits of the rapid pace of technological advancement is that economies of scale are achieved relatively easily. Sounds boring, but this means that the high-technologies of a few years ago have already found themselves in much more affordable cars. Once this meant heated rear screens...

Feeling lazy? Don't feel like driving home from work tonight? Sounds like an autonomous car would be right up your street... ZMP's RoboCar doesn't quite have the aesthetics or practicality (and especially not the performance) of Google's automated Toyota Prius, but the technology it demonstrates is...

It's enough to make the car enthusiast's skin crawl. Visions of autonomous cars making their way along the highway while the occupants go about their daily business. If you love driving and cars, handing over control of your car to a machine is like handing over a child. Bill Reinert, a mechanical...

It's like something from a racing videogame: Your familiar view through the windshield to the world outside, but with all the information you need projected in front of you less than a glance away. It's automobile glass repair and replacement company Autoglass's vision of the future and takes the...

The concept of powering a car on waste products has been around for a while, and indeed it's an idea that's very attractive for a sustainable fuel future. Why let waste go to waste? Scientists have already explored methane power harnessed by the gases that escape from good old "number twos", but...

It's 7am, and your alarm is blaring to raise you bleary-eyed from your slumber. You grab breakfast, chuck some clothes on and get ready to head to work. As you step into your car, a message appears on the central screen. "What is your destination?". You press a button marked "Work". Although you...

Dandelion flowers may look pretty to some but to many, they're a weed that needs uprooting throughout the warmer months to prevent them from taking over the garden. What better to provide the basis of a renewable source for rubber than a plant that grows abundantly and quickly? Ford and the Ohio...

If you spend a lot of time driving you won't have failed to notice the distinctive shape of high intensity LED daytime running lights on some modern vehicles. As for LED tail-lights, those are even more common. Only a small selection of vehicles features entirely LED-based headlights though...

"You can't start a fire without a spark" sang Bruce Springsteen in his 1984 hit Dancing In The Dark. Great line, but unfortunately for old Bruce he wasn't quite technically accurate, as a research team in Japan and Romania is looking into using lasers to ignite the fuel-air mixture in combustion...

Nanotechnology, the study of materials and engineering on a molecular scale, has the potential to completely change the vehicles we drive. We've looked at self-healing polymers that can eliminate scratches in paintwork, plastics injected with millions of tiny air bubbles to reduce their weight...

Another day, another material that could lead to lighter vehicles of the future. The latest candidate? Magnesium. Magnesium componentry in cars is nothing new of course. Magnesium alloy wheels are popular in the motorsport world where light weight and impressive strength are paramount. Now...

Changing gear is a necessary evil. Of course, for driving enthusiasts it can be a challenge and a pleasure, and in cars with automatic transmissions you can sit back and let the car do the work for you, but the downside with the shifting process is always the momentary pause in progress...

Have you ever seen the experiment using custard to demonstrate increases in viscosity with force? When you run your hand through the substance it acts like a liquid, but quickly apply a force and it hardens. Fill a swimming pool with custard and you could feasibly run across without sinking in. Wet...