Car Tech

A few years ago sparkless ignition or homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) in gasoline engines was all the rage, with a number of major automakers including General Motors, Daimler and Volkswagen all investigating its benefits. Since then, not much has been heard of the technology whereas...

GM recently challenged Israel's Bezalel Academy of Art and Design to come up with new ways to enhance the rear-seat driving experience. The result was "Windows of Opportunity."

PlayStation racing gamers should today be able to get their hands on the third download package for Gran Turismo 5, the console's seminal racing title. Following on from the first downloadable content back in October and another just before Christmas, the third package gives GT5 fans the option of...

Mopar will offer some 150 new accessories for the upcoming Dodge Dart, ranging from appearance items to performance parts.

At the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas this week Audi announced a bold new technology coming to its A8 flagship sedan within the next couple of years: the autonomous driving Traffic Jam Assistant. Designed for slow moving traffic jams, the new Traffic Jam Assistant will allow...

What separates your regular gasoline car from an electric car? The batteries? The motor? Plugging in each night versus going to a gas station in the morning? All of the above, of course, but also the high levels of interactivity now available to electric car users, via their smartphones. Ford is...

Chevy is including its MyLink infotainment system in the upcoming Sonic RS, as well as higher-trim models of the Spark.

Proving yet again the growing importance of in car electronics, Audi has unveiled the interior of its next-generation A3 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. Though the new A3 isn’t set for a debut until March’s Geneva Motor Show, before going on sale towards...

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Ford and NPR are announcing what Ford says is the first dedicated news app for Sync AppLink. Likewise, NPR is the first major news organization to release its own in-car streaming app.

Ford will launch five more SYNC-compatible in-car apps at next week's CES show, and is opening a new research facility in Northern California to "drive innovation ion personal mobility."

While the most common way of testing one’s sobriety is blowing into a breathalyzer machine, it’s far from the only way. At roadside checkpoints, one thing police often look at is called horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN). HGN can be caused by several factors, but alcohol consumption is...

Anyone under the age of about 30 who grew up in the "PlayStation Generation" will have heard of the videogame Wipeout. For anyone who hasn't, it's a game in which you pilot a futuristic anti-gravity racing ship around utopian race circuits. The original game was set in 2052, which back in 1997...

As gearheads get uneasy over increasing numbers of electric and hybrid vehicles hitting the streets, BMW has been working hard on developing two of the most exciting vehicles of any kind we'll see in the next few years. Those cars are the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car, and the BMW i3 electric...

It's difficult to discuss the weight of modern cars without referring to the old Colin Chapman adage, "add lightness". Still, the old Lotus chap had a point--by making a car lightweight, you improve it in every dynamic area, and efficiency increases too. Automakers are once more starting to take...

Ford will launch an available Lane Keeping System, usually reserved for luxury cars, on its new 2013 Fusion sedan.

We'll likely look back on 2011 as the year that the app truly entered our automobiles, becoming integrated with our Bluetooth-connected smartphones and, in some cases, fully integrated with vehicle infotainment systems.

Car thieves of the future had better hope they have exactly the same build as you, otherwise they won't be getting very far. It's already difficult enough to steal modern cars, but according to TechCrunch (via Digital Trends), Japanese engineers have been working on a car seat that won't let anyone...

For years, women in Europe have been paying less for car insurance than their male counterparts. Statistically, the claims that women make on their insurance are significantly less expensive, hence the lower rates. However, December 2012 brings a European ban on assessing rates based on gender...

If you live in the Northern hemisphere, as the majority of the world's population does, today is the shortest day of the year. For those of us at relatively high latitudes, that means an even shorter period of daylight hours, and like much of winter, a commute both to and from work in the dark...

OnStar will show its latest 4G tech at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January.