Car Tech

Starting tomorrow, drivers who subscribe to SiriusXM in their cars are going to find a changed landscape on their tuners. Effective May 4, SiriusXM says they've "re-ordered our channels to make it easier for you to quickly find what you want to hear." The new lineups make better sense of the...

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...

Online car sales sites have transformed the way we buy and sell cars. Whether you're selling to the highest bidder on an online auction site or setting your price and waiting for the calls on sites like Autotrader, you can not only add far more photos and details than ever before but reach a...

Remember Progressive's Snapshot program? Sign up, and the agency sends you a device that plugs into your car's onboard diagnostic port and lets Progressive know how safely you're driving. Score well, and your auto insurance rate could plummet. Score poorly, and your rate might go up. Now State Farm...

"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...

A few weeks ago we received an e-mail from our Verizon Wireless representative asking if we'd have a situation where we could test out the new 4G network. Of course our team readying to go cover the New York Auto Show (NYAS), we couldn't see a better opportunity to take her up on the offer. Verizon...

Like their MINI cousins before them, the 2011 BMW lineup will have access to Pandora, the music-streaming app that's colonizing car audio systems from Ford to Toyota. Bringing Pandora service into the cars is as simple as downloading it to its host iPhone. Once it's installed and configured--and...

Cars were one of the original homes of the mobile phone, and as technology has advanced, their integration has become ever closer. Today, BMW announced integration of Pandora streaming Internet radio service in all 2011 model-year cars equipped with the BMW Apps option, bringing the integration to...

Electric cars are creeping more and more into not just our collective awareness, but our driveways and garages. But even so, there's a whole generation of technology and integration yet to occur before we see mainstream EVs and the passenger experiences we've imagined. The Luxgen Neora gives us a...

Cheeky styling and endless personalization options already mark out the MINI as a fun and sociable vehicle, but now a new App from MINI called MINI Connected will give drivers, in MINI's words, "an even more intense experience of limitless driving fun". Normally for this sort of experience you'd be...

If you regularly use public transport, you should start writing to your local transit authority, because the Japanese have an idea that could make things a lot more pleasant! Passengers travelling on the Willer Express between the sprawling cities of Osaka and Tokyo in Japan get to enjoy a first...

Hyundai takes its first steps into the buzzy field of in-car telematics with Blue Link, which bows later this year in the 2012 Sonata sedan and the new 2012 Veloster sport coupe. Blue Link uses the Web, human operators, and data hardware inside the car to fuse mapping and mobile services and enable...

If your idea of a vehicle with another attatched to the back is a Winnebago with a Smart ForTwo strapped behind it, you need to start thinking about downsizing. Chinese automaker Geely (owners of Volvo) has just the combo for you. It's known as the McCAR, and although its appearance might make you...

Nintendo's 3DS has caused something of a stir in the world of 3D imaging. Rather than using unfashionable and unwieldy 3D glasses to view a stereoscopic image, the 3DS and some other recent gadgets use autostereoscopy, utilizing two layered screens to display an image that appears 3D to the user...

Despite the best efforts of some in the auto industry to keep electric cars off the roads, they're back. Given the current state of technology, the EV's revenge will likely be slow and steady, but most experts agree that electrics are the future of transportation. There are, however, several...

It's an awful feeling: That moment you open a letter to find an image of your car inside and a citation for speeding. Many would grit their teeth and pay up - do the crime, pay the time, as they say. Not for Will Foreman. The Washington businessman has beaten the charges on five occasions so far...

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...

The moment when you buy a new car is always something to be savored. Only a handful of digits on the odometer, that 'new car smell', and of course a smooth, glassy finish to the paintwork. Sadly it rarely lasts, and all but the most fastidiously-maintained vehicles will soon pick up scratches and...

Fed up with bumper stickers and window stickers that nobody else can see at night? Want to show off your allegiance to a particular sports team or college even in the darkest of nights? What you need is the Powerdecal. This 4" sticker can be affixed on the inside of any window and uses three AA...

Last fall, we told you about Toyota's "Ideas for Good" competition. If you read about it or saw the TV commercials (including the controversial one that was censored by the NFL), you know that the contest encouraged folks to envision new applications for five Toyota technologies, like the company's...