Car Tech

You pull up to the pump and you are presented with a few choices, and we're not talking about different fuel types here. We're talking, of course, about octane ratings. Those are large figures at the fueling station, and you know if you press the higher one you're going to spend more money. Why is...

Ford's famed flathead V-8 was revolutionary when the automaker put the engine into production in 1932. It brought the V-8 to the mass market and ready power to hot rodders for decades to come. But its design would eventually make it outdated. After more than two decades of service, the flathead V-8...

Starting with the e-tron electric SUV debuting on August 30, Audi cars will offer a new level of digitization enabling them to be upgraded with new services and features without costly hardware changes. It's part of Audi's plan to reap in almost $1.2 billion in operating profit from digital...

Citizens of Frisco, Texas, the self-driving cars have arrived. Drive.ai plans to launch a self-driving car ride-hailing service in the Dallas suburb this July in a limited geo-fenced area. The company follows Waymo's announcement that it will operate a self-driving taxi service in a 100 square-mile...

Audi's Traffic Light Information system (TLI) now works in 10 separate U.S. cities. The German luxury brand announced on Wednesday that drivers of select 2017 and 2018 Audi vehicles can now use TLI in Kansas City, Kansas, and Phoenix, Arizona. The two latest cities join Las Vegas, Nevada;...

Volvo's next-generation infotainment system may look a lot more like a smartphone. The Swedish luxury brand announced on Monday that it plans to embed Google's connected services in its upcoming infotainment system. Altogether, the system will feature the voice-controlled Google Assistant, Google...

A new cloud-based service called Connected Safety will allow Volvo cars and trucks to automatically alert each other to hazardous traffic situations. Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks are actually separate entities but with the Connected Safety service the two are able to share real-time data to help...

Night vision systems for cars have been around for several years but they're still a rarity among mainstream models. That's starting to change and Volkswagen is the latest mainstream brand to introduce the tech. VW is introducing it as an available feature in its redesigned Touareg SUV, which sadly...

Toyota on Thursday revealed plans to build a dedicated test site for self-driving cars. The site will be located within the 1.75-mile oval test track of the Michigan Technical Resource Park at Ottawa Lake, Michigan and span approximately 60 acres. It will include congested urban environments, slick...

Braking systems have changed considerably over decades, but high-performance brake manufacturer Brembo thinks another big change is coming. Brembo’s executive director for braking systems, Giovanni Canavotto, told Car and Driver in an interview published Monday that brake-by-wire systems will...

Automakers have started using electric compressors to help eliminate lag in their turbocharged engines. The first with the technology was Audi, which introduced it in its SQ7 TDI high-performance diesel SUV sold overseas. The SUV's engine features a pair of turbochargers, a diesel V-8, a 48-volt...

Select Amazon shoppers now have a new option for delivery of their purchases: the trunk of their car. Amazon announced the new service on Tuesday and it will roll out for owners of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and Volvo vehicles. The process is relatively straightforward and requires an active...

Honda wants you to #GiveAShift. And so do we, because driving a vehicle with a manual transmission is a rewarding endeavor that's transitioning into the realm of lost art. To help those of you who are afraid to jump into a three-pedal vehicle, Honda has prepared a video that offers up a clear...

Audi's upcoming e-tron electric SUV will have a slick feature up its sleeve when it hits European roads: the battery will be able to charge more quickly than today’s Tesla hatchbacks on their dedicated Supercharger network. The keys to its rapid refueling are a dense, powerful battery pack...

The dynamic skip fire system developed by Silicon Valley startup Tula Technology is set to make its debut in the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and 2019 GMC Sierra, promising big fuel economy improvements for the big trucks. While normal drivers may never even realize the system is hard at work, Jason...

Thanks to modern communications and sensor technology, it will soon be possible for cars to know what's immediately around them even when the line of site is blocked, in a sense making them able to see around corners. This ability is one of the core pillars of most self-driving systems being...

The BMW Group's plans for an electrified future will arrive in several stages over the next seven years, and part of the strategy will include a whopping 120-kilowatt-hour battery pack capable of providing over 400 miles of range. The battery specifications were noted in an Automotive News...

BMW has given us a peek at its forthcoming digital instrument display, and it promises to offer customizable information and greater ease of use. In the Tuesday announcement at Digital Day 2018, BMW said the new digital gauge cluster will be part of what it calls Operating System 7.0. The system is...

Our gas is listed in a range of octane offerings, but American automakers are looking to simply that. By doing so, they say, they'll clean up the air, boost fuel economy, and save us money at the pump. According to a report in Automotive News, GM, Ford, and FCA are working with the U.S. Council for...

In 2021, the Toyota and Lexus vehicles will be able to "talk" to each other, to other cars, and to the infrastructure. The brands both plan for an aggressive rollout of vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications via Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC)...