Car Tech

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, along with vehicle vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, is seen as a key stepping stone towards the safe deployment of fully self-driving cars. But while regulators slowly climb onboard with the establishment of rules and common standards for car...

If you have a newer car, your engine warms up pretty quickly. Driving something a bit more classically cool? That engine will stay cooler for longer as well, since it needs a bit more time to get up to operating temperature. But aren't you curious what an engine would look like if you could watch...

Do you know the origins of horsepower? I'm not talking about the history of cars possessing lots of it, but rather where the term itself comes from and how it was derived. Turns out, the term actually goes back to the power generated by a horse. More specifically, it compares the power of a draft...

The Volkswagen Group avoided its usual pomp and flair in the lead up to this year’s Geneva auto show by focusing on a single, community-minded concept car meant to be representative of future trends affecting its entire portfolio of brands. The concept is called the Sedric, and it’s the...

The Bugatti Chiron is just getting out to the extremely well-heeled public. Customers have started taking deliveries of the 1,480-horsepower ballistic road machine, and we're curious if any of them will ever find the room to explore the car's rumored 288-mph top speed. Jason Fenske from Engineering...

The headline to this article is clearly the type of question that keeps Engineering Explained host Jason Fenske up at night. Luckily for him, he's got the math and science skills to figure it all out. Fenske wanted to explain air intake for a given engine to the rest of us, and thus visual aids...

McLaren is a company that loves pushing the technological envelope. Be it the company's road cars or its racing machines, there is plenty of fascinating bits to be explored under the skin. One area that's proven to be rather interesting is in regards to the suspension employed on a number of modern...

Self-driving race cars may be anathema to genuine race fans, but there’s no doubt the phenomenon has the potential to further hone the technology for road cars, which after all is one of the enduring legacies of motorsport. A company by the name of Roborace is working on the world’s...

The latest version of the Volvo City Safety collision avoidance system will be able to automatically steer a car of trouble, within the given road rules. It will debut on the redesigned Volvo XC60 due to be unveiled at next week’s 2017 Geneva auto show, and will make its way into other...

As innovative as Cadillac's CUE infotainment interface was at the time of its launch, it was met with widespread criticism—including our own. But Cadillac has taken that criticism to heart and implemented some updates to make the system easier to use. The automaker is introducing what it...

Testing is already underway in Dubai on a new means of zipping through a crowded city. It involves an autonomous drone capable of carrying a passenger... and some brave test subjects. Dubai's Roads and Transportation Authority has been examining the drones and provided a demonstration of the...

Suspension can be a surprisingly mesmerizing bit of mechanical enjoyment. Go stare at a Trophy Truck as it rips across the desert and think about all of the work that the springs and dampers are handling. The abuse being dished out is both amazing and terrifying. Yet those trucks float over most of...

Ford has announced a $200 million investment in a new wind tunnel complex. Construction of the facility will begin later this year. The goal is to improve the aerodynamics of the brand's road and race cars, for speed in the case of race cars and for both fuel economy performance for street cars...

The 0-60 mph times for the Tesla Model S keep getting lower and lower. The new P100D package really helps put all of the horsepower to the ground efficiently, and makes the electric sedan rocket away from a standstill. Recently, we saw a drag racer in a stock P100D record a time of 2.38 seconds...

The McLaren P1 is a hilariously complex and deliciously expensive hyper car. However, there is a simple and inexpensive secret lying underneath its rear end. Where you might expect to find some fancy torque-vectoring, power providing, hard working limited-slip differential, instead you'll find an...

Do you wake up thinking about the effects of positive and negative trail length and their relation to motorcycle stability? No? Well, we're going to change that because you're going to learn a little bit about just that topic today. Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained is here to walk you...

Last year we learned about a company by the name of Divergent 3D that had partnered with French automaker PSA Group to introduce 3-D-printed metal components in mass-produced cars. Now a rival firm in this space, Desktop Metal, has been linked with another automaker, this time BMW. BMW’s i...

All-wheel-drive systems work in many different ways. They differ from four-wheel-drive systems in that they don't have a transfer case that typically provides low-range gearing. They all can work full time (though many have an axle disconnect feature to preserve fuel), while 4WD systems may or may...

Uber has made little secret of its desire to launch self-driving taxi fleets all over the globe. Uber is currently spending up big to develop the technology but it won’t limit its popular ride-sharing network to its own self-driving cars only. Instead, Uber will allow other firms including...

McLaren’s new supercar to replace the 650S is now just a little more than a month away, although photos have already surfaced. McLaren has been drip-feeding us info over the past weeks and the latest tidbit has to deal with the active chassis system that will debut on the car. The system is...