Car Tech

To start, let's talk about what it means to lug your engine. This is the term used to describe when you're puttering along in a higher gear than you need to be in and the engine is turning low RPMs. When you're cruising along in 6th but you should've downshifted into 4th about a half mile back, you...

Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] today announced plans to build a fully autonomous vehicle within five years. The car will have no steering wheel, gas pedal or brake pedal, and it will be used for ride-sharing or ride hailing services. Ford made no mention of when the public will be able to buy such a...

Audi is set to become the first automaker with vehicle-to-object (V2X) communication technology available in its cars. V2X enables cars to communicate with surrounding infrastructure and is a fundamental element towards the implementation of fully autonomous cars. In some Audi models going on sale...

We love horsepower. We love torque. We also need to embrace fuel economy, and that's a tricky line to toe for producers of automobiles with large engines that make loud noises for enthusiastic customers. We currently live in an era of tremendous horsepower availability, yet our vehicles have also...

Cadillac has dropped a teaser video for a new concept car it plans to unveil on Thursday as part of its Monterey Car Week schedule. The concept is thought to preview new technology and design themes for Cadillac’s upcoming models, and not necessarily a specific model. The General Motors...

The augmented-reality helmet seems to be today's great white whale of motorcycle technology. A number of companies claim to be close to bringing one to market, yet no one has actually delivered. One company that seemed close was, in reality, just blowing all of its crowd-sourced cash on strippers...

Mopar muscle cars bring mo money when it comes to the auction block, and they have for some time. Buying a clean example of a desirable Plymouth or Dodge muscle car will separate from a large sum of money. The barn finds are still out there, though, and the latest example is a 1970 Plymouth GTX...

It’s been a long and rocky road for the radical, arrow-shaped DeltaWing project. The project was born as a proposal for a new type of chassis for IndyCar and later morphed into a race car for the American Le Mans Series, the series founded by key DeltaWing backer Don Panoz. The benefits of...

Jason, the host of Engineering Explained, gets the first point that we were going to make right out of the way. His latest video tackles things you should or should not be doing in a vehicle equipped with a CVT. We'd say that step one is to avoid these vehicles, but as Jason points out, that is the...

Recovering electrical energy from braking is common in hybrids and electric cars, but brake force isn't the only energy that can be harvested while a car is on the move. We've already written about thermoelectric technology, which recovers energy from hot surfaces such as those of the exhaust, and...

All-wheel-drive systems are numerous, and some of them work in different ways. A Subaru, an Audi, and a pickup truck all have different needs to meet in powering all their wheels. They use systems that employ various different technologies, and once more our friend at Engineering Explained is here...

As cars become more connected, hacking is becoming more of a concern. Last year, researchers took control of a Jeep Cherokee in a highly-publicized hack, but it seems hackers can cause other kinds of mischief as well. A pair of hackers were arrested last week in Texas after stealing more than 30...

BAC has unveiled a version of its street-legal Mono track car fitted with body panels made from graphene. The advanced material is similar to carbon fiber but consists of sheets just one atom thick. Its strength is derived from the arrangement of the carbon atoms which form rigid, honeycomb-like...

Mercedes-Benz made significant weight savings with its latest C-Class thanks to the use of materials much lighter than conventional steel in the car’s construction, such as aluminum and even some composites. A senior Mercedes executive has hinted that the next-generation model, due early next...

Audi recently conducted its 100th durability test, known as an "INKA" test, on a 2016 A4. INKA is the acronym for Ingolstadt Korrosion und Altern (corrosion and aging). The testing replicates 12 years of vehicle life in 19 weeks. This corrosion and aging test is conducted in five phases. First, the...

It's a generally held rule: Let your car warm up a bit before heading off to tackle the day. But is it really necessary? In a word? No. Our friend Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained is here to explain why today's cars don't really need to be warmed up before driving. Basically, it comes down...

The Chinese port city of Qinhuangdao was the location for the first test of an innovative new mode of public transport called the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), a high-riding bus that can glide over gridlocked traffic. According to China Xinhua News, the test was carried out on Tuesday, with engineers...

Nobody truly likes a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). They are loud, soulless, sometimes unreliable, and frankly, they often make your car sound awful. But here's the cold hard reality: From an engineering standpoint, they make sense. Our friend Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained is...

After a fierce battle for market share in China’s ride-sharing industry over the past year, Uber looks to have finally thrown in the towel. In a deal expected to be formally announced tomorrow, Uber will sell its Chinese arm Uber China to local rival Didi Chuxing. ALSO SEE: Why Ford is making...

Ferrari [NYSE:RACE] is close to finalizing development of a modular platform that will underpin its next generation of cars starting with a replacement for the California due out in the next year or two. The platform needed to be highly flexible so that it can underpin most of Ferrari’s...