When Your Mobile Talks To Traffic Lights, Do You Feel Envy?
By Martin SchwoererSeptember 13, 2008 - 697 views
Researchers at The Institute of Traffic Engineering and Logistics in Kassel, Germany, don’t like induction loops (those things under the pavement that detect how long a car has been waiting for traffic lights to change). They say the loops are expensive, failure-prone and easily damaged. Simplistic, too: they only say how long a car has been waiting; they don’t tell you how many other cars are in line, how many are approaching and whether the other drivers plan to turn off or go straight ahead. The solution: mobile phones that automatically communicate with traffic lights. AKTIV (Adaptive and Kooperative Technologies for Intelligent Traffic, a project funded with federal millions) envisions mobile phones equipped with WLAN and GPS sensors, installed inside cars that tell nearbye traffic lights where you are heading. As a quid pro quo, the traffic lights tell your mobile how many seconds remain till the light turns green and whether you should turn your engine off. Traffic flows should improve, because AKTIV (pro-actively) times traffic light changes according to the amount of vehicles waiting. It should save fuel too, because stops are shorter and enables engine shut-down combined, with a “wake up call” to let drivers know green is on the way. A pilot project will begin in 2009. I asked AKTIV’s Walter Scholl if people fear Big Brother. “We consider data protection crucial. So all car data will be anonymized, and deleted as soon as you leave a junction.” But isn’t it so that the more gadgets people use, the less attentive they drive? “We have a working unit concentrating on ’safety and attentiveness,’ and we need to attain empirical evidence that our system doesn’t distract from the task of driving.” Isn’t this technical overkill? Why not just replace traffic lights with traffic circles / roundabouts? “Good question… Roundabouts help, but there will always be many situations where lights are better and safer. In addition, our system will help reduce the amount of street signs as well as other distractions”. I’d like to hope so.
Posted in Gizmology | News Blog | Safety | 5 comments 
Chrysler In-Car Wi-Fi: A Born Loser?
By Robert FaragoSeptember 13, 2008 - 1,148 views
Many of our Best and Brightest questioned Chrysler’s decision to offer Wi-Fi (for passengers) in its vehicles (a.k.a. Autonet). They balked at the stiff cost for same: $499 to install, $29 a month. Tech toy site Gizmodo asked one of its savvy readers to test out ChryCo’s car o’ the future gizmo on their behalf, and the early review is not good. It didn’t work out of the box, it’s slow, there’s a one gig cap and it’s not encrypted. Yup, you heard right: no security. “So average guy never sets up encryption (nothing in the manual telling you need to). He plugs it in and parks in front of his apartment with 200 neighbors. Some kids finds it and downloads the full season of The Office. Customer gets a $800 bill. Nice.” As in not nice at all, on any level. How long before ChryCo “rectifies these issues?” We’re still waiting for that revised Avenger…
Posted in Gizmology | News Blog | 18 comments
The Jetsons Were So Behind The Times
By Edward NiedermeyerSeptember 10, 2008 - 1,474 views
The flying car has long been the sci-fi terminus point for automotive technology. Such automotive luminaries as Henry Ford and Glenn Curtiss have been lured into costly, fruitless developments by visions of blasting away from traffic on the wings of flight. But the vision has never translated into production reality. The Moller “Autovolanter” is no closer to production than the flux capacitor, although far more complex. Green Car Congress reports that the sky-whip uses no fewer than eight of Moller’s proprietary Rotapower rotary-hybrid engines to power the Autovolanter. The plug-in hybrid two-seater can drive 150 miles on the road before lifting off vertically and flying a further 75 miles (at up to 150 mph), carrying up to 375 lbs and achieving nearly 15 mpg in the process. Well, in theory. Development of a prototype is estimated at $5m, though Moller claims low-volume production could make the Autovolanter available for $250k. But then there’s the problem of licenses, regulation and in-city use. Says Moller founder Dr Paul Moller “flying it in US cities is not going to be politically acceptable until it has been deployed successfully in other roles and environments. Practical or not, it excites the imagination to think about being able to rise vertically out of a traffic jam and just go!” Of course legal niceties weren’t really considered during development, as the Autovolanter was prototyped at the request of a “wealthy businessman who was unable to commute from the city to his country home due to the overcrowded streets of Moscow.” Dude, just bribe the cops.
Posted in Future Vehicles | Gizmology | News Blog | Technology | 17 comments
Berlin Hearts Electric Smarts
By Martin SchwoererSeptember 9, 2008 - 681 views
Londoners know (because a fleet of almost 100 is already running): the electric Smart fortwo is an big improvement on the original. It’s economical and smooth, without the wheezy engine and the miserable, jerky transmission of the gas-powered (or God forbid, Diesel) version. Greeny Berliners think: electric cars would be the zero-emission way to go, if you could just charge them somewhere (who has a garage in the city?) Bringing both factors together and hoping that they gel, the German government has started a project with the generic-sounding name “e-mobility Berlin”. It will be the world’s biggest e-car pilot project, involving Daimler and RWE, a utility, which will install 500 public charging stations. The charging stations will have token solar cells, but are basically about coal-derived electricity (take that, global-warming activists!) Daimler’s main motivation is to field-test its e-Smarts, scheduled for massive roll-out in the magic year (guess!) On TV, I saw Angela Merkel, Germany’s often dour, physicist-by-training head of government talk about the project with bright eyes: “It only takes two hours to re-charge the batteries? Just the time you need to go shopping!” As they say, some ways of thinking die hard.
Search Results 1. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (Germany) »
Posted in Alternative Energy | Electric Vehicles | Europe | Germany | Gizmology | Green | News Blog | 11 comments
Solar-Power Still Trailing ICE
By David HolzmanSeptember 9, 2008 - 565 views
The “Solar Taxi” has arrived in Philadelphia a year, two months and 27k miles after it left Switzerland. A substitute high school teacher from Lucerne named Louis Palmer built the contraption, with help from four universities. The three-wheeled cluchtless, gearless gizmo weighs 1,000 lbs, including 500 lbs of sodium-nickel-ceramic Zebra batteries, manufactured by MES DEA in Stabio, Switzerland. The latter give the car and its 500 lb trailer toting 6 square meters of PVs a range of nearly 200 miles at night. Top speed is an electronically limited 55 mph at 1800 rpm. The 20 hp motor pulled the car up the Rockies at 40 mph. Though billed as 100% solar, Palmer tells TTAC the trailer produces half the car’s energy, the “other half” produced by solar cells on a collaborator’s rooftop in Switzerland that feeds the grid with power equivalent to the supplement the car requires from the grid. In any case, the car’s top speed sinks to 10-15 mph when powered by direct sunshine alone. But Palmer’s goal is to show the world that solar-powered automotive transportation is feasible. He says that $5,000 worth of rooftop solar cells in the US Mid-Atlantic could provide enough electricity for 10,000 miles/year.
Posted in Alternative Energy | Gizmology | Green | News Blog | 6 comments
Hyundai ix55: Worst Alphanumeric Name Ever?
By Justin BerkowitzSeptember 5, 2008 - 1,750 views
Yes, we all hate the alphanumeric nomenclature, snaking over the auto industry like poison ivy. And with only so many letters and numbers, we always expect some repeats (Lexus LS/Lincoln LS, Chrysler 300C/Mercedes C300, BMW X5/Mazda MX-5). Has Hyundai gone a character too far? The car we North Americans know as the Veracruz is being introduced to Europe as the ix55. Not only is this a bizarre thing to say down at the pub (Oh, I drove my ix55), but it’s awfully close to, well, a lot of other cars. Hyundai’s new scheme for European car names is to begin with the letter “i,” because if it worked for Apple, it’ll work for them. Or Mitsubishi’s “i car.” The X we can assume refers to this vehicle being an AWD crossover, and of course the 55 is because it has a 5.5 liter V8. Erm, no. Instead, it sounds to me like a mish-mash of BMW (xDrive 50) and the 55 immediately conjurs memory of a trillion Mercedes AMG cars with 55 at the end, from C55 to E55 to S55 to CL55 to CLK55 to ML55 to G55). Besides, what was wrong with Veracruz?
Posted in Branding | Capsule Reviews | Europe | Future Vehicles | Gizmology | High Finance | New Cars | News Blog | 29 comments
Honda Reveals New “Insight” Prius Killer
By Justin BerkowitzSeptember 4, 2008 - 2,243 views
Or the concept version of it, at least. Honda says what you see here (and what they will show at the Paris auto show) is 90% of what we can expect when they roll out the production version - on sale in the US next spring. While Honda has said it will be the best priced car in the segment (what segment? It’s the Prius and nothing else), many have estimated its price will be below $20,000. Unlike the first generation Insight, which was a 2-seat bicycle, this new one very much follows the Prius layout: 5 passenger, 5 door (that means hatchback), and lots of high-tech gadgets. Making those gadgets optional should help to add high-profit margin items to the sales sheet, as well. While we have no information on engine or mileage, I’d be willing to bet that the all important MPGs will be very impressive. Honda is hoping to sell 100,000 of these in the US per year, and another 100,000 per year worldwide. Something tells me that won’t be a problem at all.
Posted in Electric Vehicles | Fuel Economy | Future Vehicles | Gizmology | Green | Hybrid | New Cars | News Blog | 43 comments
Recycled Carbon Fiber Tasty, Less Filling
By Martin SchwoererSeptember 3, 2008 - 800 views
A carbon fiber Formula 1 machine can sprint from 0 - 120mph in less than five seconds and survive crashes at 100. Sadly, the price of the hi-tech material is prohibitively expensive, restricted use to racing cars, luxury bicycles, boats and aviation. Now that those planes are getting long in the teeth, a German joint venture named CFK-Valley Stade reckons it can recycle carbon fiber (CF) from old Airbus frames for automotive applications. The project involves 77 (count ‘em 77) research institutes and a major waste disposal company. Dow Chemical will be joining CFK-Valley Stade to build a plant to recycle more than 1k tons a year, starting (you guessed it) 2010. The exact chemical process is complex/boring, but the CF is shredded and subjected to pyrolysis. The fibers are then isolated and combed. The finished product is sub-aviation quality, but a lot cheaper. For cars, recycled CF may be used for interior parts, gas pumps, body parts or exterior mirrors. A VW spokesperson says at the expected lower price, CF will drift from its present applications in the company’s Bugatti and Lamborghini brands down market, to VW (SEAT?). Is this the antidote to the sad tendency of car companies to think thin, but build fat?
Posted in Gizmology | Industry | News Blog | Technology | 3 comments
Heated Seats Hazardous To Your Tender Parts
By Frank WilliamsAugust 29, 2008 - 1,774 views
First it was hot tubs. Then jockey shorts. Now the latest threat to male fertility is heated seats. According to research published in New Scientist magazine (and reported by eGMCarTech.com ), heated car seats can toast one's testicles to the point that sperm production shuts down. While the ideal temperature for the little swimmers is 96 degrees Fahrenheit, test subjects found their family jewels were steamed to a toasty 99 degrees (don't ask me where they stuck the thermometer). Don't worry too much, though. Researchers do say for any real damage to take place, you'd have to be sitting on a heated seat "for a long time on a regular basis." Of course, if you habitually shoot blanks you should just have the balls to admit it instead of trying to blame it on your car…
Posted in Gizmology | News Blog | 21 comments
Question of the Day: How Much Tuning is Too Much Tuning?
By Mike SolowiowAugust 28, 2008 - 1,016 views
Warning: you might want to turn down your volume when that Audi TT with a new turbo upgrade hits full boost. The last time I heard a whine like that was when the Pratt & Whitney engines on my jet spooled-up, developing 21k lbs of thrust apiece; and it only does 0 - 60 mph in about 15 seconds (and then 60 - 250 mph in another 15). Which brings me to my question. I've seen many a car "tuned" beyond belief, many with ridiculous body kits to emphasize the fact. How much tuning on a car it too much? When does the tuning destroy the car's original character and turn it into a peaky, unreliable mess? I like it when people modify cars, especially when it builds upon the car's strengths and tones down its weakness (like the above Audi). But looking around me on Friday nights, sometimes I think it gets a bit extreme. What say you?
Posted in Gizmology | News Blog | Question of the Day | Tuners | 27 comments
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