Transportation

It always seemed to us that plugging in your iPod with a cable (or worse yet, an FM tuner or cassette adapter) was an inelegant solution to listening to your Namesakes Series MP3 audiobooks on the road (the shorter works of Washington Irving as read by Dr. J, for example). Lucky for us, the motor [...]

NASA has been trying to find someone that could meet its rigorous Space Elevator demands since 2005 and, after some notable failures, we finally have a winner. A company called LaserMotive has won the Beam Power Challenge, tasked with creating a laser-powered robot able to lift a weight on a cable at a speed of [...]

Inflatable seat belts. At a glance, that doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all, particularly for those rear seat passengers who aren’t blessed with two huge bags or air right in front of their chest. We’re guessing the top brass at Ford feel pretty much the same way, as the outfit has [...]

EnerDel, who we last saw soaking up some of that Joe Biden stimulus money, is teaming up the the U.S. Army to develop a battery solution for a hybrid Humvee. Of course, your High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle is by its nature very large and very heavy — great for dropping out of airplanes, perhaps, [...]

If you think cellphones have become overbearingly complex, look away now. A partnership of tech companies and content providers, known as the ng Connect Program, has revealed a prototype “LTE Connected Car,” which, as you might surmise, combines 4G mobile broadband connectivity with a bunch of cloud-sourced facilities, such as video on demand, audio libraries, [...]

Mavizen, the manufacturing arm of the TTXGP (the Time Trials Xtreme Grand Prix — a race for zero-emissions motorcycles) has just announced the TTX02 at this year’s SEMA. A shining example of “EVs as consumer electronics” (the buzz-concept going ’round the electric vehicle scene) this guy is being billed not as a bike, but as [...]

A Japanese team from Tokai University has taken the top spot at the World Solar Challenge, which was held at the end of last week in Australia. The team beat out the Delft University team which won four consecutive previous Challenges, and this year took second place, with the third seat going to the University [...]

For a time, it looked Aptera might be missing out on the US Department of Energy’s funding bonanza for energy-efficient vehicles due to its car’s three-wheeled nature, but it looks like President Obama has now had the final say on the matter, and signed legislation that makes both two-wheeled and three-wheeled vehicles eligible for the [...]

Boy, TomTom sure has chosen the worst possible time to release its Car Kit for iPhone, and to make matters worse, its decision to not include the iPhone app is now set in stone. That’s right, the hardware alone will set you back the cost of a TomTom ONE nowadays, and the $99.95 app works [...]

First came Cadillac (naturally), and now some of General Motors’ other remaining brands are finally scratching the WiFi itch. Beginning next month, Buick, Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet dealers will all begin offering up Autonet Mobile’s $499 WiFi router as a dealer-installed option, though it’s on you to pony up the $29 (or more) it takes [...]