tech

Unintended acceleration didn't start with Toyota, nor did it start with the Audi 5000 – it's probably been around since the first man put a leg over what he thought was a tamed horse. Automobile Magazine takes a look at the phenomenon of accidentally wide-open throttles circa 1957, when ...

A researcher at Renault said customers surveyed last year about what they want in an electric car responded, "silence, peace of mind and comfortable riding, a windy sound quality, a fluid driving experience like a skipper enjoying a sailboat." That sounds dreamy, until you realize how loud a car ...

We have an announcement to make: the Robot Apocalypse is not on its way. The Robot Apocalypse has officially begun. Toyota is working on a plethora of robots that will assist in caring for the elderly. Home health care is massively expensive and time consuming, and if the task were pawned off on ...

Ford appears to be using any advantage it can, from any industry, to make better cars and make them more quickly. Last month we got word of the motion-capping tech The Blue Oval borrowed from video games and movies. This month the news is that it's putting all of that mo-cap work into its ...

There are a lot of reasons for invention that goes beyond necessity, and pure want is right up there at the top. A clever gent named Dave tired of making the 15-minute walk to his freezing cold car, so he built a long-distance remote starter from a prepaid cellphone. To make it work, Dave ...

Here's another first for Ford after the revelation of its motion-capturing software: The Blue Oval will be the first to offer iTunes tagging through iPods on SYNC-equipped vehicles. Right behind the announcement of mobile Internet connectivity being added to SYNC, this will go along with the ...

Wishing to sharpen up the eternally imprecise data collected by using with real, live human beings, Ford is apparently the first automaker to use motion-capture software to assist with its vehicle design. The ...

The season of hitting the roads to places you don't really want to go, so that you can give gifts you didn't really want to buy and eat food you don't really like has begun. Naturally, a lot more people on the road means a lot more folks getting lost. Fear not, you invincible iPhone-equipped ...

You remember Nintendo's Paperboy, right? Back in Triassic era of videogames, you had to deliver the day's print to the right house while not getting run over by a car or taken out by a tire. Not exactly the most direct way to learn bicycle safety, but it was fun. A more efficient way to stay ...

It's certainly good to see some other wheeled vehicles doing their part for the environment, even if it is an airplane -- especially if it's an airplane. Actually this news isn't about the plane itself, but a "pilot-controlled towing ...

It goes by the name "Sartre," but it has nothing to do with existentialism and just a little bit to do with exits. The Safe Road Trains for the Environment program is a three-year European study centering on the creation of 'platoons' of ...

We don't know where carmakers got the idea that we want intelligent robots learning our behavior and then talking to us. Wherever it was, we don't want it any more than they thought we did 25 years ago in a talking Maxima. Nissan has its ...

LoJack systems draw their power from your car or your motorcycle's (or laptop's) battery to send their signal. With a traditional vehicle, this generally isn't a problem as the draw is small and as long as the a car gets driven regularly, there's plenty of juice on tap. Hybrids are another matter ...

You didn't think having an Audi TTS climb Pike's Peak was the only thing that Stanford's Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory was working on, did you? No, they're also working on something closer to home -- ...

If you read AutoblogGreen regularly, then you already know that Volkswagen and Stanford University have taken their relationship that began with developing autonomous vehicles to compete in the ...

The Mazda Sky D diesel and Sky G gasoline engines are meant to bring "everlasting blue sky" to oversee "sustainable Zoom-Zoom." Both utilize low-friction engine blocks, direct injection and piezo-electric injectors. The Sky G ...

Until cars drive themselves and we absolutely can't get lost, automakers and sat nav companies are steadily enhancing the graphics of navigation systems to make it easier to find the next right turn. Navigation systems in Renaults, for instance, ...

Citroën is using the latest in video technology to promote its newest compact, the DS3. First, you go to Citroën's augmented reality website and print out the interactive pages. Then, after you enter the augmented ...

Microsoft Surface is, at its most basic, a table-sized touchscreen computer. You can play with them at rather select locations, but we haven't yet begun to see what the thing can do because there aren't enough people ...