The Formula E electric race series kicks off this month, and we're going to see something somewhat unusual during each ePrix: car swapping. Each race will last around an hour, which, with the demands on the car, is longer than its battery will last. That's why each driver is assigned two cars for each race, and is req
Ford Motor Co. celebrated the 100th anniversary of the moving assembly line this week at its Wayne Assembly plant by setting new goals for global manufacturing, and promising the next few years will mark the automakers' largest manufacturing expansion in 50 years.
A student film project featuring a time-traveling Mercedes-Benz C-Class running over a boyhood Adolf Hitler is creating buzz on the internet.
Apparently, electric vehicles have long tempted drivers to go faster than the law allows. According to a historical tidbit on Today I Found Out, the first-ever speeding ticket handed out in the US was given to a New York City cabbie driving a battery-electric car, all the way back in 1899.
Battery technology is getting better, it just isn't getting better as quickly as we'd like. Certainly, battery advancements haven't kept pace with the astounding advances in areas like electronics, and it has failed to produce the cheap, capacious, powerful cells we'd like to have for driving our electric vehicles cross country while laughing at gas stations and electric outlets alike.
Electric vehicles have been trying to make it big since the late 1800s, and the story truly seems to be repeating itself today.
At long last, American car nuts have a version of Top Gear to call our own. The project has been in the works for a long time now, and finally debuted on the History Channel this past Sunday. As we go to press server, some 17,500 readers responded to our poll: over 42 percent had already watched it, a few more said they intended to, and less than 14 percent of respondents s
History of the BMW 5 Series – Click above for high-res image gallery
Historic BMW Electric Vehicles - Click for high-res image gallery
Today, ethanol is not the most favored solution to oil dependency, but it was not always so frowned upon. Here's a car that deserves a place in the history of ethanol's growth. A Brazilian friend of mine pointed to me to the first mass-produced ethanol car (with the exception of the Ford T): the local version of the Fiat 127 (also the Seat 127) that was called the Fiat 147. The 147 was developed in Brazil in 1976 right as the oil crisis hit and the country was seeking solutions from the biofuel.
A new Indiana Jones movie is coming to theaters this May. New episodes of the short-lived Young Indiana Jones TV series were released on DVD recently. I caught an episode on the History Channel called Spring Break Adventure which includes a story about an electric car. The plot involves a scientist in Thomas Edison's laboratories working on a battery for a Ford electric
click above image for gallery of the Aurora Safety Car
Imagine a classic radio announcer's voice in a static-filled newscast. He says:
I was a full-time Alt Fuel technology consultant/researcher back in the 1990s. Among my fellow wizards, the PNGV was a big deal. We attended conferences every year or so and watched the Big 3, with federal funding, develop hybrid cars that could meet an 80 MPG target number. They were getting close. The Japanese firms were worried and started their own hybrid projects "just in ca
click the pic above to see a gallery of 50 shots of past Toyotas
It's the Ultimate List, at least until it becomes the Penultimate List the next time some publication decides to go through the exercise of picking the best of all time, and then justifying the results. Automobile Magazine has picked up the gauntlet for its September 2007 issue, and selected what they've termed The 25 Greatest Cars of All Time. Of course nobody's going to agree with each one of their picks, but their list is a good one, backed up by solid explanations for each picked. Thus, it's
The Volkswagen Company turned sixty years old last week. In July 1946, German dealerships Gottfried Schultz in Essen and Raffay & Co. in Hamburg, Germany received their first Beetle sedans (saloons).
Forbes automotive columnist Jerry Flint provides a history lesson of various automotive couplings and even triads to illustrate that while a few have been beneficial to one or (rarely) all parties, most fall flat on their faces. None, however, are easy for any of the parties, successful or not.
