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Yeah, but do they have a HEMI in it?

Interesting choice, in light of Ford's plan to stop selling anything but trucks, SUVs, Mustangs, and a Focus crossover; at least in North America.

You're an idiot. ALL vehicles on the road must conform to all FMVSS regulations

No, dumbshit. As long as you're not making them to sell, you do not need to conform to all FMVSS regulations to get a car licensed and use it on the roads, and you don't need to conform to NHTSA regulations either (in case that was going to be your next bogus claim).

Here in California, where dune buggies and crazy home-brew cars rule, the process is easy and does not require anything from the federal government. Yes, you have to have brakes. Yes, you have to have a horn. Yes, you have to have lights. All of the regs are local. None have anything to do with the federal government.

Now will you please just take the "L" on this and move on? Try to hang on to some shred of dignity, man.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/...

https://autoweek.com/article/c...

If Mercedes is really going to sell electric cars, Tesla will have completion in their niche market

And, Mercedes Benz isn't going to have the quality and production issues that Tesla has been having, not by a long shot.

Mercedes isn't going to deliver your car with mismatched door panels, they're just going to make good cars from the start.

When Tesla has to start competing against established car makers who aren't learning how to do this as they go, they're going to have to try a lot harder.

Every day Ford sells an average of 2,452 F-Series trucks...

http://autoweek.com/article/tr...

They already have:
http://autoweek.com/article/ca...

That or they will just jam a gas generator on a trailer or in the luggage rack of the electric car or something.

Something like this
http://autoweek.com/article/ca...

Same as with emissions, there is always the opt out of using an older model vehicle not bound by the new restrictions.

I read that in California, though, the standards are still required for cars back to the 80s even and so cars of that vintage are being scrapped. http://autoweek.com/article/ca... When you start getting into cars which are too old, reliability, maintenance, parts availability start to be problems, not to mention overall quality suffers. Nobody wants to drive a 1975 car when emissions equipment was in its infancy.

Sorry, I was talking about the electric power steering found on steer-by-wire cars, like the Infiniti Q50.

http://www.autoweek.com/articl...

I'll take balanced design and more testing... and driver TRAINING.

If you over design, we'd all still be running those Mercedes E class diesels with a cassette tape bluetooth jack to connect our iPhone.

Overdesign makes sense if you are building one-offs. Cheap designs you get what you paid for, crap. hence remember to choose 2... a balance/good design works best for innovation. All the German manufactures sell 'perfection', which doesn't scale if one thinks about it.

Tesla is doing the right thing, and they are innovating. Don't be quick to judgement as rich folks are smart in something (business?), but not everything (driving).

Spontaneous Combustion? Naw, just a little water would be all that's needed and it wouldn't matter if the power source is one big lump, like a bunch of batteries next to each other or spread out all over the car, taking your house with it.

To your other point, auto manufacturers have been shifting more and more technology into cars which prevents your local mom and pop car repair from fixing them requiring dealer only servicing or programming services. Even then, you can't get things fixed properly, even with headlights. Auto manufacturers aren't the only ones trying to squeeze third party repair technicians out of the market, Nikon stopped selling parts to camera repair shops last year.

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130801/CARNEWS/130809996

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130917/CARNEWS/130919842

More then 9 superchargers have been opened in the past two weeks. Total is 21 right now, but many more are coming for fall.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

It will be a below $10000 Nano made for the US, but not $3000.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121015/CARNEWS/121019906

Furthermore, Lotus is discontinuing their current Elise model. It'll be 2015 before they have a new Elise, and has a totally new body and frame.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20110609/CARNEWS/110609849

How, exactly, is Tesla supposed to keep building it's roadster without a frame?

You mean, it's kind of like buying the world's fastest production car, and then only being able to drive it 2500 miles a year.

Waste heat might actually be of use that way as well.

Use it to run a steam engine ... which is sort of what this does.

Good post. This 6-stroke engine (petrol + steam) might be more interesting then...

http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060227/FREE/302270007/1023/THISWEEKSISSUE

NY Times Story

Autoweek Story

PhysOrg Story

If the NY Times story doesn't come up from the link, just search Google for Nissan electric car and you'll be able to read it.

When you don't have time to recharge, drive to nearest Shell and wait a couple of minutes for battery change.

Not a bad idea but unfortunately I just don't think that's practical.

The battery pack in the Tesla weighs (yee-ouch!) 990 lbs. Source Autoweek's road test.

I see no evidence that the traditional piston and crankshaft, poppet valve, type of mechanism is going to be replaced by a new IC engine.

The "next big thing" for IC engines will probably be rotary valves or camless engines. You are right, though, that future changes will almost surely be incremental.

Why are you comparing batteries to fuel cells in "thermodynamic efficiency". Batteries do not have "thermodynamic efficiency". A battery is not an engine, it's a container of an electrical potential that was put there probably by burning coal. You do realize that's where something like 80% of grid power comes from right? The battery's analog in current automotive propulsion is the gas tank in your Honda or whatever. Find out what the "thermodynamic efficiency" of the process of creating the electricity and then getting it into your lithium ion batteries, and then we can start making useful comparisons to other systems for automotive propulsion. Also, talking about range as if the range of a fuel cell vehicle was directly comparable to the range of a simple/straight EV (ie no production of power on bard, only storage) has limited validity too -- hydrogen vehicles are able to refill their hydrogen tanks about as fast as current gas cars fill their's, if not faster. EV's on the other hand, need to sit at a charger for a minimum of a couple hours, and if battery longevity is desired, really need to charge over an entire night. By the way, for those of you who don't know about it the Fuel Cell Equinox is extremely impressive. It's a mass produced, production fuel cell vehicle with the full interior room of a normal Equinox, that'll be driven by 1000 "owners" in the 3 major cities next year. It's been quite a wakeup call to the rest of the auto industry.

If you ignore the over-hyped (and still pretty damned cool) iPhone as 1st place, this list is pretty amazing. The water-injected engine at first glance sounds alot like the water-injection that was hyped back in the 1970s, but it's not. A little bit of digging (thanks, Google!) reveals that it's actually a 6-stroke engine that uses the heat that would normally be radiated away. If done right, there's no need for a radiator or other cooling system!

My first thought is about what this could mean for General Aviation - having the fuel burn rate cut by 40% WITHOUT needing any cooling gear (think: reduced weight) could be a real boon... already there are diesel aviation engines already that are significantly more efficient ( but need radiators, and already have a high compression ratio) this could help out even more - imagine a diesel engine that reduces fuel consumption by 60%, maybe even 70%?!?!?

Pipe dream? Yes. But I sure do hope. And it would likely happen in cars before airplanes, thanks to the glacial pace of technology advancement in aviation. Everybody's so terrified of risk that innovation is radically reduced. The reality is simply that (Private Airplanes) == (Money) == (Lawyer Bait) == (an industry that is forever on the edge of shutdown).

If you want to see the crippling effect that excessive lawyering can cause to industry, you need look no further than private aviation.

-Ben

Here's the linkage: Chevy fuel cell Equinox

Yep, http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID= /20050426/FREE/504260702&SearchID=73230581548062 has mentions "Smart, which has never been profitable and which DaimlerChrysler considered closing, will undergo a turnaround strategy that will cost $1.56 billion. Schrempp now promises the brand will break even in 2007, with a lineup reduced to the two-seat ForTwo and the larger ForFour model..."

Boy, this sure sounds a lot like what Valeo announced last year.

Even if it used twice the fuel of a normal car, as long as the sticker price is reasonable (less than the almighty WRX) the petrol (soy) heads will be lining up in droves.

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=1020 55

Please let those who aren't ignorant discuss this.

The worst part is, I got that link from the post directly above yours, and it preceded your post by 20 minutes.

I think they've already dealt with that.

• Autoweek: Mazda's Sassou three-door hatchback concept to bow at Frankfurt
• Automobile.com: 2005 Mazda Sassou Concept
• Softpedia: Mazda Sassou Loses Its Keys!

No, I think he means that in other countries, the government pays for those benefits so that the car companies don't have to.

This is a serious problem, actually. It always surprises me that more major corporations aren't in favor of national health insurance -- it would be one less thing they had to pay for themselves, and what company wouldn't want to save money? Especially when the alternative is your bonds becoming junk and your company possibly going bankrupt.

That's not entirely true. ESR and cmdrtaco became millionaires in the VA IPO scam. Linus has been gifted millions in stock. RMS is living comfortably on the 240k McArthur genius grant he recieved and is known to pull up to conferences in his pristine Bugatti EB16.4 Veyron.

It's already been done...
http://www.whynot.net/view_idea?id=830
http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=31& threadID=14566&start=30&tstart=0
http://www.wnyt.com/x3458.xml?ag=x156&sb=x183 ...or just fucking Google for "auto breathalyzer ignition".

I thought my morning paper was stupid for picking up this story as "news"...I can't believe SlashDot got trolled too...

Both Autoweek http://www.autoweek.com/ and Car & Driver http://www.caranddriver.com/ have had some excellent reviews about Honda's new top-o-the-line Honda Accord Hybrid V-6. Both magazines noted that, for buyers who want to get more MPG for their money without something as unconventional looking as an EV1 or a Prius, the Accord may fit the bill.

Not to mention the fact that the new hybrid Accord sits at the TOP of the Accord lineup for Honda. Friggin' $30K for a hybrid V-6, but you DO get 255HP and a nice car.

I wonder, though, if this prices what could be a very nice, standard hybrid sedan out of the reach of the consumers that Honda hopes to reach -- those that want something "normal" instead of a stylized Prius. Certainly, the Civic hybrid is an excellent, cheaper alternative, but it's not nearly as roomy, and for long trips, it's gonna be cramped/inadequate, say, for a family of 4.

The Ford Escape Hybrid has also gotten lots of good press from these magazines. And the hybrid Lexus RX400 (2006? yes? no?) is supposed to be a marvel of hybrid innovation and luxury technology.

I guess we'll have to see how the hybrid phenomenon goes forward. I thought this morning, as I sat behind a Civic Hybrid on my morning commute, about how soon hybrids are going to NOT BE ENOUGH to help with an emerging energy crisis. This while I'm listening to an NPR report on the US Senate vote on drilling in ANWAR for oil. It's going to be an interesting next few years, I'm afraid. Hope my rather inefficient Subaru Forester doesn't become a MPG killing liability.

IronChefMorimoto

This same article originally appeared in Autoweek as: "Under the Hood, with Big Brother" Just sayin.

This same article originally appeared in Autoweek as: "Under the Hood, with Big Brother" Just sayin.

Jobs and environmental rules are not mutually exclusive. This line of reasoning is often used by people who opose environmental regulation.

I used to be an environmental engineer, and saw first hand how companies view running operations cleanly /cleaning up as a cost to
minimize, public health/right thing be dammed. To view it any other way is to be niave. Government regulations serve to increase the cost of polluting enough it becomes economically better not to pollute.

Not to mention who knows how NOT ratifiying the treaty will effect US exports (will Kyoto Nations be able to slap a stiff tarif on goods the US produces because we pollute to much so trading with us is unfair(I'm not claiming to be an expert on that incredibly complex WTO contract, who knows what in that thing)).

In short much like NAFTA, these contracts and accords have an almost impossible to predict impact on economies.

Kyoto may not be perfect but its a start. To bad the US isn't going to be part of the solution and didn't work to make something that they found more palatable.

The US is committed to the principals of Kyoto?

Is that why the EPA is trying not to regulate "greenhouse" gasses as a pollutants???.
http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=101241

Why go through all of the trouble of mandating GPS when they could just check the EDRs, the equivelant of an airplane's black box.

This link shows what happens when you push an SUV beyond the intended "envelope". Notice that the whole body is deformed, the frame doesn't have enough strength to hold the car's weight when rolling over at low speed. Imagine this happening at 75 mph on the freeway...

I seem to remember reading an AutoWeek article about 2 years ago about the time that DaimlerChrysler's Jeep divison introduced the Jeep Liberty small SUV.

I opened my mail, and I saw this full page cover photo on this weekly auto magazine showing a Jeep Liberty tipping over during a slalom test. An inset picture showed the friggin' car flipped over on its side, if I remember correctly. I'm posting from work, so read for yourself:

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=3331

Turns out, AutoWeek testers were doing their standard lane change avoidance/slalom test that they do with everything from Hyundais to GMC Yukons. I'm pretty sure it was a production Jeep Liberty -- nothing pre-production -- that flipped over twice (???) and landed on its side during this relatively commonplace automotive review test.

The driver, thankfully, only suffered a sore neck (nearly broke it, if it had rolled one more time), and AutoWeek devoted their entire issue to this vehicle which had been designed to put an affordable small SUV Jeep into the hands of consumers.

DaimlerChrysler balked and basically claimed that THE TEST WAS NOT A REAL WORLD TEST. AutoWeek called bullshit and basically said, "Uh, yeah it is -- if a driver has to make a quick lane change and or dodge something in the road, it's as real world as it gets."

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=4163

I seem to remember that DaimlerChrysler continued to balk at the test, but in fact they ended up making center of gravity changes to the vehicle (suspension and ride height, perhaps?) over the course of the next model year.

Sounds like the same crap that Renault is doing here.

It's funny -- the automotive press gets touted all the time when they LOVE a car and try and hype up the manufacturers' products, but heaven forbid that they also try and save the manufacturer a little legal trouble by finding out these sorts of dangerous rollover issues and what not in pre-production cars. Only the GOOD NEWS, right? Bullshit.

IronChefMorimoto

I seem to remember reading an AutoWeek article about 2 years ago about the time that DaimlerChrysler's Jeep divison introduced the Jeep Liberty small SUV.

I opened my mail, and I saw this full page cover photo on this weekly auto magazine showing a Jeep Liberty tipping over during a slalom test. An inset picture showed the friggin' car flipped over on its side, if I remember correctly. I'm posting from work, so read for yourself:

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=3331

Turns out, AutoWeek testers were doing their standard lane change avoidance/slalom test that they do with everything from Hyundais to GMC Yukons. I'm pretty sure it was a production Jeep Liberty -- nothing pre-production -- that flipped over twice (???) and landed on its side during this relatively commonplace automotive review test.

The driver, thankfully, only suffered a sore neck (nearly broke it, if it had rolled one more time), and AutoWeek devoted their entire issue to this vehicle which had been designed to put an affordable small SUV Jeep into the hands of consumers.

DaimlerChrysler balked and basically claimed that THE TEST WAS NOT A REAL WORLD TEST. AutoWeek called bullshit and basically said, "Uh, yeah it is -- if a driver has to make a quick lane change and or dodge something in the road, it's as real world as it gets."

http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=4163

I seem to remember that DaimlerChrysler continued to balk at the test, but in fact they ended up making center of gravity changes to the vehicle (suspension and ride height, perhaps?) over the course of the next model year.

Sounds like the same crap that Renault is doing here.

It's funny -- the automotive press gets touted all the time when they LOVE a car and try and hype up the manufacturers' products, but heaven forbid that they also try and save the manufacturer a little legal trouble by finding out these sorts of dangerous rollover issues and what not in pre-production cars. Only the GOOD NEWS, right? Bullshit.

IronChefMorimoto

Check out the new M5. Over at Autoweek. 500HP V10 8500 rev limit. No active suspension or slicks and missing about 10k revs, but it's no slouch. :-)

this article on autoweek from a little over a year ago (almost to the day) talks about how bill gates and other rich folkses fought to get the porsche 959 made street legal. obviously this would have cost a tad more than a bunch of segways

Suchetha

A few suggestions:
How Stuff Works has a good section on auto technology explaining the basics.

There are tech talk discussion forums where you can ask questions at many magazine websites. My current favorite is the 'Combustion Chamber' at Auto Week, and aside from the registration it is free. (If you find anything better, please let me know.)

One thing to remember about Horsepower TV is that they focus on a lot of muscle cars with pushrod engines. I personally am a big fan of pushrod engines (there are lots of pushrod vs. over head camshaft discussions on various forums), but the valvetrain layout is different enough from overhead cams that you can get confused comparing the two.

A lot of the hot rod magazines have free tech articles that give explanations on the magazine website.

link to billg's toy car story.

I don't have the URL but it was over a year ago that I read how Bill wanted a car imported and that it was sitting at the dock for months and months because he was not supposed to import the car. He hired a bunch of lawyers and they worked with their representative to have a law written up so Bill could get his car. The law was then tied in with some others that were sure to get passed and the whole bunch ended up going through.

I highly recommend the article, it's an interesting read and is quite apropros.

The car was a Porsche 959. Gates worked within the confines of the law, even offering sacrificial 959s for crash tests. If you read the article, he became a partner in a business to federalize the cars. The only sign of shady behaviour may be trying to import the car that wasn't approved for the U.S. streets.

To help put this into context, motorcyclists do this all the time, licensing rare imports (a.k.a. "grey-market bikes") and two-strokes or dirt bikes for the street.

As long as you don't take it with you, when you go sky-diving. These guys are working on something similar to NASA, but they haven't quite built the prototype scramjet car engine perfected yet.

You're quite right. When I worked at Oldsmobile the stock advice for getting ahead was to wreck a company car.

The company inadvertently encouraged its employees to wreck the cars it had assigned them, thereby increasing costs and reducing profits? Well, that certainly explains things.