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Wow - that is a big deal, I had no idea mercedes was practically in production with this:

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedan/112_0509 _2006_mercedes_benz_c_class/

So, whats new in the article?

The Toyota Camry, Motor Trend's 2007 Car Of The Year.

Three cheers for across-the-board competence! Hip! Hip! Hooray!

Undue advertiser influence in magazine publishing is as old as the hills.

I mean, drivers would only ever have a vigil and risk getting arrested for a sucky car....(ever heard of a vigil for any petrol powered car? me neither)

I guess they sucked so much, perhaps the former drivers wanted to pay the nearly 2 million offered to stop GM crushing them just so they could smash them themselves? Sure wish I had that much money to throw away on sucky cars...

In other words, do a little research yourself and realise something very important.

One Hint: You're a moron. (not everyone needs to drive further than 122 miles per day. In fact, not many (as a percentage) really do)

1 horsepower ~= 746W.

The horsepower of our computers has gone from figurative to literal.

One rack of these could theoretically consume more power than this: http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/coupe/112_0107 _2000_mini_cooper_sport/

Will noone think of the salmon? http://riversideca.apogee.net/foe/fgphe.asp

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.

In fact one of your examples is blatently wrong, a Focus is a car that is commonly upgraded to handling and performance specs that match exotics.

You may be right, but I'm still very skeptical. Show me a Ford Focus that can hit 0-60 in 3.3 seconds (Ferrari Enzo) or pull 0.99 G on the skidpad (Porsche Carrera GT).

Considering the article was talking specifically about drivetrain, you're talking about nothing more than linear performance, not handling anyway.

Whoa, hang on, I disagree. The grandparent asserted that "Its not hard to make most cars as fast as a Ferrari, Porsche or other neo-exotic." I took that to mean the general sense, including handling. You can strap a solid-fuel booster to the roof of anything with 4 wheels and make it faster than any street-legal car in a straight line. It's meaningless. Porshes aren't $200,000 because they go fast in a straight line. When people make that comparison, they're talking about the whole package.

In either case 12 seconds is *commonly* beat on drag strips in pleanty of cars.

Are we talking about cars that have had everything replaced but the license-plate holder, or cars that have been only slightly modified? Again, I quote the original poster:

Its not hard to make most cars as fast as a Ferrari, Porsche or other neo-exotic.

When he said "not hard," I took that to mean a couple, cheap, street-legal mods. You seem to be saying that just because it "can be done" with $50,000 in upgrades means the grandparent's point stands. I disagree. If you're replacing the engine, drivetrain, wheels, suspension, and whatever else, I don't think you can say that you've proven it's "not hard" to make the vehicle as fast as a stock, street-legal Ferarri. Indeed, it was quite hard. It took hundreds of hours of work and tens of thousands of dollars to do it. Let's be reasonable here.

So while it may be possible to make the frame and body from a Ford Focus (after replacing virtually everything else) lap the track as fast as a Ferrari, I don't think you can say it was "not hard." Mainly because to do it, you'd have to replace every major system of the car, to the point where I don't think you can even still call it a "Focus."

While he's wondefully wealthy and can afford to buy one just for the sake of having one, Arnold was at least showing some leadership recently when he bought a GMC Hummer "H2H" converted to run on hydrogen rather than fuel. Just look for "Hydrogen Hummer Governor Arnold" at news.google.com or your favorite news outlet. Here's one article.

The gas station to fill his ride is at LAX airport. How that would help the Governator working in Sacramento is beyond me. Who wants to go to LAX every time you need to fill up? and how many miles can a big beefy Hummer go before it needs a refill? The Chino multi-station pilot test at least seems more practical.

Speaking of practical, just how practical is hydrogen going to be, anyway? Unless there is a huge improvement in the abundance of energy needed to seperate hydrogen atoms from water (or methane or other sources), other methods like bio-diesel or just plain electric are going to be more pratical ways to reduce US dependence on oil. If we somehow are able to implement pebble-nuke plants like the Chinese are doing, hydrogen processing might become more cost-effective.

I suggest getting a Toyota Prius if you want to drive a space ship. Check this picture out.

Granted there are some clean diesel engines available in Europe. Why aren't they here in the U.S.? Incidentally there's no reason diesel and hybrid technology can't be combined as well. I would expect to see such cars sometime in the next several years.

It is also worse then what the last generation of Petrol gets as well.

What the heck is "the last generation of Petrol"?

I'm not at all familiar with the three models you cited from Daihatsu and Toyota. Are they midsized (like the Prius), compact (like the Honda Civic), or subcompact (like the Honda Insight)? I just want to make sure it's a fair comparison.

Honda Civic Hybrid has better fuel consumption and better dynamic characteristics

Are you using the 2004/2005 Prius in your comparison, or the earlier ones? I think your information is old; here's an article to bring you up to date. Note that the Civic Hybrid gets worse mileage, and is slower than the Prius in the 0-to-60 acceleration department. Insight is a bit quicker and gets better MPG, but those things are tiny. BTW, when California has just increased fines for exceeding 100 MPH to $750, who cares if the top speed is 115 or 130?

I like the TransAm much better. My ex-girlfriend has the '00 Camaro SS. Stock, they were about the same to drive, except when we test drove hers, it still had stock tires, and I already had sticky tires..

The biggest differences were the fact that mine (The TransAm) has the Monsoon sound system. 10 speakers, and a nice radio. Hers had the traction control, but I turn that off as soon as I sit down. It seriously hurts the performance. Lovely for keeping you stuck to a wet road with stock tires, but terrible for hard acceleration.

Gotta love a cute girl that's into muscle cars. Damn, why am I not with her now??

Ya, I imagine it could be better than a standard car.. I just wonder if it'd keep up with a decent muscle car. :)

This is my car. Well, mine is pewter, with the 5 spoke rims, and much stickier tires. Where people spin their wheels, I'm already accelerating away.. Woosh. Oh, and mine has some other tricks under the hood, but we'll keep those quiet til race day.

Now, if it can keep up, or even come close, I'd seriously consider trading my car in..

Don't get me wrong because I agree, but I am amazed when I see comments like this on a slashdot. This is the most liberal site I have ever seen in my life. Most on here voted for Kerry I would bet and don't even keep track of which party does the most to help things like this or hurt it. Most tree huggers are Democrats. The tree huggers are the ones trying to stop things like this. Bush has dedicated funds to this and I submitted the story in 2003 (rejected of course...was pro-Bush). Here is an html ver of the doc. here or the pdf if you prefer.

From the article: Friday, January 31, 2003By ROBERT STERNPLAINSBORO - After a five-year hiatus, the United States next month will rejoin internationalnegotiations to develop fusion energy as a commercial power source, U.S. Energy SecretarySpencer Abraham said yesterday.

5 year hiatas...who was in office then? Oh yeah democrats.

U.S. participation in construction of the $5 billion project would cost an estimated $500million in constant 2002 dollars over a 10-year period, according to the Department ofEnergy.

And people on here say Bush doesn't do anything to help with alternative fuel research all the time. Articles like this are rejected of course. From it you see:George Bush, an oilman, could wind up a sort of fuel-economy and alternative-fuel president.

He's already boosted mileage requirements for trucks 7%, to an average 22.2 miles per gallon for 2007 models. He's committed $1.7 billion to hydrogen-fuel research. And he has made decisions that helped the ethanol-fuel industry boost production to 3.4 billion gallons this year, double from when he took office.

In a second term, lobbyists and public policy veterans expect him to do even more for renewable fuels such as ethanol, reshape fuel-economy regulations in ways that could require even better mileage, and push a Republican Congress to pass an energy bill with generous tax credits for people who buy especially fuel-efficient vehicles.

So basically, the progress being made on fusion was funded in part by this administration and funding was cut by the previous. Anyone who mods this down is just a Bush basher and I plead to you now, don't hide the truth. The media already does that enough. I don't want a flamewar. I'm only talking about the last 2 administrations and the current topic of fusion.

Its more of a Honda IMS hybrid than a full Prius hybrid. What's the difference?

Toyota and Honda have blazed markedly different trails into this hybrid frontier. Honda's Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system in the Insight and Civic Hybrid is mild and elegantly simple in its operation--an electric motor is sandwiched between the traditional engine and transmission--either a five-speed manual or a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Fuel is saved by switching off the engine when stopped or coasting and by downsizing the engine and relying on the electric motor to assist with acceleration. The motor is powered by energy stored during deceleration and braking when the motor functions like a generator, recharging an onboard battery. (Today's hybrids are never plugged in for recharging.) Honda hybrids cannot accelerate on electric power alone.

Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) is more complex. The gas engine is unique, utilizing lightweight, low-friction internal components designed to run at a maximum speed of only 5000 rpm. A mechanical compression ratio of 13.0:1 improves efficiency, but the intake valves close so late that the air-fuel mixture experiences only 9.5:1 compression, permitting the engine to run on regular fuel. A unique planetary automatic transmission allows the car to accelerate from rest up to 30-plus mph on electric power only if the driver accelerates gently, which adds significantly to the fuel savings over what Honda's mild hybrid achieves. Toe in deeper, and the gas engine kicks in. Floor it, and the separate generator switches over to work as an additional motor for even more assist. The fuel savings are far less significant at highway speeds, where the engine must run continuously, which explains why the Prius's EPA results are highest for the city test.

Motor Trend

Its more important for GM that the mild hybrid have the ability to produce ample amounts of electricity. Why? So you can plug in tools, that's why!

Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Automobile and Road and Track. Being a former mechanic, I love cars. Once a gearhead, always a gearhead. ;-)

There was a Motor Trend article that talked about the flawed mileage issues and came up with some real world numbers of their own based upon their test results. They tested the 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid, the 2004 Toyota Prius, the 2004 Honda Insight, and the 2003 Toyota Prius.

Stop spreading FUD.

We're not using lead batteries, damnit! It's 120 1.2 v NiMH batteries. The battery pack weighs 63 pounds, not 200 as you assert, and the entire Honda Civic Hybrid manual car weighs only 129 pounds more than a comparable Honda Civic EX manual model.

There's no lead, no mercury, no cadmium in these batteries, and they're recyclable. Just like all the other NiMH batteries.

Launch of Bugatti Veyron postponed to 2005

Deutsche Presse-Agentur - April 14, 2004

Motor Trend

Volkswagen has postponed the launch of the super sports car Bugatti EB 16.4 Veyron until next year amid technical problems, the news magazine Der Spiegel reports.

Check it out for yourself

They are awaiting FAA approval! Link
Link2 Thier site seems to be down right now but, they are making the "SKYCAR" with an included parachute.

logicool, the japanese arm of logitech just released the ultimate drive game setup for crazies. Look here. The setup features an actual Sparco seat from the Italian manufactuer with mounted petals and wheel setup from Logicool's new 900 degree GT Force Pro wheel. The whole setup costs a cool $850 US, if you throw in a Plasma and a dedicated PS2, you can have the ultimate driving simulator for under 5k. And by ultimate I mean that profressional driving schools use a similar setup to train for driving line, applied breaking techniques and 4wheel drift. Note the 30 so inch HDTVs here. The whole setup may 'only' be 5k but with games like GT4, R: Evolution the whole setup beats the pants of most arcade driving games (the only thing lacking is force feed back seats). Even millionares can't drive 500+ cars (not to mention the fantasy drift of the Ridge Racer games).

"Well, now I don't have to drop $600K anymore becuase I've got the car right here on my PS2!" Plus, I'm sure that offering girls a ride on your PS2 is just as effective as an F150.

Wake up and smell the Espresso, Ferrari!

Check it out

For some reason it's gotten almost no press, even though it's both amazing looking (like a car version of the Tron cycle) and uses impressive technology.

I was looking for a convincing answer to whether or not the car actually runs Win 98, and instead found these pretty pictures of the car in a more informative article.

A previous post suggested this article (no bookmark anchors, scroll down 2/3 of page) from motortrends, which states that Windows CE is the OS in production systems - but doesn't speak to the issue of their concept cars. The MSNBC author could easily be right in this case - but should have known that it was could have known that this was not the production choice.

Other info from miscellaneous articles: the fancy communicator uses Bluetooth networking.

I was looking for a convincing answer to whether or not the car actually runs Win 98, and instead found these pretty pictures of the car in a more informative article.

A previous post suggested this article (no bookmark anchors, scroll down 2/3 of page) from motortrends, which states that Windows CE is the OS in production systems - but doesn't speak to the issue of their concept cars. The MSNBC author could easily be right in this case - but should have known that it was could have known that this was not the production choice.

Other info from miscellaneous articles: the fancy communicator uses Bluetooth networking.

Unsurprisingly, Volvo is not using Windows 98 in their safety concept car. As Motor Trend reported in May, they're using Microsoft's embedded operating system, Windows CE. It's kind of old news that Microsoft has been leading an initiative on embedding CE into cars. Check out the information from MS at Microsoft Windows CE for Automotive.

As the USA and UK are generally heralded as technological equals to Japan, this is pretty lame.

Here's a quick list technology the US developed:

1. F-15 Eagle, [I belive] the first fighter jet with a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1
2. F-16 Falcon/Viper, exported globally from Israel to Japan
3. F-117 Nighthawk & F-22 Raptor (Both with stealth, the second with Supercruise)
4. The Dodge Viper GTS, Chevorlet Corvette C5R, & Ford GT40
5. Computer processor (notable: ZiLog Z80, Mot 68K, Intel 80486)
6. PCs
7. Palm Pilot/PocketPC/Apple Newton
8. Onstar, DSS, DirectTV,
9. The orignal idea of the Cellphone
10. etc.

I'm not trying to say that the US is technologically better than Japan. I'm trying to show that different countries have different strengths in different areas of technology.

The article is here.

If you want a cheap sports car that's as fast or faster than a BMW, Ferrari, Viper.... get an Eclipse, Camaro, Firebird, Mustang, MR Spyder, most of these you can get for under $25000. Plus you can spend what you saved on aftermarket accessories to make them look better, go faster, etc. I have a 1999 Camaro SS (fixed up of course) that looks good and can run with the best of them. I get decent gas mileage (19/28 city/hwy when driving normal) and insurance is cheaper. Nothing feels better than kicking a Z8, vette(TA's and Z28's come with a toned down vette engine anyway), or viper's (when using nitrous) ass. Of course you could get the Ford Focus FR200