Car Tech Articles

Chevrolet is in the midst of launching "Project Driveway," an ambitious program where more than 100 fuel cell electric vehicles will be put in the hands of select consumers for the largest market test ever of its kind.

Testing will take place over the next several months in the Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., metro areas. Drivers range from average consumers to business owners to policy makers. Chevy reps also promise that some cars will go into the hands of "celebrities," but no names have been dropped yet.

The cars are modified Chevy … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--With all the high-tech in evidence at Maker Faire here, it's hard to believe that one of the most amazing things I've seen was purely analog: drawings in dirt on the side of a car's window.

This is Scott Wade's Dirty Art Car.

Most people, when they see cars with dirty windows, just use their finger to write "wash me" on the glass.

But Wade is taking that basic idea and turning it high concept. He takes a drawing tool and etches wonderful, detailed drawings into dirt on the windows of his simple … Read more

Porsche Design's mobile phone isn't just a piece of rubbish with a Porsche logo on it--it is in fact a rather nifty clamshell handset.

Crafted out of sturdy aluminium and mineral glass, the Porsche P'9521 isn't for the faint-hearted, weighing 137g and measuring a somewhat chunky 47mm wide, 90mm tall and 18mm deep.

Inside, this phone packs enough features to scare off any other car-inspired phones--including a fingerprint reader, which doubles up as touch-sensitive scroll interface for navigating through the menu or your pictures.

On the back, the Porsche P'9521 sports a 3.2-megapixel camera … Read more

Mini? Mini who?

Audi has released photos of its Audi A1, aka the Audi Metroproject Quattro concept car that it plans to debut at the 2007 Tokyo auto show next week.

The Audi wins hands-down in terms of a sophisticated and elegant look for a sub-compact, inexpensive car compared with its intended rival, the BMW Mini Cooper.

The Audi A1 makes BMW's Mini Cooper look like Minnie Mouse, a colorful, fun and quirky friend you once thought was cute as a child. But now that you're an adult your interests lie more toward Heidi Klum or Seal.

My … Read more

Given our position on physical activity, our appreciation for such gadgets as bicycle GPS devices is predictably limited (as in nonexistent). From what we understand, however, some hard-core cyclists have been anxiously awaiting the release of Garmin's latest "Edge" models, the 605 and 705, top-of-the-line devices that include new mapping features, training systems and the ability to share information wirelessly with other bikers on their 2.2-inch color LCDs.

But they'll have to wait. GPSLodge says Garmin has encountered some bumps in the road (sorry) and is postponing its release from the scheduled December launch date … Read more

Dash Navigation is building the GPS gizmo that everyone in the CNET reviews department is waiting for. See this video from 2006. Today at the Web 2.0 Summit, the company is announcing more features for its delayed product.

Dash now plans to ship its GPS product for cars, the Dash Express, in early 2008. Its key differentiator from other GPS units is that it will always be connected to the Internet, which will enable cool features like peer-to-peer (with other Dash devices) traffic reporting, and the capability to program routes on to your device from your Web browser.

The … Read more

Sometimes, we're pleased to say, corporate one-upsmanship can result in more than just putting down the competition. Case in point: Manufacturers of all types have issued special pink products to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month, typically donating some of the proceeds to charity. But Ford and Microsoft have raised the stakes by partnering to donate the entire $250 purchase price of 30GB limited-edition Zunes to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Engadget does note that, for the record, these are first-generation Zunes. But it's all for a good cause.

As a powered subwoofer for your car, the Blaupunkt Velocity 2Go installs easily and delivers a reasonably powerful bass thump. But this sub gives you more bang for your buck in that it works as a semiportable speaker system for an iPod or other MP3 player. In the latter incarnation, it adds pairs of 6 1/2-inch woofers and 1-inch tweeters to its subwoofer output.

Read the review

Since you're using the gas anyway, why not convert the heat from your car engine into useful electricity?

That's the basic premise behind the work of Terry Tritt, professor and director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Center of Excellence in Thermoelectric Materials Research at Clemson University.

Thermoelectric generators are currently used to convent radioactive heat into electricity by NASA for deep space probes. The same technology could be applied to the automotive combustion cycle, which wastes more than 60 percent of its energy through heat, according to a paper Tritt delivered at the Alan MacDairmid … Read more