Space-age design: The mPower Emergency Illuminator is set to hit stores in March, 2010.
(Credit: mPower)Flashlights are becoming more and more sophisticated, as well as rather expensive. Case in point: the upcoming mPower Emergency Illuminator, which made its press debut this week at an event in New York. Designed by the Porsche Design Studio to be "a stylish product with emergency utility, it will cost somewhere between $250 and $300 when it comes out in March of 2010.
Aside from the fetching design, the mPower Emergency Illuminator boasts some innovative battery technology. One battery "tube" stores two CR123 batteries, while the other has what's called an OnCommand Reserve Battery that the company says has a minimum 20-year shelf life and will deliver "power on command when and where you need it."
While the special reserve battery isn't rechargeable and will wear down if you use the flashlight a lot, it will never degrade just sitting around in its tube. In other words, you could never turn this torch on for years, and it would still work the moment you need it--according to mPower. Replacing the backup battery will cost you around $25, though that price may go up with inflation over the years.
It's also worth noting that the flashlight has a built-in USB port for charging cell phones and other gadgets. If there's juice available from the CR123 batteries, your device will draw power from them; if not, it will charge up via the backup battery.
Comments? Would you rather have this model or the battery-free LED quick charging flashlight from 5.11 Tactical?
LightForm strips are available in red, amber, green, and blue (although that really looks like purple to us), with white currently in development.
(Credit: Grote Industries)Flexible LED lighting strips could mean flash in unexpected places. Grote Industries' LightForm flexible LED lighting film, which just became commercially available, is ultrathin and ultrapliable, meaning it can be bent around corners and over contoured areas and maneuvered into various shapes. It can also be cut to fit while lit and slid into narrow crevices and between panels and trim.
The LED strips can be sewn directly into fabric.
(Credit: Grote Industries)Grote mainly envisions the strips being used for vehicle lighting (along carpet edges, floor vents, and window openings; inside trunks; and as ambient lighting under dashboards and seats) or sewn into fabric--say, for LED dresses and doggie porcupine costumes (too bad we found out about this just after Halloween). We're sure creative types will be able to think of plenty of other possibilities, though.
The strips, introduced at the 2009 SEMA auto trade show in Vegas Wednesday, measure 10 inches long, half an inch wide, and less than 1 millimeter thick. They're expandable: up to three, 10-inch segments can be connected, providing up to 30 inches of red, amber, green, or blue LED lighting.
LightForms come with a peel-and-stick adhesive backing that sticks to clean metal, acrylic, polycarbonate, and fiberglass surfaces. And they're hardy enough to withstand hammer blows, as well as extreme humidity, heat, and cold, according to the maker--potentially good news if you live in Fargo, N.D., and plan to trick out your car/garage/clothing in January.
We've contacted Grote for pricing information and will add that as soon as we hear back.
A nice look, but let's not get too carried away here.
(Credit: Grote Industries)
Ford Motor Company is using new technology to fine-tune sound inside a vehicle's cabin, part of a continuing effort by the U.S. automaker to deliver industry-leading quietness and refinement with minimal noise, vibration and harshness.
The Virtual Vehicle Sound Simulator can shave valuable time and cost out of the vehicle development process. Calibrating cabin sound in the virtual world reduces the amount of real-world testing needed in the wind tunnels and on the test track once vehicles reach the prototype stage.
The new technology gives Ford sound engineers capabilities similar to their visual counterparts, who are doing groundbreaking work with virtual reality and animation software--creating immersive experiences that allow designers to virtually sit in vehicles during the computer design process.
With the audio technology, engineers also predict sounds based on digital drawings of the vehicle and then combine those sounds into a realistic simulation. For the first time, engineers can hear what a vehicle would sound like under different road conditions, at various speeds and in a range of gear and throttle conditions as the simulated vehicle shifts, accelerates and decelerates.
Previously, Ford engineers would test the sound quality of specific components one at a time, playing back and measuring the sound of each component under a single drive condition. Now engineers can hear the way a vehicle's interior sounds in real-time under dozens of drive conditions simply by clicking through them. This ensures that the sound quality of the individual parts work in harmony with each other for a holistic analysis of the sound data.
Ford engineers also can make comparisons against competitive vehicles with a simple click of the mouse. It allows them to perfect and enhance interior sounds from the earliest stages, which will help Ford to improve vehicle sound year after year.
Based on software from the aerospace and video gaming industries, the sound simulator also is proving to be the ideal tool to gather consumer research. Ford asks consumer test groups to don the headphones and provide feedback on the sound of vehicles. In past testing, vehicles stripped of their branding would be put to the consumer test, but consumers often still recognized the make of the vehicle they were driving. Now, consumers can rate Ford vehicles they can't even drive yet in the real world.
(Credit:
Likecool)
This isn't the first Batmobile we've spotted, but that doesn't make it any less cool. This Batmobile retrofitted from a 1973 Lincoln Continental may have cost Leif Garvin from Sweden more than $1 million and 20,000 working hours over a span of 3.5 years to build. But the envious stares he gets are priceless.
Inside, it's all rather mundane technology, from a DVD player and voice recognition to height adjustment and car reverse cameras. The liquid fuel cell inlet, we're sure, is just a front for jet fuel. One wonders if it makes pancakes, too?
(Source: Crave Asia via Likecool)
For years, style was absent without an excuse from American subcompacts. But the days of slab-sided, no-frills hatchbacks may soon be history.
For decades, something was missing in the small cars designed, built and sold in the United States. It was gone for so long that most American consumers probably didn't know what it was.
But to Ralph Gilles, Chrysler Group's chief designer, the missing ingredient was obvious. U.S. subcompacts lacked emotional appeal.
"Small cars of the past were not necessarily done with passion," he said.
Generations of Detroit designers seemed to say: No one buys a small car for its styling, so why bother? Uninspired, appliancelike econoboxes? What else did you expect?
American subcompacts had none of the attributes found in the cool, quirky and even elegant small cars created elsewhere in the world, from the original BMC Mini to the first Peugeot 205 to the modern Citroen C3.
U.S. automakers were forced to churn out small cars to raise corporate average fuel economy averages, so they could keep selling big trucks. Small-car design? An oxymoron.
But consumer preference has shifted -- the result of higher gasoline prices, new fuel-efficiency standards and concern about climate change.
"Small cars and vehicles powered by four-cylinder engines have been on a steady increase since 2004," said Ford Motor Co. sales analyst George Pipas.
U.S. fleets must average 35.5 mpg by 2016, compared with 25.3 mpg this year. Combined with stricter emissions standards, it means the number of small-car nameplates for sale in the United States will increase.
And when a market segment gets crowded, automakers must rely on styling to set their vehicles apart from the crowd.
"It's not business as usual for small cars here anymore," said Moray Callum, Ford Motor's design director for cars.
The expanding lineup of new small cars means styling will get a lot more creative and appealing, just as it did with mid-sized cars recently. (Think of the modern Chevrolet Malibu, the new Ford Taurus and the current Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.)
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The Lotus Evora, equipped for endurance racing.
(Credit: CNET)When Lotus launched its Evora last year, it seemed the company gave in to the need for a mass-market car. Unlike the Elise, the Evora has four seats. The cabin isn't stripped bare, but sports modern electronics. And the engine is a big--a Toyota-sourced 3.5-liter V-6. But lest we think this extra tonnage makes the Evora any less sporty than the Elise, Lotus intends to take a race-equipped Evora to the Nürburgring 24-hour endurance race.
The Evora's brakes have been upgraded to six-piston calipers front and back.
(Credit: CNET)Lotus had its Evora endurance racer on display at the Frankfurt auto show. Externally, the car shows few modifications from a standard Evora, although its big carbon fiber wing stands out. Other aerodynamic components include a diffuser and splitter. For endurance racing, the Evora also gets a 31.7-gallon fuel tank, roll cage, and fire suppression system. But even with this extra equipment, Lotus engineers managed to shave 441 pounds off it versus a standard Evora, for a total weight of 2,646 pounds.
The Evora endurance racer retains the 3.5-liter V-6, although in this application it has been tuned up to 395 horsepower, which likely means a supercharger. The standard transmission has been replaced with a sequential six-speed paddle-shifted gearbox.
With its power-to-weight ratio, good aerodynamics, and Lotus-engineered handling, the Evora should prove itself a contender. But the tough nature of endurance racing will reveal any faults Lotus engineers might have overlooked.
The fire hose extends by around 65 feet and has an on-off handle for "burst mode." Click on the above photo for more images.
(Credit: M&M Automotive)What happens when you mix a fire engine with a 193 mph supercar co-designed by the makers of Gran Turismo? Well, if these pictures are anything to go by, you get the fastest, coolest emergency vehicle in the world. Apart from Thunderbird 1, of course.
The Nissan GT-R ultra-rapid response emergency vehicle was modified by M&M Automotive to offer some serious firefighting abilities. Its two rear seats were removed to make room for a 13-gallon tank secured by a roll cage, while in the trunk, there's a medium-pressure (20 bars) extinguisher system and winding device for a 65-foot hose. According to Nissan, the car will dispense both water and foam, and can fight fires for approximately two minutes on a single tank.
The car was built specifically to patrol the iconic Nurburgring race track in Germany's Eifel region, where hundreds of amateur drivers try their luck on the high-performance circuit every year. Accidents are, understandably, quite commonplace, so having a fast emergency vehicle on hand is a smart idea. Ordinary fire engines would take ages to reach an accident, but, despite carrying an extra 440 pounds of firefighting equipment, the GT-R can lap the twisty 13-mile Nordschleife circuit in less than eight minutes.
Car geeks the world over will tell you the GT-R is the perfect car for the job. Not only is it ludicrously fast, but it also has all manner of high-tech gizmos to help the driver arrive in a hurry.
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Audi released only teaser images of the car, such as this shot of the hatchback.
(Credit: Audi)A streak of insanity has been running through the automotive design world these last few years, first expressing itself with the BMW X6. This particular psychosis reached across the world to Acura, with its upcoming ZDX model, but cropped up again at BMW with the 5-Series Gran Turismo. Now this design virus has leaped over to Audi, which has chosen to take the perfectly beautiful A5 coupe and add a hatchback.
One of the first clues to the disaster is this sentence from Audi's press release, "The five-door coupe features emotional and progressive styling to fascinate with powerful elegance and sporty proportions." Given the progressive loosening of the definition of coupe, with Audi pushing it to five doors, some car company will eventually apply it to an SUV. That sentence goes on to apply the descriptors progressive, elegance, and sporty to the car, which Audi is calling the A5 Sportback. It sounds as if Audi's marketing team didn't know what to call it, so ended up picking a set of words out of the dictionary.
This sketch reveals the profile of the A5 Sportback.
(Credit: Audi)The thing is, we really, really like the design of the A5. To make room for the extra set of doors and the hatchback for the A5 Sportback, Audi extended the wheelbase, something that should have given the designers pause. Otherwise, the A5 Sportback should offer the same tech and power trains as the standard, better-looking A5.
Fortunately, the Audi A5 Sportback won't be sold in the U.S.
Iconmobile designed this instrument concept for Nvidia's automotive chip.
(Credit: Iconmobile)Forget analog gauges; the instrument cluster of the future will be a 3D dynamic display configurable by the user. Computer graphics company Nvidia is has developed a chip designed specifically for the automotive market. This chip holds system software and graphics processing capabilities to show 3D instruments on an LCD. Partner Iconmobile, which did earlier work on Audi's A1 concept car, designed an interface for the chip that combines car information with navigation and entertainment. The Iconmobile interface serves as a demonstration and is not slated for a production car.
With the Fusion Hybrid, Ford is showing off the flexibility of a digital instrument cluster. NVidia's chip would bring 3D to the equation, potentially allowing for more useful navigation guidance or information structures.
Digital instrument clusters could save automakers money by letting them use a common hardware platform across models, and programming a different look and feel into the instruments to distinguish cars. Likewise, drivers could reconfigure the instrument cluster by personal preference or for different driving conditions. For example, a larger tachometer could used for sport driving, then minimized for the daily commute.
(Credit:
Spantax)
Certain cars feature such atrocious designs that they become automotive legends. Think cars such as the AMC Pacer and Pontiac Aztek. In the last year, we've seen quirky designs that may reach such legendary status from the vaunted brands BMW, Acura, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Aston Martin. Some of these designs are attempts at entering the crossover segment, building an SUV with the fuel economy and ride quality of a car. Others attempt to expand model lineups dominated by sports cars, giving the prospective buyer who wants to add a baby seat an option. Take a look at these photos to see the results of these design efforts.
