Cars and Motors

While many people who have looked into battery electric vehicles are turned away due to range limitations, others are more worried about the long recharge time.  In some cases, these vehicles can take up to a full 8 hours to recharge, which is too long for some people to live with.  However, a newly developed kind of battery may provide the answer to this problem.

Automotive styling has undergone some very extreme changes over the past 20 years, and mostly for the better. Sometimes however, a new concept comes along that breaks that mold and really makes us step back and stare.  The BMW Lovos is a perfect example of this kind of concept.

The "watercourse cyclone air cleaner" from Seiwa circulates your car's smelly interior air through water to wash out unwanted impurities. It may not get you high but it WILL leave your ride as fresh as mountain air after a thunderstorm.

Honda has been working hard on the upcoming VFR1200 touring bike, with the introduction of a dual clutch gearbox into the motorcycle being among the many pieces of technology they plan on including. On top the more efficient transmission, it now appears that Honda is planning on cylinder deactivation to help keep fuel consumption down as well.

The Mini Pig Keychain Light v2.0 is a welcome update on the cute Pig LED Keychain Light featured here a couple years back. Oink if you want one!

The Yike Bike is an outside-the-box electric bicycle designed for urban commuting. It's not for everybody (or much of anybody), but it certainly is interesting to look at.

Speed is one of the few obsessions we as a society will almost certainly never get away from. Every time someone sets a new speed record, regardless of how and using what, we feel the need to break it. This past month has proved not to be the exception.

The Tokyo Motor Show is looking more and more like the focus will be put on the zero emissions scene, rather than the hybrid realm. Not to be outdone, Nissan is also planning on bringing out their latest all electric city scrambler, aptly named the Land Glider.

Crash avoidance systems have been at the top of nearly every automaker's list when it comes to research and development, and for good reason. In an interesting press released, Nissan has revealed what could be the next generation of these systems, and the unique idea that led the engineers to it.

It is no secret that Mazda refuses to separate driving excitement with environmentally friendliness. The engineers and designers are adamant that a car can be fun to drive, and still be clean and efficient. It is from this thinking that Mazda has been able to create the SKY clean engine concepts.

It has been known that Suzuki is planning on bringing the hybrid powered Swift to the Tokyo Motor Show for quite some time. What they didn't tell us, was they have been working on 3 other fuel cell powered vehicles they are going to unveil alongside the Swift Hybrid.

Thinking about trading your sedan in for a bicycle? Consider getting up to speed on traffic safety before that first commute.

Back in 2002, BMW revealed a tricycle-based concept that called the CLEVER. It stood for Compact Low Emissions Vehicle for Urban Transport and was light enough to be powered by a small compressed natural gas engine. Now, BMW has released another of their tricycle-based concepts that has been dubbed the SIMPLE.

Few automakers can match the safety and reliability Volvo has been able to work into nearly every one of their vehicles. Their innovative methods and cutting edge technology have gotten them more than a few life-long customers and more are sure to come. Their latest piece of safety hardware could very well be one of the key factors in driving these new customers in.

Over the years, we have come to expect great things from the Lotus Engineering team, which they have been more than able to provide. The research and development they accomplish has been used in a myriad of applications extending far beyond their automotive realm. Recently, they unveiled a new range extending motor that will most likely follow the same path of global application.

Building an exceedingly complex 1/16 replica of one of Japan's historic World War II warplanes won't cost you an arm and a leg when you buy weekly parts kits on the installment plan.

Since first being introduced in 2002, the Volkswagen L1 Concept has been dubbed the most fuel efficient automobile in the world. While this is a lofty claim on the part of VW, the evidence to support this title seems to be sufficient.

Even the most exotic sports cars available today cannot match the potential acceleration of a high output electrically powered sports car. This is mostly due to full torque available at 0 RPMs. To really drive this point home, Audi has developed the E-Tron, which could easily become the next generation of high end sports cars.

Web 2.0 has not only ushered in social media, it fostered a movement of consumer-generated content and crowdsourcing. We can believe and trust in things we read and view if its endorsed by one of our friends, business associates or social networks chums. Traditional advertising? ... not so much! Consumer-generated content as a sea-change has gained so much traction that even advertising in a lot of respects is now controlled by the public.

Even though using public transportation within a city greatly reduces the overall amount of pollution, this doesn’t stop people from demanding cleaner and more efficient means.  A new kind of bus being launched in Britain may be able to provide the perfect solution to such demands, as well as bring a halt to the reliance on diesel.