The electric car offensive from Volkswagen will soon begin. After years of laggin behind other carmakers because of the research it needed to do, the German auto giant promises that thanks to its new modular platform, there will be ten million electric Volkswagen group cars on the roads in the coming years.
This new platform, the one which allows for this electric revolution is referred to by Volkswagen as the MEB. That’s kind of short for Modular Electrification Toolkit.
Traffic accidents are an unfortunate reality, and what may be most frustrating about these sometimes fatal incidents is that they can often be avoided. Honda has a plan to help cut down on accidents in one specific and common road feature: intersections.
The Japanese auto manufacturer is introducing, in a limited capacity, its “Smart Intersection” technology, that could help cut down on accidents that take place where roads cross paths. The company is launching a test run of the technology in partnership with the city of Marysville, Ohio, as part of its 33 Smart Mobility Corridor project.
I’m guessing you are scoffing in disbelief at the very suggestion of this article, but bear with me.
A growing number of tech analysts are predicting that in less than 20 years we’ll all have stopped owning cars, and, what’s more, the internal combustion engine will have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Yes, it’s a big claim and you are right to be sceptical, but the argument that a unique convergence of new technology is poised to revolutionise personal transportation is more persuasive than you might think.
The central idea is pretty simple: Self-driving electric vehicles organised into an Uber-style network will be able to offer such cheap transport that you’ll very quickly – we’re talking perhaps a decade – decide you don’t need a car any more.
Cars without steering wheels will be allowed under certain conditions, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said today in an 80-page report.
The report gives guidelines, which are voluntary. Precise rules, which are binding, have yet to be spelled out. But the policy clearly is to cut rules whenever possible while reserving the right to tighten regulation if problems should emerge. “When regulation is needed, USDOT [U.S. Department of Transportation] will seek rules that are as non-prescriptive and performance-based as possible,” the report says.
Look, no hands! Big car and technology companies such as BMW, Apple and Google are investing in driverless technology.
Widespread adoption of driverless cars would release thousands of acres of land for new housing and reduce the strain on transport infrastructure, according to research published today.
The report, centred on Edinburgh, suggests that congestion is costing the city more than £300 million a year in lost time and autonomous vehicles would help to trim that figure.
It wants to fly you around cities as in the Jetsons, but there are still roadblocks to overcome before UberAir can take flight.
It’s 6 p.m. in Tokyo and my flying car is late. Three years late.
Back to the Future promised me flying cars (and hoverboards) by 2015. Yet here I am in 2018, standing in one of the world’s most high-tech cities and I have to walk. I don’t even get to do it in self-lacing shoes.
I’m in Tokyo for Uber Elevate, Uber’s third conference outlining its plans to get flying cars off the silver screen and into our skies in as little as two years. It’s a lofty ambition, but Uber has partnered with some big names in aviation and picked up its share of NASA alumni to help it get there.
The goal? UberAir. A future transport network in which air travel is as easy and on-demand as Uber rides are now. As simple as “push a button, get a flight.”
When you think about the amount of time we spend behind the wheel today, whether in congestion or helping friends and family getting to and forth, being able to spend this time on other activities whilst on the move opens up a whole host of possibilities.
But not only will we have more free time, driverless cars also promise to make our roads safer and make our journeys faster.
Driverless cars are set to arrive on UK roads by 2021 according to the government and are predicted to change the face of personal mobility forever. Looking past the obvious benefits, Select Car Leasing have looked into the less predictable consequences of driverless cars.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company continues to gain validation from city governments. In June, the company was selected to build a multibillion-dollar rapid transit link between downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport, and just this week, it got approval from the Hawthorne City Council in California to start building a prototype garage that would transport cars to an underground hyperloop.
A REAL-LIFE BATCAVE
The garage will be built on a private residence near SpaceX’s headquarters, which will be rented by the company. The Mercury News reports that, as part of the conditions of the approval, the test elevator will be closed to the public, and no cars will be able to move from the garage to the street in order to keep the project from impacting traffic. Instead, cars must start at SpaceX HQ and stay in the one-mile stretch of tunnel between the residence garage and the company. A sketch of the prototype, seen above, shows an elevator shaft that would lower cars into the tunnel that connects to the hyperloop. More than 100 residents have been notified of the project and assured that the noise would be minimal, but it’s to be seen how quiet drilling tunnels will actually be.
Its battery-electric platform can be used for a wide variety of purposes.
The advent of battery-electric “skateboards,” powertrain platforms that can accommodate a bunch of different bodies on top, means that vehicles can become even more versatile than they already are. Mercedes-Benz has applied this thinking to its vans to create the wild Vision Urbanetic concept.
Mercedes-Benz today unveiled the Vision Urbanetic, a battery-electric, autonomous van that Mercedes believes will contribute to a whole new segment of mobility that’s efficient, comfortable and sustainable — and, of course, capacious, being a part-time van and all.
Without a combustion engine or a steering wheel, Volvo reimagines the car as a short-haul flight replacement.
“In our striving for efficiency, have we lost empathy for the traveler?” These words, from Volvo’s launch video for its new 360c fully autonomous concept car, hit home with me. I fly a lot, so I’m fully familiar with efficient but unsympathetic forms of travel, and Volvo’s idea is to help people like me through the design of its future cars. The Volvo 360c is, like most concepts of our time, all-electric, fully autonomous, and covered by a big sweeping glass dome. What distinguishes it, though, is Volvo’s vision of how it fits into the broader scheme of city infrastructure, short-haul flights, working commutes, and environmental concerns.
Volvo’s product strategy chief Marten Levenstam says this car is “a conversation starter, with more ideas and answers to come as we learn more.” That leaves a lot of specifics yet to be determined, but Volvo does envision four basic usage scenarios for a car like its 360c. It can serve as a mobile bedroom, replacing red-eye flights with a smoother, calmer, quicker, and more environmentally friendly travel option. It can turn your work commute into a much more productive time, offering the connectivity and space of a mobile office. Or it can be your living room and entertainment space. A modular interior with relevant information projected onto the windows makes flexibility the overriding characteristic of the 360c’s functionality.
The age of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is over. Electric cars are the future. The transition has just begun, but the move from ICE vehicles to Electric will happen sooner and more quickly than most people suspect.
With more than one million micromirrors per headlight, Mercedes-Benz Digital Light HD headlights do much more than just illuminate the highway.
Drivers can project messages on the road in front of a car equipped with the new headlights. The lights can also project navigation guides and road conditions or traffic warning symbols.
Digital Light onboard computers control the HD headlights, which are available in limited quantity for Mercedes-Maybach S-Class sedans. The car shown in the images and video that accompany this article is the Mercedes-Maybach S 560 4Matic, which has a $168,600 U.S. starting list price.
