Audi’s new Tesla Model S rival will offer a
280-mile all-electric range with room for a whole family
Audi has revealed that an all-new, all-electric family car with a 280-mile range is currently under development. Technical development boss at Audi, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg revealed that the model, which is set to rival the Tesla Model S, will arrive in 2017.
Will the automobile keep its soul as the industry transforms itself?
At the 1964 New York World’s Fair automakers were center stage. General Motors exhibited the Firebird IV concept car. GM explained how it, “anticipates the day when the family will drive to the super-highway, turn over the car’s controls to an automatic, programmed guidance system and travel in comfort and absolute safety at more than twice the speed possible on today’s expressways.” Ford introduced a vehicle for the more immediate future: the Mustang. With an eye toward the segment that would later be named the baby boomers, the Ford Division’s general manager (a not-yet-40-year-old engineer named Lee Iacocca) explained that the car brought “total performance” to a “young America out to have a good time.” Ford estimated it would sell 100,000 Mustangs during that first year; in fact, it would sell more than 400,000.
Back to the Future has filled our heads with visions of soaring Deloreans, but in reality, the automobile industry has some pretty glaring flaws it needs to address before we can attempt flight. It seems like everything in our daily lives is becoming connected. But very often the car is left out of this conversation, and it would benefit greatly from a healthy dose of mobile connectivity.
Future cars that can drive themselves—or otherwise make the driving experience safer and more pleasant—is here. But fanfare aside, there’s a far less pleasant issue that needs to be addressed: There is a profound potential for companies to misuse our data.
Stefan Klein, a designer from the Slovak Republic, has announced the first flight of his Aeromobil Version 2.5, a flying car prototype he has been developing over the last 20 years. This vehicle is a strikingly beautiful design with folding wings and a propeller in the tail. But will its flight capabilities match its looks? (Photos and video)
The motor industry’s fortunes are increasingly divided, but in the right markets and with the right technologies, they look surprisingly bright.
Henry Ford and his engineers perfected the moving assembly line a hundred years ago. They cut the time taken to assemble a Ford Model T from 12 hours and 30 minutes in 1913 to just one hour and 33 minutes the following year. That made the car a lot cheaper to build and opened up a mass market for it. By 1918 its list price was down to $450, or just over 5 months’ pay for the average American worker, against the equivalent of about a year and a half’s pay when the car was launched a decade earlier. Cars became a personal badge of status, and in time carmaking became a badge of national virility.
German automotive supplier Continental has entered into a collaboration agreement with technology giant IBM.
At the Frankfurt IAA International Auto Show this week, Continental AG and IBM announced a collaboration agreement to jointly develop fully-connected mobile vehicle solutions for car manufacturers around the world.
Steve Jobs wanted to build an iCar. But, some people tend to dismiss the idea of an Apple iCar as a crazy pipe dream. Not only is the Apple iCar a great idea it perfectly aligns with Apple’s history and mission. And here’s how they should do it.
Information collected by a car block box intended to help improve federal safety standards, but increasingly it is being used in court cases.
If you are in a serious car accident and are unfortunate enough to land in court afterwards, the the star witness against you may not be an eyewitness or even a human being, it could be your car.