Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 88

Computex 2012 - We've just finished with the Ford press conference where they've unveiled their Evos concept car, which is fully Internet-connected and intertwined with the cloud. It's also powered by Microsoft's SYNC technology which can do more things than you can poke a stick at.

Ford is committed to be an electronic leader and working with Microsoft in the new Ford Focus. The new Focus features Sync powered by Microsoft, with better fuel economy, newer design safety features and interiors. Sync connects the car with the driver's personal devices and controls those devices via voice. So far Sync is powered in 4 million units all around the world now it will be available in Taiwan with traditional Chinese and Mandarin language support. Ford hope to see this number increase to 9 million by 2015.

Ford is also introducing App Link that controls apps in drivers personal devices and lets the driver control the device via voice.

The future is here, nearly. After Google's try at an autonomous car driving the streets of Las Vegas, Volvo have done something even more impressive. Volvo were impressive in the way that they platooned three cars behind a lorry for 200 kilometers on a busy Spanish motorway.

Don't know what platoon means outside of a first-person shooter like Battlefield 3? The term "platooning" means, in effect, queueing cars behind e ach other with a lead car as a pace setter. The technique is also known as road-training.

It involved several research partners alongside Volvo, with the latest version of the project codenamed SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment). The first public road test for the SARTRE took to the roads outside of Barcelona, Spain at the end of last week. The cars travelled at 85 kilometers per hour (roughly 52 miles per hour) at varying distances from each other.

Voice control is gaining momentum everywhere thanks to Apple's Siri: Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S III is going to feature a Siri alternative. Google has voice search. Now, Nuance, the people behind the Dragon software, is showcasing a new technology to allow for natural language processing. Nuance technology is already seen in Ford's Sync and My Ford Touch.

The current Nuance system recognizes about 10,000 voice commands, but can't cope with anything outside of that pre-programmed library. The new technology being showcased is called Dragon Drive and will use Nuance's cloud-based servers to allow natural language processing, similar to how Apple's Siri works.

The technology is moving forward slowly and starting with an SMS service. The SMS service will allow users to send and receive text messages. As more people get used to the technology and the technology advances, Nuance will bring the technology to services like navigation, traffic updates and music playback.

If you see a car with a red license plate and infinity symbol, steer clear as that car is one of Google's self-driving cars driving itself around. Drivers of Nevada will soon be driving through Las Vegas with the likes of cars that no longer need them. Just do Google a favor, don't honk at any cars with said red license plate.

"It gets honked at more often because it's being safe," said Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow. But, after proving itself in test drives through Carson City and Las Vegas, the vehicle has received a license to drive itself around, with a few learners restrictions. The vehicle will be required to have two people in it at all times.

One person is required to sit in the drivers seat to take control in case a glitch occurs. The other person is required to monitor a computer screen which displays its planned route and keeps tabs on traffic lights and road hazards. The driver can stop autonomous mode with a push of the brake pedal or a movement of the steering wheel.

Rumors about an upcoming Apple iPad Mini refuse to die. This week, rumors are point to Apple releasing another new iPad even though the iPad 3 came out less than a month ago. This new iPad is dubbed the iPad Mini and, pretty obviously, would be smaller than the current generation of iPads.

The current 3rd generation iPad features a 9.7-inch screen and a resolution of 2048 x 1536. The rumors place the new iPad mini with a 7.85-inch screen and a 1024 x 768 display. This is likely so that Apple can sell a version of the iPad at a cheaper price and better compete against the upcoming Windows 8 tablets.

A site is claiming that reports out of China that manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron both started receiving orders from Apple for the smaller iPad. If you believe this site, the factories will have 6 million iPad Mini units ready to go by Q3 of this year meaning that you could have one in your hands by early- to mid-summer.

Everyone, I'm sure, remembers that little fender bender that Google's self-driving car was involved in in August 2011. The vehicle has now been tested for over 200,000 miles and company employees finally felt it safe to unleash it onto the public roads. The car took Steve Mahan who is the CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center out to Taco Bell. I guess the car's a cheap date!

There were some legality issues that had to met for this to happen. First, Google had to get permission from the local police department since Mahan doesn't have a drivers license. Second, self-driving cars haven't exactly been approved for use in California. To solve this, the Morgan Hill police placed Sergeant Troy Hoefling in the car with Mahan for the duration of the trip.

In the video, Mahan states:

CES 2012: It's not all consumer electronics to be used indoors at CES, there's also ourdoor-y type in the form of a car from Ford. Ford have just announced their 2013 Fusion, which is an all-new car packed to the rim with gadgets and tech like adaptive cruise control and comes in gasoline, hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants.

Effiency for the mid-sized sedan ranges from 26MPG city and 37MPG highway in the gasoline variant to 44MPG city and 44MPG highway for the lithium-ion-packed hybrids. The Fusion Energi plu-in sports an estimated 100MPGe, which is 7MPGe better than the Volt and 13MPGe better than the Prius plug-in. Not only that, the Fusion is actually bigger than the two models mentioned.

It can also drive for 20 miles on electricity before starting its engine, and will accelerate all the way up to 62MPH on battery power alone. This is a great feature for those who just want to duck out to the shops, or go out to dinner or see a movie.

This just in, it looks like the rumors and accusations being hurled at different companies over the general explosiveness of their batteries might not be just disgruntled owners.

Recently a 2007 Saab 9-3 Combi was burned pretty much to the ground. The owner was barely able to rescue their dog before the car burned. Saab, after hearing of this incident took possession of the car and checked it over for anything that would have caused the blaze.

At the time of the fire the car was not running and had a "cold" engine. The review of engineers at Saab showed that there was nothing wrong with the vehicle electrically or mechanically. Using fire propagation investigative techniques they determined that the fire started on one of the seats.

There were a few items left in one of the seats, a cell phone, a camera and a personal music player. Looking at the devices the investigators noted that the music player was melted in a manner consistent combustion. This would seem to point to the music player as the culprit for the fire.

The manufacturer and type of music player was not disclosed. But it is interesting to note that in Korea Apple is recalling all of the first Generation iPod Nanos due to issues with overheating, melting and spontaneous combustion.

Although this has nothing to do with computers, I thought it was a pretty cool bit of news and worth mentioning.

GM and Segway have teamed up to create a two seat, two wheel vehicle based off of the Segway design called the P.U.M.A. Paul Miller from Engadget got to take a spin in this nifty little vehicle and was even able to get a video of the ride.

It looks very intriguing, I hope it does not go the way of the first Segway and end up overpriced and quickly ignored in the market.

Read more here.