Cars

On January 2nd, 2013, David Eckart lived through a nightmare. After being stopped in a Walmart parking lot, New Mexico police asked Eckart to step out of his car, and patted him down. They searched his car without his consent. He was handcuffed, arrested, and eventually a search warrant was issued that allowed police to Continue Reading →

Google could become a “serious competitive threat” to the auto industry if it continues to push its self-driving cars, said Mark Reuss, product-development chief at General Motors. GM, which is developing its own autonomous vehicle technology, isn’t in a race with Google to create driverless cars, he told reporters on Wednesday in Detroit. Google announced Continue Reading →

Uber will eventually replace the people who drive its cars with cars that drive themselves, CEO Travis Kalanick said on Wednesday at the Code Conference. A day after Google unveiled the prototype for its own driverless vehicle, Kalanick was visibly excited at the prospect of developing a fleet of driverless vehicles, which he said would Continue Reading →

Mentioned very briefly, and with far less emphasis than the many descriptions of the tiny size of Google’s new driverless car, is that Google’s new experimental fleet of robotic cars are electric. That’s important because as one of the leaders of developing the software and artificial intelligence that will move autonomous cars through the streets, Continue Reading →

Google’s experimental Google X division has been working on self-driving cars for a while, but it’s created the prototype for a brand new version that looks nothing like the retrofitted version. “We took a look from the ground up of what a self-driving car would look like,” Brin said at the CODE Conference on Tuesday, Continue Reading →

Idaho couple Julie and Scott Brusaw of Solar Roadways have raised more than $1 million on Indiegogo to pursue the extremely ambitious goal of replacing the nation’s roads with solar panels. The design will now move from prototype to manufacturing, a dangerous phase for any technology project — and while the dream is exciting, the Continue Reading →

Google’s self-driving car is still at least five years away from commercialization, but the team behind the project has made remarkable progress since starting work in 2009. We took a roughly three-mile ride around Mountain View in one of the modified Lexus SUVs, and it drove so well on its own, it was kind of Continue Reading →

On Tuesday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) officially approved rules to allow the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads. The rules will take effect September 16, 2014. The move has been a long time coming, with the DMV promising back in December 2013 that it would post regulations for public use of Continue Reading →

The roughly three-mile ride we took around Mountain View in Google’s self-driving car was so impressive it was kind of boring. With the exception of a few jerky maneuvers, the car drove just like an experienced human. So really it was kind of like being driven by a teenager who got his license a few Continue Reading →

General Motors has been promising to bring LTE connectivity to its cars for some time, and on Monday the automotive conglomerate announced concrete plans to launch the service in vehicles this year. Starting in June, the Chevrolet Malibu will be the first GM vehicle to come with OnStar 4G LTE. Thirty other vehicles from GM’s Continue Reading →