Items tagged with Cars
Porsche is gunning for Tesla with its own line of electric vehicles that will look good and offer high performance (and Porsche's usual penchant for quality). The line will include the slick Mission E and the Mission E Cross Turismo that have only been seen in concept form so far. A high-performance electric car comes with the need for a high-performance charging network, and since Porsche is taking the fight to Tesla, that infrastructure can’t exactly be shared. New details on what Porsche has planned for its charging network have surfaced and Porsche Cars North America plans to have at least 500 fast chargers available at dealerships and highway locations around the U.S. by the end of...
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The ever-increasing fuel economy standards were sure to be eventual the death of big displacements engines. A new rumor floating around says that death is coming soon for Mercedes' famed bi-turbo V12 engine. That engine is found under the hood of the Mercedes SL roadster with the most appealing version being the Mercedes-AMG SL 65 with the bi-turbo 603hp V12 underfoot. A German blog called mbpassion has cited a source that claims the production of the bi-turbo V12 AMG SL 65 will end in the next few months. That was a very expensive car ringing in at $222,000 and it didn't offer much in the way of a performance improvement compared to the bi-turbo V8 SL 63 that sat right under it for $70,000 less....
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Tragedy struck last week for a man and his family in California. The man was driving in his Tesla Model X when the vehicle struck a concrete barrier on Highway 101 near Mountain View -- he died as a result of the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been investigating to determine if the Autopilot feature was engaged, and now Tesla has now confirmed that it was in fact turned on at the time of the accident. Tesla wrote, "In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier...
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Volkswagen has taken a beating in the U.S. market after it was discovered years ago that the automaker was purposely cheating with software designed to help its popular diesel cars pass emissions testing. VW is trying to put that behind it and get Americans interested in its cars again. A new concept called the Atlas Tanoak has debuted at the New York International Auto Show and with the market for mid-size trucks being so hot right now this could be exactly what VW needs to woo American buyers. VW says that the Atlas Tanoak gets its name from a species of tree that is native to the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and can grow up to 135-feet high. The Tanoak is the first pickup that is based on the...
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Ford has announced that the legendary California Special package will return for the 2019 Mustang pony car. Ford is packing some very cool tech into the 2019 California Special with a 6-speed manual transmission that features rev-matching technology. Ford says that rev-match tech will "ensure smoother and more spirited day-to-day-driving." Ford will also give California Special buyers the chance to own the first-ever custom-tuned B&O Play premium audio system for the Mustang. The California Special will have new vintage-inspired colors and over-the-top stripes. "No doubt, 2019 is an exciting year for Mustang enthusiasts, especially fans of our California Special and Bullitt models," said...
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Late last month Porsche dished out new details on the Mission E Electric performance sedan that aims to challenge Tesla. Porsche is back with another electric concept that is essentially a lifted SUV wagon version of the Mission E Performance sedan called the Porsche Mission E Cross. Porsche calls it a "Cross-Utility Vehicle" and says that it is designed for individuals with an active lifestyle, and was intended to be practical for year-round use. Inside the concept is designed with plenty of cargo space and exterior mounting systems to carry large objects like surfboards or bikes. Four people can sit inside and the dash is fitted with a display and control concept that has touchscreens and eye...
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Porsche is set to unveil the 2019 911 GT3 RS at the Geneva Motor Show next month and ahead of that official unveil the German automaker has given up details and images of the car. It's awesome, to say the least. The 2019 911 GT3 RS is a naturally aspirated car meant to tear up the street and the race track -- and it no doubt carries a hefty price of $188,550 including destination. That much money gets you revised styling inside and out compared to the previous model and a 4.0L flat-six that makes 520hp, a bump of 20hp compared to the 2018 version. Porsche also massaged more torque out of the engine the car uses with 346 lb-ft, a bump of 8 lb-ft compared to the outgoing model. Porsche gave the...
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McLaren has a long history of making some of the coolest and best-performing supercars on the planet. The last hyper exotic that the company rolled out was the Senna, but McLaren Special Operations (MSO) has announced that it has built a series of ten MSO X cars that were inspired by the McLaren 570S GT4 racing car. Each of the ten special editions was designed and engineering with emulating a race car as the primary force behind the cars, but each of them are street legal. The ten cars were built for special buyers and each of the rides are already sold and were delivered at a special McLaren customer event near Las Vegas. The cars were commissioned by McLaren Newport Beach, the largest...
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Nissan has pulled the wraps of some new research that it claims will allow vehicles to interpret signals from the brain of the driver and redefine how people interact with their cars. Nissan calls it Brain-to-Vehicle, or B2V technology. The Japanese auto giant claims that it will speed up reaction times for driver and eventually lead to cars that adapt to make driving more enjoyable. Nissan will be showing off the new B2V technology at CES 2018. "When most people think about autonomous driving, they have a very impersonal vision of the future, where humans relinquish control to the machines. Yet B2V technology does the opposite, by using signals from their own brain to make the drive even more...
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McLaren has built a new car and named it in honor of legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna and it is definitely an interesting vehicle. The car was clearly not designed with an eye towards aesthetics; from the side the car is not very attractive. This happens at times when a car is built more for function than what looks good to the artist’s eye. This makes the car perform fantastically, but a bit off looking in some respects. Look at the Senna from any angle but the side or front 3/4 view and it is shockingly beautiful; many would go so far as to call it a work of art. It has windows in the bottom of the doors, because why not. The car is street legal, but it's clearly meant mostly to...
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If you have ever purchased a car, you know that it's not always fun and games. You spend hours day at a dealership haggling on price and having the finance department try and talk you into buying things you just simply don’t want. There is a reason why car dealerships have earned a bad reputation, even though there are many good dealerships and sales people out there. Volvo wants to take all the hassle out of buying a new car and it wants to do that with a new plan called Care by Volvo. Care by Volvo isn’t a lease, thought it seems similar, and it isn't a purchase option. You are buying a subscription to a car that belongs to you for up to 24 months. Much like trading in your iPhone...
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Computer scientists working for Apple have published a research paper that gives us a look at exactly what sort of tech the company is cooking up for the autonomous car realm. Apple had originally been working on an actual autonomous car, but reportedly hit the reset button on those plans to focus on software for self-driving cars. The research paper outlines a new method that could be used to allow self-driving cars to detect pedestrians and cyclists. The paper, which was published November 17 in an online journal called arXiv, and authored by Tin Zhou and Oncel Tuzel, focuses on advances made in the capability of detecting 3D objects. Currently, autonomous cars use LiDAR systems to shine...
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Lamborghini builds some of the most powerful automobiles on the planet, and like several other automakers, the Italian company has plans of releasing an electric vehicle (EV), too. That is the reason why some of Lamborhini's engineers are in Massachusetts—the Italian supercar company is collaborating with two laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an electric super car concept called "Lamborghini of the Terzo Millennio." "Exactly one year ago we have signed an agreement with the MIT-Italy Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which marked the start of a collaboration between two outstanding entities for the creation of a project that intends to write...
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Koenigsegg feels the need, the need for speed. It has managed to get the state of Nevada to shut down and 11-mile section of route 160 that runs between Las Vegas and Pahrump, Nevada, on Saturday and Sunday, to allow the Swedish maker of hypercars to attempt to set a land-speed world record for the fastest production car. The record attempt will employ a Koenigsegg Agera RS. Koenigsegg was granted a special permit by the Nevada Department of Transportation and the 11-mile section of road to be used is said to be straight. The beast of a car that will be attempting the record setting top speed run packs 1,360 hp and is aiming to top the current record of 268 mph set by a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport....
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