The human brain is an amazing organ, but it certainly has limitations when it comes to multitasking. That’s why it’s very dangerous to call or text while driving your car. Yet people do that, but in the future your vehicle might make sure that you do not.

In the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) guidelines released on Tuesday, the Department of Transportation is recommending the installing of electronic devices in the car which would block common cellphone functions unless the vehicle is stopped and in park.

The operations include:

• Manual text entry for the purposes of text messaging and internet browsing
• Video-based entertainment and communications like video phoning or video conferencing
• Display of certain types of text, including text messages, web pages, social media content

But they haven’t suggested anything regarding hands-free voice and texting apps which are also said to cause distractions. And nothing about in-dash controls, which could also be distracting to some.

These are non-binding guidelines, and even if such a tech which controls cellphone activity is developed it will take some time before manufacturers decide to add these into their vehicles. We wonder how this tech would recognize the difference between cellphones of passengers and drivers, since these guidelines don’t really make sense for passengers.

What do you think of the idea of enforcing a system that prevents certain cellphone functionality while driving? A good idea or not?

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Although there are big obstacles ahead of them, Hyundai has big hopes for the future and has announced that they will start mass production of cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The company will begin building a hydrogen-powered Tucson ix SUVs at the company’s Ulsan plant in South Korea and their current aim is to sell 1000 of those zero-emission vehicles around the world by 2015. The immediate plan is that 15 of the new models will head to Denmark and two units to Sweden this April for municipal use.

Hyundai Motor Vice Chairman Kim Eok-jo said, “We expect to realize an environmentally friendly era more quickly through the mass production of hydrogen fuel cell cars for the first time in the world“.

A hydrogen-powered vehicle is certainly good for the environment as it emits only water vapor after hydrogen is converted into electricity.

As for the performance of the vehicle, Bloomberg says that it lags behind its gasoline-powered rivals but gives a smooth driving experience. It produces 134 horsepower and accelerates from 0 to 60mph in just over 12 seconds. Hyundai says that the car can go for about 370 miles before there is a need for refuelling.

But refuelling is one of the problems as there is a scarcity of fuelling stations. Reports suggest that there are only 13 stations across South Korea, but more stations are also being planned. Another major problem is the production cost, with estimates suggesting a price tag of $200,000. In comparison, the standard Tucson costs $19,935. But the company is promising that the price can be lowered to around $50,000 by 2015 after the tech improves.

If all the problems are taken care of, finally we can take an eco friendly route by not relying too much on internal combustion engines. What do you think?

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You may be able to connect with your car in a lot of ways such as making hands-free calls, and many cars out there are able to connect with their manufacturers wirelessly when there is a need, but AT&T and GM want to take connectivity to a new level. The two companies have announced a partnership that will bring the AT&T LTE network to the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac car models meant to go on sale in 2014 in the US and Canada.

As you might know, GM already provides customers with the service of OnStar for security alerts, directions and much more. The future LTE cars will have all those abilities along with more high tech features.

AT&T’s connectivity will be used for a variety of services including diagnostics, infotainment, and their main focus will be safety. We can think about a thousand things such as advanced voice recognition tech for better hands free abilities, or content streaming from services like Netflix, or maybe better communications between cars to avoid accidents, and so on.

All these new features will certainly help sell more cars which is good for GM. Just in case you are thinking about what’s in it for the wireless carrier, AT&T needs to spread their services beyond handsets for growing on the market where most people already own smartphones.

So, are you looking forward to an AT&T connected car? Or do you think that GM should have made a deal with Verizon or another carrier instead?

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The problem is that carrying around that jerry can of gas may not be particularly safe. There are fumes to worry about, not to mention the possibility of leakage and possible combustion, fire and explosions. A much safer alternative, it seems, is a product called Extra Fuel. It works with any regular gas engine in a car (pretty sure it doesn’t work as a diesel alternative), but it doesn’t contain the volatile chemicals found in conventional petrol gas.

The volatile gases–like butane, pentane, and hexane–are really the problem, because they can heat up on a hot day, pop a vent in the jerry can, and fill your car with dangerous fumes. Extra Fuel doesn’t have that, but your engine can still use it. Extra Fuel has an octane rating of 91 and is supposed to give the same kind of mileage as regular gas. Better still, it has a ten-year shelf life.

A half-gallon jug is $24.99, so Extra Fuel is definitely more expensive than the stuff you get at the pump, but it may be a very worthy investment for some road trip peace of mind.

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Today’s car batteries are massive, yet can only go about 100 miles, and can never come close to gasoline. But a new technology currently being developed under IBM’s “Battery 500 Project”, could result in a battery that would power cars for more than 500 miles on a single charge. They are developing a light-weight, ultra high-density lithium-air battery, or air-breathing battery, which actually breathes air.

In a lithium-air battery, oxygen will react with the soft element lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy. When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released. Since the oxygen used for the reaction comes from the atmosphere, the battery will be much lighter compared to conventional batteries.

And these batteries have a much higher energy density than lithium-ion ones. Theoretically, the maximum energy density of lithium-air batteries is 12 kWh/kg. That’s around 15 times greater than li-ion, but more importantly comparable to gasoline. If the project is a success, lithium-air might not only replace li-ion, but also gasoline. That won’t happen anytime soon, but it’s certainly possible.

The talks about lithium-air battery actually started way back in 1970, but at the time we did not have the materials required to build one. But li-air is possible today as we have graphene and carbon nanotubes, and also IBM’s famous computer architecture, Blue Gene. IBM has received assistance from Asahi Kasei and Central Glass.

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The biggest inefficiency that you’ll find on the highway has to do with the acceleration and deceleration of the cars around you. This creates all these empty pockets of road and it has a weird domino effect on traffic. Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is supposed to fix that. And that technology is precisely the focus of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) that took place over the weekend. Eleven teams from nine different countries took part with their own CACC-equipped vehicles. The cars “talk” to one another through an obstacle course, staying as close together as possible to reduce wind resistance and increase the number of cars that can fit on the same stretch of road.

The first Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) on Sunday 15 May was won by the German team AnnieWay of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. During the Cooperative Driving Weekend, part of Automotive Week 2011, it had the best cooperative driving result in an exciting international challenge against ten other teams. “Both the partners involved – High Tech Automotive Campus, TNO, Province of Noord-Brabant, SRE and Helmond municipality – and the participating teams were very enthusiastic about how this GCDC went.

They use wireless communications, along with cameras and GPS, to get the job done. By communicating with one another, they can be as efficient as possible. This is quite different from conventional adaptive cruise control, where each car is independently monitoring the other cars. Here, they’re working as a team.

We’ve seen visions of cars driving bumper-to-bumper down the Interstate thanks to tech like this, reducing the need for any sudden braking or acceleration. Whether or not these really are the cars of the future remains to be seen, but for CACC to really work, every car on the road has to be on board.

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Despite some advancements in greener ways to power our cars, regular internal combustion engines are still going to be around for the foreseeable future. That said, changes can be made to make them a little greener… like getting rid of the spark plug.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) in Japan are working on laser ignition systems that will replace the conventional spark plug. Instead of creating a high-voltage electrical spark to ignite the air-fuel mixture in the engine cylinder, a laser igniter can do the same thing.

What’s the advantage? They could provide for better fuel economy and better performance, but they could also significantly reduce the nitrogen oxides typically produced by the internal combustion process. If the laser igniters can produce a higher-energy spark, there could be more air in the air-fuel mixture (“running lean”) while still providing the same amount of power.

Engine timing can be improved with the precision of a laser, as can the targeting of the mini explosion. Spark plugs ignite the air-fuel mixture closes to the top of the cylinder, whereas laser igniters could target the middle. This makes for a potentially bigger explosion, meaning more power with the same amount of fuel.

No, it’s still not exactly green yet, since you’re still burning a fossil fuel, but this could be a good step in the right direction.

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Driverless car (van, whatever) to navigate 8,000 miles

That’s it. Skynet is just around the corner. Sure, this team of Italian engineers appear to be harmless enough, but these two driverless vehicles will set in motion a series of events that will surely lead to Judgment Day.  You read that right: driverless. They have two vehicles that can effectively drive themselves, and the goal is to get them to exactly that for a total of 8,000 miles. Over the course of the three month journey, the vans — with no one behind the wheel — will make their way from Italy to China.

Along the way, they’ll have to transverse twisty mountain roads, overcome harsh Siberian weather, and fight through dense city traffic. Eventually, if all goes well, the vans will arrive in Shanghai by October.  They say that this is perfectly safe, since each van “will work in tandem with a manned leader van that will drive ahead and give its driverless counterpart cues on where it’s going next.” This is only the beginning. It won’t be long before Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be sent from the future to save John Connor.

[Gizmodo via NPR]

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You know when you play most racing and driving video games you have that option of switching through various different viewing perspectives? In general, it seems easier to use the “out of the car” viewpoint where the camera is placed just behind the car. Apparently this does not translate in to real life.

What you see here is a specialized rig meant to simulate the video game experience, but it uses a real vehicle. Seeing things from a third-person perspective actually makes driving quite a bit more difficult for the average person, despite the opposite being true in a video game environment.

Who would have known? I guess I can’t really rely on computer assistance to “rubber band” me to the front of rush hour either? And my car won’t miraculously repair itself at the end of a long drive on the highway? Naturally, you shouldn’t try to recreate this stunt on your own as they used professionals on a closed course, but it is still an interesting experiment nonetheless.

The post Real truck driven like third-person video game, not so easy after all appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Transonic Combustion’s new fuel-injection technology used in the sports car above weighs close to the Toyota Prius hybrid and has similar aerodynamics. Running on gasoline alone, with no hybrid-assist system, it outperforms the Prius in fuel efficiency. Photo: Transonic Combustion

There was an era when muscle cars and other high performance vehicles ruled the road. If you had one, you were appreciated for your good taste.  If you drive one today, you may be frowned upon for being a green hater, but there usually is a bit of envy under those patchouli smelling dreadlocks.

The hybrid cars on the market today are oh so cute and economical, but they sure take all the fun out of owning an automobile.  A savior has been born and it’s name is Transonic Combustion. The company has developed a fuel injection system that can achieve 64 miles per gallon – a 50% fuel efficiency increase in gasoline engines when compared to a Hybrid, without castrating it.

To test the fuel injection system two vehicles were chosen – the Toyota Prius Hybrid and a sports car with the same aerodynamics and architecture as the Prius. Guess who came out on top in terms of better gas mileage. Not the Prius. The so called gas guzzling sports car with the new fuel injection system came out on top.

Here’s a bit of the science behind it. Gasoline burns better hot, after it is heated and pressurized, its then injected into the combustion chamber which places its elements in a “super critical state.”  This makes the fuel burn cleaner for the environment and combust faster in the chamber.

There is no spark to ignite the fuel because the fluid mixes immediately with air and the heat is enough to get it to combust. The maximum amount of energy is converted into mechanical movement precisely when the piston reaches the optimum point, presto, ignition happens!

You may be puzzled by how different engine loads will affect the fuel injection system. Transonic is a step ahead again, with software that will customize the engine load according to specifications required.

Everything is at in the test stage right now; the technology is expected to be put in production cars by 2014.  So keep driving your hybrid and park that gas guzzling beast back in the garage for the time being. If you ever crave the need to drive a high performance car without damaging the earth and your wallet, simulators are your friend for now.

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