You know how this goes–you’re out tailgating and someone brings out one of those awesome beer coolers or electric grills or what have you, and it’d be a great idea except no one knows where to plug it in.  Yeah, sure, you could hook it to your car’s cigarette lighter, but that could wear down the battery.

But now, that’s not even a problem with the 400 Watt Power Dome, a generator that fits in your car trunk.

Granted, four hundred watts is not a lot of juice.  It will, however, run a TV for five hours or a PS2 for eight on a full charge.  And, if you need more continuous power than a charge will carry, you can plug this into your cigarette lighter and, while running your car, run power through the Power Dome and use it like a giant inverter. You’ll have power until you run out of gas.

It’s a pretty nifty idea, and should really put a punch in campouts or tailgating.

Tags: 400 watt Power Dome, car trunk, generator, inverter, power dome, tailgating

I’m sure you are quite familiar with Mythbusters, the show where Adam and Jamie try to prove something, usually by blowing something up. This time, they were trying to prove that covering a car with golf ball-like dimples gives a car better gas mileage. I honestly don’t remember that being a myth per se, but their Ford Taurus with dimpled modeling clay achieved a better gas mileage by 3 miles per gallon. Not bad.

Source

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You might well think that totally winterizing your vehicle is basically limited to keeping the antifreeze topped off and keeping the battery charged.

If AAA is to believed, and let’s face it, we’re talking about Triple A here so they probably ARE, then there’s a whole lot more that we’re all overlooking.

Here’s a partial list of things you should be doing to winterize your vehicles.

Check your tire pressure. Cold weather months can do strange things to tire pressure, so if you’re not already giving your tires a once-over, now would be a good time to start.

Check your windshield washer fluid levels. Failing to do this will either risk getting your windshield splattered with unremovable mud, salt and other winter effluvia or, worse, giving water a place to condense, freezing up the reservoir and leaving it unusable until it melts.

Install winter wiper blades. If you don’t already have a good pair of all-season blades, consider getting a set for winter driving.  You’ll be driving into a lot more stuff on your windshield, and not just snow, either–there’ll be ice, frost, and frozen road dirt kicked up by passing semis.

These are just three steps you can take to help ensure your car will get through cold winter driving and get you where you need to be.

Tags: aaa, tire pressure, triple a, Winter, Winter Driving, winterizing

That’s the question that Domino’s Pizza is asking with its incredible limited-time deal, an unlimited number of one topping large pizzas for just $5.99 a pizza.

The deal is limited to this week only, and Domino’s advertises that the deal is not specifically unlimited, but patrons will be cut off after a daily order of two hundred and fifty six larges.  Naturally, no one in their right mind is going to shell out more than twenty five grand at a swoop for pizza, but still, the limit is sufficiently monstrous as to not truly be a limit.  In fact, Domino’s is running its advertising to reflect this.  Here’s a snippet from their newest ad:

… telling you that your trunk has a carryout capacity of 51 large pizzas for a sub-compact, 88 large pizzas for a sedan or 149 large pizzas for an SUV.

I never really thought about that before, and frankly, I’m not in a mood to see if I can get fifty-odd large pizzas into my car trunk. But considering that it would cost around three hundred bucks, it might be interesting to try, and I bet they’d freeze pretty well.

Tags: car trunk, customer appreciation week, Domino's pizza, large pizza, rear trunk, trunk storage

From a press release issued only hours ago:

“Nothing’s more frustrating than sitting in your car, stuck in traffic, watching the clock knowing that you’re going to be late and there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Bryan Mistele, president and CEO, INRIX. “INRIX TRAFFIC! is the only traffic app available for mobile phones that empowers drivers to improve their daily commutes knowing they can rely on us to provide them with the insight they need for the roads they care about most.”

If that’s not one of the better product ideas I’ve heard lately, I’m not sure what’d qualify.  We all love GPS with its ability to tell us where we need to get to, but it’s not always the greatest at telling us what roads are so spectacularly blocked with traffic or road construction that they’re basically impassable.  And radio news updates are only sporadic at best.  So what better than a mobile phone operation to tell us, up to the second, where best not to travel if we want to get anywhere in a hurry?

Life is, sadly, all about speed these days, so anything that gives me an edge in speed is welcome in my car any day.

Tags: INRIX, lane closures, mobile app, press release, road closures, traffic, traffic report

You’ve got to hand it to the head of Pininfarina, a plucky, can-do sort of Italian car company (which sounds something like an oxymoron given that Fiat is just an acronym meaning Fix It Again, Tony) that’s convinced that, despite its horrendous economic troubles, it will manage to get the Bluecar out to market by 2011, meaning that their electric car’s design is not merely a concept car, but rather a market vehicle.

Just to give you a quick rundown on the car, it offers lithium metal polymer batteries for power giving it a range of about 150 miles. Plus, the car can also gather fuel from brake presses and directly from sunlight thanks to a combination of reactive braking systems and some roof mounted solar panels.

It’s a worthwhile goal for Peninfarina, and hopefully it can manage to bring it off.  Video of the Bluecar is directly below, so enjoy it.

Tags: electric car, Peninfarina, regenerative braking, roof-mounted solar, solar

You remember that old cartoon, Inspector Gadget? How Dr. Claw’s car could retract its wheels, extend a set of wings and suddenly start flying?  I’ve actually got video of said flying car at the bottom of this page.

Butf you’ve got two hundred thousand dollars handy to just burn outright on a car, then you may want to know about a new brand of flying car that was just developed at MIT.

You’ll also need a sport pilot license in order to fly this beast, which can convert from a car to a plane, much like Dr. Claw’s, in under thirty seconds. It can drive at normal highway speeds and achieve an airspeed of a hundred and fifteen miles per hour.

I can’t help but think this is awesome, and not just because I grew up with Gadget and Dr. Claw, either.  The thought of being able to suddenly fly away is a thrilling one indeed, but something would have to be done to keep criminals from using this as a getaway vehicle of choice.

Just like Dr. Claw.

Tags: flying car, Flying cars, Inspector Gadget, MIT, sport pilot's license

Reports are emerging that say IBM, and the Battery 500 team, is looking to develop a 500-mile lithium-air battery pack for use in future vehicles.

According to AutoBlogGreen this lithium-air technology uses “lithium anodes electrochemically coupled to atmospheric oxygen through an air cathode” making for an extremely energy dense battery. In fact, IBM reportedly said these batteries could hold up to 10 times more energy than your regular, lithium ion battery.

Will they succeed? Let’s hope so because 500 miles on a single charge is definitely something I’m interested in.

Tags: battery 500, IBM, lithium ion, Lithium-Air

It was recently made known that Panasonic is working closley with Toyota to produce lithium ion batteries for cars that will be tremendously cheaper to produce than larger celled batteries.

The reason these Panasonic produced batteries would include lithium ion cells found in typical laptop batteries. However, Panasonic has reportedly come up with a new method of connecting said cells that will give them the same capacity of larger cells but cost a hell of a lot less to produce.

Let’s hope this technology goes into use sooner rather than later.

Read (Reuters)

Tags: cells, laptop batteries, lithium ion, Panasonic, Toyota

Recent reports have surfaced that suggest Mazda is currently on the market for funding to the tune of $1.1 billion to help speed up their hybrid vehicle development.

To secure this funding Mazda will be issuing 96.8 million treasure shares and 315.2 million new shares and then reinvest the collected money back into their company. In addition to hybrid development, Mazda will be looking at other environmentally friendly technologies to help power their cars and get back into the green movement game.

Will it work? Only time will tell.

Read (Reuters)

Tags: development, funding, hybrid, Mazda

I got a look at this little sucker recently and it’s the stuff of all my science fiction dreams.  Well, at least most of them–it can’t hover and it doesn’t come standard with particle beam weaponry, but still!

It’s called Project Puma, short for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, and for urbanites it may well be the next best thing to driving a car.

It’s produced as a partnership between GM and Segway, and is described as a “small, nimble, electric vehicle” that looks a LOT like an enclosed Segway.

Basically, if I’m interpreting this right, it’s a car pod.  A tiny little electric vehicle that acts like a car.  Now, I can see a LOT of appeal in something like this.  You know what it’s like to have to go just a couple miles to go somewhere like the post office or the grocery store, and you think, what’s the point in taking the whole car?  But you can’t WALK, or even bike there because it’s just a bit too far for that.  This is where some people think moped, but that’s still a gas engine.

Problems?  You betcha–I can’t imagine this thing doing well in winter for a panoply of reasons, not least of them those two wheels on icy slush or in high winds.  Even if traction isn’t an issue, an unheated cab sure would be.

But hopefully they can iron out the kinks and get these to market, inexpensively.  I’d sure like to try one.

Tags: car pod, electric vehicle, GM, Project Puma, Segway

One problem with electric cars is the fact that their engine is so silent. And we definitely need a car to make plenty of noise, or at least just enough so people hear them passing by at all times. It’s basically a safety issue which is taken seriously by car manufacturers. That’s exactly the case with Nissan. It looks like its engineers have come up with an unique sound for the engine of their next electric car, the Leaf. Are you ready for this? Nissan electric cars will sound like the cars in Bladerunner. Noise and vibration expert, Toshiyuki Tabata says:

We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic. We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.

So there you have it folks! If you’re going to get a Leaf then you’d better get used to the new engine noise. The sound will start when you start your car and it will be automatically turned off at around 12mph. Apparently that’s when tire noise is loud enough for pedestrians to hear it!

via Nissan

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Back in January, we were talking about the new line of tires from Yokohama, the E-Spec line, that contains the strange addition of orange oil.  But some new details on the E-Spec line have been released, so here’s an update.

As it turns out, the tread actually lasts longer when the tires are made with orange oil.   The tires also get ten percent less rolling resistance than tires made without orange oil,  and the inner liner actually weighs under one pound, cutting down on the amount of weight carried.

Plus, the new liner actually has better air retention than the ordinary, meaning the tires hold pressure longer and in turn give, again, better mileage.

There is one downside in the additional news; the E-Spec tires are expected to cost between ten and twenty percent more per tire.

Yokohama believes that eventually all tires will be made with orange oil, which is a smart idea in my book, especially given all those benefits.

Tags: E-Spec, orange oil, rubber, tires, yokohama

It looks like Toshiba is ready to improve our whole driving experience while adding some much needed safety to driving. The company has developed a new pedestrian detection technology which will warn you whenever there are people near your vehicle. The new technology has more than 99% accuracy during the day so it sound pretty interesting already.

How does it work? Well the system uses two cameras mounted on the car and that’s how it recognizes people and objects. Unfortunately this new tech will be available by 2011 or 2012 so we have plenty of time to learn more about such safety systems!

via Nikkei

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We are all aware that the search for alternative fuel for use by cars these days is growing rampant and apparently we have seen a lot of them. Leading the pack are biodiesels and ethanol but as criticized before, the matter of how the car engine would react is still up in the air.

The manufacturers claim that they will not have any effect and even improve car performance. However, as far as the Philippines Petron Corporation is concerned, they are harmful and may lead to damaged car engines.

The Ethanol gasoline E10 is the alternative fuel being hit, said to be highly corrosive. The E10 fuel is still being sold locally in the Philippines and reports of damaged car engines have been relayed. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been urged of the matter and nothing has been divulged as of yet.

The E10 damages a car’s gas tank, fuel pump, carburetor and fuel injector according to Petron Corp. Chairman Ramon S. Ang. The problem, he said, was that the government did not specify that there should be a dehydrator to remove the water content, which is what makes the ethanol-blended gasoline (E10) highly corrosive.

(Source) Philippine Daily Inquirer

Tags: alternative fuel, car engine, car engines, car performance, carburetor, damaged car, dehydrator, e10 ethanol, e10 fuel, ethanol blended gasoline, ethanol gas, ethanol gasoline, fuel injector, fuel pump, gas tank, petron corp, petron corporation, philippine daily inquirer, tank fuel, water content