Nissan and other makers are beginning to view electric cars not as just as transportation, but as mobile energy-storage units that can provide emergency power and take stress off electrical grids.
This month the carmaker will begin testing its Leaf-To-Home energy station in Japan, testing the ability of electric cars to provide temporary electrical power to buildings in real-world circumstances.
MORE: Nissan Leaf-To-Home Power Station: Will It Make It To U.S.?
The station converts high-voltage direct current from a Leaf's lithium-ion battery pack into the 100-volt alternating current used by homes in Japan.
For the test, Leaf plug-in cars will be stationed at Nissan dealerships, where they will be used to provide power for lighting during regular business hours.
Two or three tests--taking about three hours each--will be conducted each month between now and January 2015.
The Leaf-To-Home unit is one part of Japan's "demand response" energy policy, instituted after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the country in 2011.
Under the demand response scheme, utilities ask consumers to limit energy use during times of peak demand.
Normally, residents comply by turning down air conditioning or shutting off lights. But Nissan believes the Leaf-To-Home system could allow them to power their homes from an electric-car battery instead during those periods, or during emergencies when power grids are completely offline.
ALSO SEE: Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyota Turn Electric Cars Into Backup Batteries
This idea was put into practice a few times in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, but most electric cars still lack the battery capacity to provide power for long periods of time.
Bigger packs, better for U.S.?
So just as bigger battery packs are needed to increase range, they'll likely also be needed to make electric cars a viable source of backup power, at least in the U.S.
U.S. homes use roughly three times as much energy per day as do Japanese homes.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts average U.S. consumption at 32 kWh a day—though it varies regionally, with Tennessee residents using more than two and a half times as much as Maine residents.
The figure for a Japanese household is just 10 kilowatt-hours, or half the capacity of a fully-charged Leaf battery pack.
Still, many electric-car owners are aware of and like the concept of using their vehicles for emergency backup power during outages.
The potential to relieve stress on the grid has also attracted some interest from U.S. utilities.
NRG--which operates the eVgo network of charging stations--has discussed using electric cars to balance the grid by temporarily storing excess electricity, and discharging it during periods of high demand.
The company is participating in a test program operated by the University of Delaware, which has a small fleet of electric cars equipped to discharge power back into the grid.
_______________________________________________
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DEERFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A woman who police say drove through the wall of a Franklin County restaurant as people were having breakfast, will be charged with driving under the influence.
Photos: Car crashed through Deerfield restaurant
Deerfield Police Chief John Paciorek told 22News that the woman drove her car through the side of Jerry's Place on North Main Street in South Deerfield at around 5:55 A.M. He says that a father and son were sitting at the counter when the car crashed into the building. They suffered minor injuries, and did not have to be taken to the hospital.
The driver of the car, Kristy N. Lake of Northfield, was taken to Baystate Franklin Medical Center, where Paciorek says she was placed under arrest for OUI. She is expected to recover from her injuries, but the chief says she is most likely to receive bail at the hospital, and her arraignment will likely be held on Friday or Monday. She is being charged with OUI-Liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, failure to inspect a motor vehicle, and failure to stop for a stop sign.
Joyce Deskabich had just left the restaurant minutes before the accident. "Its a lot worse than I thought it would be. I mean I'm just really shocked. So this will be quite sometime before they get this going," Deskabich said.
And that disruption to business has owner Dagrosa shaken up. "I'm devastated. I'm not one to sit around and do nothing, but I'm sure I'll be out for at least a week I'm imagining, by the time I get a hold of some people and get the whole thing cleaned up professionally," Dagrosa said.
The owner of the building and town's building inspector are assessed the damage and clean up crews were there early Thursday to begin the repairs.
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BAY SHORE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — A woman thought she was playing it safe by waiting for a tow truck in her car, but where she parked ended up making the difference between life and death.
As CBS2's Hazel Sanchez reported, Jessica Ortiz was a beautiful 21-year-old college student with a bright future. But Ortiz was killed in a tragic accident in Bay Shore, Long Island Wednesday afternoon while sitting in her parked car.
She was pulled over on the shoulder of the Sunrise Highway for a flat tire.
"As the tow truck operator began to assist her, the second vehicle swerved out of the lane of traffic onto the shoulder, hitting Ms. Ortiz's vehicle and forcing that vehicle into the tow truck," said Suffolk County police Detective Lt. Edward Reilly.
The 51-year-old man driving the Chevrolet Caprice that slammed into Ortiz's vehicle was critically injured, but survived. Police on Thursday did not know what caused him to veer off the highway.
Ortiz was parked on the shoulder right before the mouth of an on-ramp. She had three busy lanes of the Sunrise Highway on her left, and the on-ramp and two service road lanes on her right.
She chose to stay in her car to wait for help to arrive.
"Where she was, literally stuck in the middle of lanes of traffic, the more safe choice she had was to stay with her car — and that's what she did," Reilly said.
Robert Sinclair from AAA said it is best for people to drive slowly on a flat tire until they reach a safe place off a highway.
"You have to play it by ear," Sinclair said. "Every circumstance is different."
Sinclair had some advice for drivers who must pull over on the shoulder.
"You get out of the vehicle, and you stay to the rear of the vehicle — as much as 60 feet to the rear of the vehicle — so that oncoming traffic can see you; can warn them that somebody might be there," Sinclair said.
On Thursday afternoon, yellow caution tape still marked the place where Ortiz would have had to exit her car. It was a dangerous position no matter what the choice.
As of Thursday afternoon, the 51-year-old surviving driver remained hospitalized. Police said as of Thursday, there was no evidence that he was driving while impaired.
The investigation continued late Thursday.
Check Out These Other Stories From CBSNewYork.com:
Welcome to Ars UNITE, our week-long virtual conference on the ways that innovation brings unusual pairings together. Today, a look at the slow roll to autonomous cars. Join us this afternoon (3pm ET) for a live discussion on the topic with article author Jonathan Gitlin and his expert guests; your comments and questions are welcome.
Preparing for the part-time self-driving car
[ COUNTDOWN ]
Self-driving AI cars have been a staple in popular culture for some time—any child of the 1980s will fondly remember both the Autobots and Knight Rider's KITT—but consider them to be science fiction no longer. Within the next five years, you'll be able to buy a car that can drive itself (and you) down the highway, although transforming into a Decepticon-battling robot or crime-fighter may take a while longer. As one might expect, the journey to fully automated self-driving cars will be one of degrees.
Here in the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has created five categories of autonomous cars. The most basic of these are level zero, which might include your vehicle if it doesn't have a system like electronic stability control. Fully autonomous cars, which can complete their journeys with no human control beyond choosing the destination, are categorized as level four. While level fours are still some way off, level three autonomous cars, which will be able to self-drive under certain conditions (say, an HOV lane during rush hour), are much closer than one might think.
A couple of weeks ago, Tesla wooed its fan base with the news that soon, its cars will be able to drive themselves. But the autonomous car may be one of the company's least innovative moves yet. Those who've been watching the industry closely will know that Mercedes, Volvo, Audi, and others have similar products waiting in the wings, ready to hit the streets as soon as the rules and regulations fall into place.
Enlarge / Mercedes-Benz has been testing its autonomous driving system, Intelligent Drive, in an S-Class.
Mercedes-Benz
First steps
It all used to be so simple. A car was just a car; a mechanical contraption with an engine and wheels, controlled by a human being with a combination of pedals, levers, and wheel. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication meant using turn signals or perhaps gesticulating rudely out the window to indicate displeasure at being cut off in traffic. However as semiconductors became cheaper, faster, and more rugged, they attracted the attention of the auto industry. Electronics began to infiltrate our cars, with fuel injection replacing carburetors in the name of performance and efficiency, for example, and anti-lock brakes (ABS) being added for safety.
By 1995, electronic stability control (ESC) systems started to appear, Mercedes-Benz leading the way with its flagship S-Class. Cars equipped with ESC are constantly monitoring their driver's steering inputs and comparing them to the direction the vehicle is headed. If those two variables start to diverge beyond certain limits (because the car is either under- or oversteering), ESC will apply the brakes to individual wheels to bring things back under control. Stability control systems proved so effective at reducing both crashes and injuries that they became mandatory for any car sold in the US or EU by the end of 2011.
Enlarge
Volvo
The mandate in effect made ABS and traction control standard features, too. So any car one might buy today will not only constantly be monitoring both its direction and where it's heading, but also whether an individual wheel is spinning too much (because of a loss of grip) or even not at all (locked by a brake). These various safety aids aren't sufficient for self-driving cars. They only take control during emergencies to slow a vehicle, but with the advent of drive-by-wire throttles and steering—something we explored recently—all that remains is for the vehicle to be able to 'see' the environment around it and have a 'brain' fast enough to make sense of that data to control where it goes. No biggie.
Eyes and ears
As it turns out, most of the technology needed for a car to sense the world around it already exists. Adaptive cruise control—as fitted to the Audi A8, for example—uses a mix of optical, radar, and ultrasonic sensors that keep a car from veering out of its lane and, by constantly checking the range to other vehicles, from hitting any of them. Image recognition software will even detect speed limits on road signs and alert the driver. All of this would seem like science fiction even a decade ago, but it really is just the beginning. Quite soon, those sensors will do more than just tell your car what's around it, thanks to what's known as V2V.
Ars IT Editor Sean Gallagher went for a ride in a V2V-enabled Ford at CES.
As Ars' Sean Gallagher found out early this year, V2V-enabled cars can communicate to each other, warning of upcoming road hazards. V2V is being built atop 802.11p, a Wi-Fi standard that uses 75 MHz of the spectrum centered on 5.9 GHz. 802.11p allows almost instant network connections and can broadcast messages without establishing a network connection first, both of which are extremely desirable when thinking about the safety aspects of V2V. After all, it's no good telling another car about a road hazard if you need to spend precious seconds handshaking. V2V-enabled cars will be able to quite literally see around corners, since the technology doesn't require line of sight.
The cloud
But wait, there's more, and it's coming from the cloud. More and more cars are coming equipped with LTE data connections, mainly in response to consumer demand for streaming media services. Passenger entertainment may seem trivial to some, but persistent data connections also enable in-car navigation systems to get a lot smarter. I'm probably not alone, for example, in ditching either a standalone or built-in GPS unit in favor of a smartphone app like Google Maps or Waze. And if you're like me, you probably did it for the same reason: the smartphone apps are able to provide layers of real-time data (like traffic) on top of the cartography. Data-enabled cars mean we can ditch the smartphone holders and go back to using that onboard navigation system. That navigation data will also allow the car to know where it is in the world and, to a certain extent, what it's likely to encounter.
Enlarge / Nokia is using sensor-equipped cars to create high-resolution maps.
Nokia HERE
That kind of map data is sufficiently informative for human drivers to use while they navigate, but even combined with GPS it's not going to be accurate enough for a self-driving car (civilian GPS accuracy only has a 95-percent confidence interval of 7.8 meters). No, that's going to require an extremely high-resolution map, and that map will need to be accurate, which means constantly updating. Writing for Slate, Lee Gomes identified this as a problem for Google, but other companies, particularly Nokia, think they might have this one licked.
Nokia's HERE platform begins by mapping streets in the conventional 21st century way—with a small fleet of sensor- and GPS-equipped mapping vehicles, which it uses to create an HD map that's machine (but not human) readable. But in addition to providing location data to HERE-enabled cars, Nokia will leverage them to continually update that map in near-real time. Those same cars will send sensor data about the road—things like the position of road lane markers accurate to a few centimeters—resulting in an always up-to-date map.
Nokia also has other plans for using crowdsourced data to improve the self-driving car. We recently spoke with HERE's head of Automotive Cloud Services, Vladimir Boroditsky, who told Ars the company plans to use crowdsourced data from connected cars to create data sets of driving behavior that the company can use to train car software how to drive without terrifying or aggravating humans along for the ride. Compared to the alternative, it certainly sounds like an efficient solution.
How far off are we talking?
As one might expect, car makers have been working with tech industry stalwarts like Qualcomm and Nvidia to build the kinds of integrated systems that allow a car to make sense of its environment and then act on it. Kanwalinder Singh, a senior vice president with Qualcomm, told Ars that's an area where his company, and its Snapdragon processor, excels. "As more sensors get added, you need massive sensor fusion. It's a highly intensive problem as the data needs to be crunched very rapidly." Meanwhile, Nvidia's Tegra K1 is the brains behind both Audi's and Tesla's self-driving vehicles.
If all of this is starting to sound like vaporware, think again. Mercedes-Benz has been testing Bertha, a self-driving S-Class, on the roads of California for some months now. Meanwhile over in Sweden, Volvo has been demoing a self-driving S60 sedan. Then there's Tesla, which showed off its self-driving autopilot feature earlier this month, along with the information that every Tesla Model S on the road already has the necessary hardware on board.
Perhaps predictably, our favorite self-driving car demonstration thus far involved a race track. Less than two weeks ago, an Audi RS7 entertained the crowds at the final round of the DTM (think German NASCAR) with hot laps of the Hockenheim track. The car lapped the track in just over two minutes, hitting a top speed of 149 mph without a human in control.
Finally, Google has also shown the world its idea of a self-driving car, although it's one that was radically different, lacking any driver controls like a steering wheel or pedals. It's interesting to note that Google's car still requires a roof-mounted camera pod. By comparison, those Teslas, Audis, Mercedes, and Volvos look almost indistinguishable from their less-intelligent siblings.
All of the cars described above are capable of driving to NHTSA's level three. The agency defines level three autonomous cars as vehicles that "enable the driver to cede full control of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions and in those conditions to rely heavily on the vehicle to monitor for changes in those conditions requiring transition back to driver control." In contrast to a car fitted with adaptive cruise control (level 2), the driver won't need to constantly monitor road conditions. However, when Forbes went for a ride in a self-driving Audi, it reported that the car monitored the driver's eyes, sounding alerts and then coming to a halt if they were closed for too long. Don't expect to be able to sleep in your commute just yet.
According to Anders Eugensson, Volvo's director of government affairs, the technology is fairly mature, and the Swedish company plans to have 100 test cars on the road in 2017. "It is more a matter of how to apply the technologies and properly link them up with the infrastructure. What is important is also to understand how this is working together with non self-driving vehicles and the acceptances of other road users. They also have to match the expectations of the end customers." Level three self-driving Volvos should be on sale early in the next decade, he said.
Audi is even more optimistic, telling Ars it expects to have level 3 autonomous cars on sale in the US by 2017. Brad Stertz, an Audi spokesman, said the company's confidence was down to computing power. "We announced our centralized driver assistance processor or zFAS would employ the NVIDIA K1 supercomputer on a chip announced at CES 2014. Our piloted driving pre-development work is being done in parallel with the development of the 192-core K1 chip to bring this technology out sooner."
Is that legal?
Both of those predictions came with a big regulatory caveat. Cars won't be driving themselves anywhere until it's legal for them to do so. This, rather than the technology, will really determine precisely when you can go out and buy a car that drives itself. Eugensson told Ars that the liability issues have to be acceptable to their customers, and lawmakers will have to cooperate to avoid a regulatory patchwork. Sertz also pointed out the need for regulatory consistency, but he raised another issue. "One problem with regulations is that they are often considered and drafted from the perspective of fully autonomous driving capabilities, and every innovator is still a long way from reaching that level of capability. The concern then is that laws are written in a highly restrictive way that addresses a far into the future state, while slowing progress on driver assistance technologies that are the foundation for fully automated driving."
Enlarge / The world's fastest robot car.
Audi
In the absence of either US-wide federal, or Europe-wide EU regulations, individual states (in the US) and member nations (in the EU) have started the ball rolling. California started issuing licenses for driverless test cars earlier this year, and the UK intends to follow suit in January 2015. Interestingly, neither the EU nor California seem set to allow Google's steering-wheel free car onto the road any time soon. But even once the legal issues are worked out, it will still be quite some years before completely autonomous door-to-door journeys become possible. Qualcomm's Singh told Ars that we should expect dedicated highway lanes first. "[Self driving] is complex enough on a highway, but it increases in difficulty as the setting becomes more urban and congested," he said. No one we talked with thought that self-driving cars would be ready to tackle a dense urban environment (say, an intersection in downtown Mumbai) for at least a decade. Rest assured, it's ! a topic that automakers (and Cars Technica) will be revisiting frequently between now and then. But we're well on our way traveling down the road toward robot cars.
DEERFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A woman who police say drove through the wall of a Franklin County restaurant as people were having breakfast, will be charged with driving under the influence.
Photos: Car crashed through Deerfield restaurant
Deerfield Police Chief John Paciorek told 22News that the woman drove her car through the side of Jerry's Place on North Main Street in South Deerfield at around 5:55 A.M. He says that a father and son were sitting at the counter when the car crashed into the building. They suffered minor injuries, and did not have to be taken to the hospital.
The driver of the car, Kristy N. Lake of Northfield, was taken to Baystate Franklin Medical Center, where Paciorek says she was placed under arrest for OUI. She is expected to recover from her injuries, but the chief says she is most likely to receive bail at the hospital, and her arraignment will likely be held on Friday or Monday. She is being charged with OUI-Liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, failure to inspect a motor vehicle, and failure to stop for a stop sign.
The owners of the restaurant and of the building are currently assessing the damage, and figuring out what to do next.
Aaron Vays, one of two men killed in a crash over the weekend after attending a car show at the Meadowlands.Facebook
WOODBURY, N.Y. — Two men on their way home from a car show at the Meadowlands Saturday night were found dead in a car at the bottom of embankment on Monday, New York State Police said.
Aaron Vays, 25 and Evan Finell, 23, both of Monroe, N.Y. hadn't been heard from for more than 24 hours after stopping for cigarettes and gas on Route 17 in Ramsey early Sunday, according to officials.
Authorities located the 2003 Dodge Viper on Monday under a tree off Ninninger Road in Woodbury following a search of roads leading from Bergen County to Orange County, N.Y. A New York State Police helicopter was also used, spokesman Steven Nevel said in a release.
Police are investigating the cause of the crash.
Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The Atlanta metropolitan area has become the fastest growing market for electric cars in the United States. Last March, the state of Georgia had a grand total of 1,469 registered electric vehicles. 12 months later that number grew to 10,482, a whopping 614 percent increase.
So why are electric cars becoming so popular in Georgia? Several factors are contributing to the boom, with the state's $5,000 tax credit the most obvious. Atlanta is spread out over a massive area and the vast majority of people commute to work alone by car. Unsurprisingly, that results in widespread gridlock.
If you own an electric car in Atlanta, you can get around those traffic problems through the use of HOV lanes as well as avoiding HOT tolls. That's on top of all the other savings electric cars afford their drivers, meaning that the dollars pile up after that initial investment. Unsurprisingly, electric cars are becoming increasingly attractive.
California is still the runaway leader in electric car ownership in the United States. The Golden State boasts an impressive 170 percent growth rate of its own with the number of registered vehicles surpassing 77,000 in March 2014.
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Detroit Electric giving a look at the rear end of what it considers the final version of its SP:01 battery-fueled electric sports car.
The car will be somewhat similar to the Tesla Roadster no longer in production. Both are pure battery-power two-seaters based on Lotus designs. Detroit Electric's founder is former Lotus executive Albert Lam, former Group CEO of the Lotus Engineering Group and Executive Director of Lotus Cars of England.
Detroit Electric says its car will not be a roadster -- open car -- but rather a hatchback for better aerodynamics, longer range, higher speed.
Production is to begin late this year, and sales are to begin early next year in Asia, Europe and North America. No price has been announced.
The company was founded in 2008 and named after an electric car company that was successful in the early 1900s. It said in March 2013 that it would build as many as 2,500 sports cars a year in Michigan, but it didn't say exactly where.
Now the plan is to build all the cars in a new, dedicated Detroit Electric production facility in Leamington Spa, England, beginning late this year.
It also plans a European headquarters in Houten, Netherlands, where the company has recruited a new team to manage the brand's sales and marketing, as well as customer service in the region.
The company's h.q. remains on the 18th floor of the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit, and that site also becomes the financial center and will oversee North American activities.
The company claims that its lightweight, limited-edition SP:01 will be the world's fastest production electric sports car: top speed, 155 mph; 0-60 mph, 3.7 seconds. It hasn't given a driving range between battery recharges.
The changes since the 2013 Shanghai showing include a fastback design with smoother rooofline, a rear spoiler and heating-cooling system improvements.
The vehicle's battery packs have been clad in a protective composite casing which forms an integral part of the vehicle's structure and makes the car stiffer. It also helps protect the batteries in a crash.
Jerry Chung, design chief at Detroit Electric, said: "The final design of SP:01 incorporates signature Detroit Electric design DNA, carried over from the prototype model we revealed last year. Coupled with many motorsport visual cues, the new fastback design, bold face and sharp contours evoke the company's vision of pure electric performance."
Aaron Vays, one of two men killed in a crash over the weekend after attending a car show at the Meadowlands.Facebook
WOODBURY, N.Y. — Two men on their way home from a car show at the Meadowlands Saturday night were found dead in a car at the bottom of embankment on Monday, New York State Police said.
Aaron Vays, 25 and Evan Finell, 23, both of Monroe, N.Y. hadn't been heard from for more than 24 hours after stopping for cigarettes and gas on Route 17 in Ramsey early Sunday, according to officials.
Authorities located the 2003 Dodge Viper on Monday under a tree off Ninninger Road in Woodbury following a search of roads leading from Bergen County to Orange County, N.Y. A New York State Police helicopter was also used, spokesman Steven Nevel said in a release.
Police are investigating the cause of the crash.
Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Like this topic? You may also like these photo galleries:
Show Thumbnails
Show Captions
Last SlideNext Slide
Detroit Electric giving a look at the rear end of what it considers the final version of its SP:01 battery-fueled electric sports car.
The car will be somewhat similar to the Tesla Roadster no longer in production. Both are pure battery-power two-seaters based on Lotus designs. Detroit Electric's founder is former Lotus executive Albert Lam, former Group CEO of the Lotus Engineering Group and Executive Director of Lotus Cars of England.
Detroit Electric says its car will not be a roadster -- open car -- but rather a hatchback for better aerodynamics, longer range, higher speed.
Production is to begin late this year, and sales are to begin early next year in Asia, Europe and North America. No price has been announced.
The company was founded in 2008 and named after an electric car company that was successful in the early 1900s. It said in March 2013 that it would build as many as 2,500 sports cars a year in Michigan, but it didn't say exactly where.
Now the plan is to build all the cars in a new, dedicated Detroit Electric production facility in Leamington Spa, England, beginning late this year.
It also plans a European headquarters in Houten, Netherlands, where the company has recruited a new team to manage the brand's sales and marketing, as well as customer service in the region.
The company's h.q. remains on the 18th floor of the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit, and that site also becomes the financial center and will oversee North American activities.
The company claims that its lightweight, limited-edition SP:01 will be the world's fastest production electric sports car: top speed, 155 mph; 0-60 mph, 3.7 seconds. It hasn't given a driving range between battery recharges.
The changes since the 2013 Shanghai showing include a fastback design with smoother rooofline, a rear spoiler and heating-cooling system improvements.
The vehicle's battery packs have been clad in a protective composite casing which forms an integral part of the vehicle's structure and makes the car stiffer. It also helps protect the batteries in a crash.
Jerry Chung, design chief at Detroit Electric, said: "The final design of SP:01 incorporates signature Detroit Electric design DNA, carried over from the prototype model we revealed last year. Coupled with many motorsport visual cues, the new fastback design, bold face and sharp contours evoke the company's vision of pure electric performance."
USA TODAY's Chris Woodyard takes a look at the six vehicles that Consumer Reports magazine says are giving their owners the most trouble /Sean Fujiwara
Video Transcript
Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate)
00:03 If reluctant to avoid a serious case of buyer's remorse 00:06 and influential consumer magazine says there's some cards you may want 00:09 to avoid at the moment. I'm Chris what did USA today 00:13! and consumer reports magazine has just listed the three cars and 00:17 three suvs. That place deadly blast in there and a listing 00:20 of most unreliable models. Why are owners having to keep bringing 00:25 back their cars to the dealers for repairs. Let's take a 00:28 look at some of them. Th! e Fiat 500 L is the 00:31 squared off version of the final little 500 sub compact. But 00:35 ouch Fiat may really stand for fix it again Tony after 00:39 all. Honors the plane a problem with you connect entertainment system 00:43 and the transm! ission. The Ford Fiesta is also a fun little 00:48 car but donors say there's nothing fun about its automatic transmission. 00:53 Then there's the Mercedes-Benz CLA. It's so popular that Mercedes is 00:57 having trouble keeping it stopped but owners say they're seeing trouble 01:01 with the engine the aria systems! and electrical. Plus they're pairing 01:05 squeaks and rattles something you'd never sitting countering a luxury car 01:09 as for suvs. Owners are complaining about the new Jeep Cherokee. 01:14 Never mind it's funky polarizing looks the issue here is bugs 01:18 in the new ninth speed transmission. And the four cylinder version 01:22 gets twice the number of complaints as the sex. The charities 01:25 larger sibling the Jeep Grand Cherokee as a new version of 01:29 the diesel engine. But the fuel system Ford is giving fits 01:32 to some honors. Lastly. N! issan Pathfinder is hugely popular as an 01:37 SUV but it got a new CBP transmission. And many owners 01:42 are less than thrilled. Models like the Mercedes CLA in the 01:45 Jeep Cherokee or new and that means there's issues to be 01:48! worked out. But these other guys what's their excuse for USA 01:53 today I'm Chris what you're.
Consumer Reports says infotainment systems appear to be the most troublesome feature in 2014 vehicles.
In fact, it considers them a "growing first-year reliability plague," referring to models in the first year after introduction or a redesign.
That conclusion is part of the results announced today of the publication's annual Auto Reliability Survey. The publication solicits replies from readers to a questionnaire about their cars and analyzes the results -- this year based on more than a million responses -- to predict the reliability of new vehicles by brand and model.
CR said the worst example of the infotainment phenomena in this year's crop of new models is the In Touch system in the InfinitiQ50 sedan.More than one in five owners said it didn't work right. That, combined with other reliability issues in the Infiniti QX60 SUV, pulled Infiniti's overall brand reliability ranking down 14 places to 20th -- the biggest drop of any of the 28 brands in the survey this year.
Electronic issues also can be a signal that the vehicle may have other problems, the magazine said.
"Infotainment system problems generally don't exist in a vacuum," said Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports. "A close look at the results suggests that cars with a lot of in-car electronic issues usually have plenty of other troubles, too."
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The survey is widely followed, but reliability isn't the only way to judge a car, says Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com. It is "one of many aspects that make up a car's total ownership experience," he says. And "it has to be considered among factors like purchase price, resale value, performance and fuel efficiency.
"Measuring reliability is also not a straightforward process," Brauer says, "because for some it means how many unexpected problems arise while for others it means satisfaction with the cupholders. Car shoppers should keep all of these factors in mind, rather than fixating on a single factor, when considering their next purchase."
According to CR, first-year models from Infiniti, Jeep, Fiat, Ram, Cadillac, Ford and Honda all have suffered significant rates of complaints due to infotainment bugs and glitches.
Of the 17 problem areas CR asks about in its survey, the category that includes in-car electronics generated more complaints from owners than any other category.
Common electronics issues identified in past CR surveys include unresponsive touch screens and a reluctance to pair phones. Those issues continue, CR said, and this year's results also showing growing problems with other aspects of infotainment systems, including multi-use controllers.
Infotainment is a hot item in today's cars and trucks and the word generally refers to electronic systems that can include links to the user's cellphone, connections for an iPod or other music device, built-in navigation, vehicle controls from climate to lighting and apps that provide other features, such as reminding you where you parked or whether you locked the doors.
The most modern not only pair a phone to the car without using a cord, but also let you control most of the car's and the phone's features via voice command and display the phone's features on the vehicle screen.
And as with the horsepower race of old, carmakers are rushing to be able to tout the most new features.
General Motors, for example, is trying to trump rivals by installing built-in 4GLTE connections and Wi-Fi in more and more models.
But being first to market has risks. Ford Motor was an infotainment pioneer, with its Microsoft-based Sync voice control system. But it was quite unreliable at first and knocked down Ford's reliability scores. Ford has hinted that it will replace the Microsoft system with other, unnamed software that it expects to be more dependable.
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Here are Consumer Reports' tally of predicted reliability by brand for 2015 models, and the best and worst individual models in this year's survey:
Rank (Rank last year), brand, worst model, best model
A scene from an Edmunds.com ad mocking haggling. Which never happens at car dealers. AdAge screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
The world has changed.
Lawyers no longer enjoy making money. Burglars just do it for the fun and will always return everything they've taken. And car dealers don't haggle.
I must confess that this last one I definitely didn't know. But the information emerges from an unholy spat that has occurred between certain auto dealers and car-shopping research site Edmunds.com.
The site prides itself on presenting post-haggle prices. I know this because, just now, I looked and the main headline on the home page read: "Get the post-haggle price."
Pressing hard on the logic button above my left eyebrow, I deduced that this was a contrast to, say, car dealers who enjoy befuddling the innocent and rubbing their hands with glee after winning yet another round of I Am Marvin Haggler.
Supporting this logic were amusing YouTube ads released by Edmunds. They showed a grocery store checkout clerk attempting to haggle with entirely real, innocent customers.
Yes, he even uses the phrase: "What would I have to do to get you to take these cans away today?" The cans were presumably full of something like tuna. The poor customers all look entirely bemused to the point of annoyance, something that never happens at car dealers.
The idea, of course, was to suggest that if you wanted to be free of such behavior you should rely on help from Edmunds.
There was one section of humanity that didn't find the ads funny. ! Oddly enough, it was car dealers.
As AdAge reports, ! some were so strangely direct about their complaints that Edmunds.com took the ads down. Its president Seth Berkovitz even declared that the ads had "missed the mark." He added that the ads "reinforced outdated stereotypes."
I find myself making involuntary gurgling noises when I read the objections of Jeff Wyler, CEO of Wyler Automotive Group in Cincinnati, Ohio. He told AdAge that he was removing his company's ads from Edmunds.
He explained: "Negotiating prices on cars has always been expected by the consumer and having it referred to as 'haggling' by a company that I am a customer of is insulting."
Oh, it's negotiating. It isn't haggling at all. Hell hath no fury like a car dealer insulted.
I have contacted Edmunds to ask whether the site didn't realize that haggling was no more. I also asked whether it now knows in which year haggling ceased.
I would like to commemorate the date. (I will update, should I hear, so that you can commemorate ! it too.)
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras, a 22-year-old slugger who was regarded as one of the majors' top prospects, died Sunday in a car accident in his native Dominican Republic.
Taveras was driving a 2014 Chevrolet Camaro at the time of the crash on a highway between the beaches of Sosua and Cabarete in Puerto Plata, about 215 miles north of the capital of Santo Domingo, said Col. Diego Pesqueira of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency.
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''He wasn't carrying documents at the time of the accident, but his body was identified by family members,'' Pesqueira said.
National police spokesman Jacobo Mateo Moquete said he was told by the mayor of Sosua that Taveras lost control of his vehicle and went off the road. Edilia Arvelo, 18, who was in the car with Taveras, also died in the accident, said Pesqueira.
Taveras made his major league debut this year. He hit .239 with three homers and 22 RBIs in 80 games for the NL Central champions.
''I simply can't believe it,'' Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said in a release. ''I first met Oscar when he was 16 years old and will forever remember him as a wonderful young man who was a gifted athlete with an infectious love for life who lived every day to the fullest.''
Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said the organization was ''stunned and deeply saddened'' by Taveras' death.
''Oscar was an amazing talent with a bright future who was taken from us well before his time,'' DeWitt said. ''Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends tonight.''
Taveras was a teenager when he signed with St. Louis as an international free agent in 2008. Before this season, Taveras was ranked as the No. 3 overall prospect by MLB.com and Baseball America, and had a.321 average over six minor league seasons.
He homered against the Giants' Yusmeiro Petit in his major league debut on May 31. He also had a big solo drive in the seventh inning of Game 2 in the NL Championship Series against San Francisco.
''All of us throughout Major League Baseball are in mourning this evening,'' baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in a release.
''Oscar, a young member of the baseball family, was full of promise and at the dawn of a wonderful career in our game, evident in his game-tying home run against the Giants exactly two weeks ago.''
It looked as if Taveras was headed to the majors in 2013, but he had surgery for a high right ankle sprain last August for an injury that did not respond to treatment. He then got off to a nice start at Triple-A Memphis this season, earning a promotion by batting .325 with seven homers in 49 games.
''Oscar had a very promising future, on and off the field, and this news is heartbreaking on many levels,'' Tony Clark, the leader of the players' association, said in a statement. ''It's never easy to lose a member of our fraternity, and to lose one so young is devastating news.''
Several of Taveras' Cardinals teammates took to Twitter to express their condolences.
''Last 30 minutes I've been sick to my stomach. Keep thinking about Oscar's big smile in the dugout whenever we made a big play/got a big hit,'' All-Star reliever Pat Neshek posted.
Rookie second baseman Kolten Wong tweeted: ''RIP you will be missed buddy.''
___
AP Sports Writer R.B. Fallstrom in St. Louis contributed to this report.
Courtesy of Ramos FamilyRylee Ramos, 8, was struck and killed by a car outside a Bronx elementary school.
A joyful 8-year-old girl who was "like sunshine" was killed outside her grade school Friday when a car jumped the sidewalk and rammed into a! group of people minutes after the dismissal bell rang, officials said.
The driver tried to run away, but she was restrained by a horrified witness as little Rylee Ramos lay dying amid other people with injuries on the sidewalk outside Public School 307.
"She was like sunshine," Rylee's heartbroken aunt Sandra Leon, 40, said, describing the wide-eyed girl as relatives gathered to mourn Friday night. "She had a beautiful smile. What do you do when you lose someone like her? I wouldn't wish this on any child... adult...anyone."
Rylee and her friend, Genesis Rodriguez, were only paces away from the school's front door along Eames Place in Kingsbridge Heights when a blue Honda Accord hopped the curb and hit them about 2:45 p.m. The 55-year-old woman behind the wheel then tried to drive forward but all that did was "hit more people," said Eliasser Lopez, 11. "It was something out of this world," Eliasser said of the horror.
When the driver finally stopped, Rylee was injured beyond saving, though some tried to give her CPR. The car hit the girl so hard it crushed one of her lungs, family members said.
"She kept going in and out," said Erskine Caldwell, who lives nearby.
"Her eyes were rolling up back in her head. She was foaming at the mouth and everybody was calling 911. It was really heartbreaking."
Paramedics rushed the third-grader to St. Barnabas Hospital, where she died.
New York Daily NewsAn 8-year-old girl was killed Friday when a car backed onto the sidewalk in front of a Bronx school and rammed into a group of pedestrians, authorities said.
Two women, ages 54 and 66, were taken to the same hospital with serious injuries. Both were expected to survive, authorities said.
Genesis, who is in the fourth grade, was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, along with two other women, ages 31 and 26, according to authorities.
Police said a total of 10 people were struck by the vehicle, while nine remained in stable condition early Saturday morning.
"She was in shock," Genesis' mom Cynthia Beltran, 36, said of her daughter. "She couldn't move her right arm and her legs. Nothing is broken, thank God."
"I thought I was going to lose my daughter."
After the driver got out of the car, she tried to run, but at least one parent stopped her.
"One gentleman grabbed her, and the other mothers were ready to go after her," Caldwell said. "He prevented the other mothers from getting a hold of her."
Caldwell said he was stunned by the driver's reaction.
"She was angry that the guy was holding her," Caldwell recalled. "I couldn't believe she was angry that the guy was holding her."
After a few moments, the driver started wailing, witnesses said.
"What have I done?" she screamed in Spanish before she leaned against the car and stared blankly at the sky.
Peter Gerber for New York Daily News Another girl at the scene, age 9, was taken to Jacobi Hospital with two women, ages 31 and 26, with minor injuries. Barry Williams for New York Daily News The scene where an 8-year-old was killed after school Friday in the Bronx. An NYPD officer monitors the scene where a Honda jumped a sidewalk in the Bronx and killed an 8-year-old. Todd Maisel/New York Daily News The 8-year-old girl was struck in front of Public School 307 in the Bronx Friday.
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No charges had been filed against the driver by early Saturday. Her name was not released.
Police said she was reversing down Eames Place from Claflin Ave. when she backed onto the sidewalk, hitting the group as well as a parked car and a street sign.
Beltran told The News that Genesis will be OK physically — but the girl did not know Rylee's terrible fate.
"I haven't told her yet that she is dead," Beltran said.
The 2004 Honda Accord, shown here during a crash test performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, is among the cars involved in the Takata airbag recall. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Editor's Note: This is an updated version of a story we published on June 11, 2014, in the midst of General Motors' recall of nearly 30 million cars.
There are more than seven million vehicles on US roads today equipped with airbags, made by the Takata Corporation, that may have faulty propellants, and have the potential to fire shrapnel into passengers when they inflate. Those cars, including models from Toyota, Honda, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors, are being recalled.
This is a particularly terrifying problem: It makes a tool designed to save lives into one that's masterful at taking them instead. The problem has been linked to at least two deaths in the US, . A House committee has promised an investigation, and politicians have criticized the NHTSA's decision to focus action first on regions with high humidity, which seems to make the defect more likely.
Recalls like this one—and the massive General Motors recall of nearly 30 million cars earlier this year—are marked by deadly crashes, furious consumers, and publicity-seeking politicians. But the reality is, most recalls don't stem from accidents and are settled pretty easily.
Cars have thousands of parts and things go wrong all the time—this month alone, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced dozens of recalls, most of them quite minor. There are rules in place to put things right. Here's how that process works.
Drivers who find something wrong with their car can report it to NHSTA, whose technical experts take a look. If the agency receives enough reports (there's no fixed number) about a particular problem, it takes action. That involves ordering the automaker to fix the problem safely, effectively, and for free.
Most recalls are spearheaded by automakers, which discover problems via customers, dealers, lawsuits, and their own inspections. Those defects don't always affect safety. Sometimes a car just isn't quite up to code for federal regulations or the automaker's quality standards.
When an automaker initiates a recall, it's required to notify NHTSA and file a public report airing all the dirty details, including how it discovered the problem, who is affected, and how it plans to fix things. That last bit usually means notifying customers and asking them bring their cars to dealerships for a free repair.
Because federal guidelines change slowly and old people still own cars, automakers must send those notifications as letters—in the mail!—to the registered owners of affected automobiles, then follow up with a postcard every three months for a year and a half to remind them to take care of the issue. The automaker can also send notifications through its cars' OnStar vehicle diagnostics system and via a monthly "state-of-the-car" email that customers can choose to receive. If things are bad, dealerships and customer service folks may call owners to push them to come in for repairs.
Problem is, those letters are easily and often ignored, or may never reach the current owner—especially if the car's changed hands multiple times since it was first sold. And that's what worries the NHTSA in this case. "Responding to these recalls, whether old or new, is essential to personal safety," says NHTSA deputy administrator David Friedman. "And it will help aid our ongoing investigation into Takata airbags."
If you're worried in the meantime, you can see the list of affected vehicles here, or be proactive and see if you need to get your car to the dealer car here.
Recalls are without doubt the biggest story in the auto industry this year, with about 52 million models – that's roughly one out of every five vehicles in the nation – being called back by their manufacturers for safety-related defects. This total has already blown away the previous all-time high of 30.8 million units recalled in 2004; with another two months left on the calendar, 2014 could easily beat the previous record by 100 percent.
As our Forbes.com colleague Micheline Maynard recently reported, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is expanding its recall of vehicles equipped with potentially dangerous airbags manufactured by auto supplier Takata to include 7.8 million vehicles from the 2000-2008 model years built by BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota, with the possibility of even more models subsequently being included. (UPDATE: We've added NHTSA's list of applicable models being recalled for faulty airbags at the end of this post.)
There seems to be no end to the number of cars being recalled this year, with a new initiative hitting the headlines at the rate of about two a day, according to CNN Money. Virtually all automakers – even some of the lowest-volume exotic makes like Rolls-Royce, Lotus and Lamborghini – have issued at least one recall over the last two years.
GM is telling Pontiac Vibe owners not to let passengers sit in the front seat because of a potentially defective airbag. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Perhaps it's because recalls have become become far too commonplace, but a disconcerting number of consumers seem to be ignoring them altogether. More than 3.5 million used cars hit the market with unresolved recalls on their records last year according to the used-car title search company Carfax, with that number expected to swell exponentially during 2014. "Open recalls are a major public safety issue," says Larry Gamache, communications director at Carfax. "In fact, our research indicates that more than one in ten used cars for sale online has an open recall."
To be sure, the latest massive recall involving deficient airbags affects some of the most popular used vehicles on the market, including Dodge Ram trucks, Ford Mustangs, Subaru Outbacks and Legacies, Toyota Corollas, Nissan Maximas, Pathfinders and Sentras and Honda Accords, Civic, CR-Vs, Elements and Odysseys.
Automakers usually conduct recalls voluntarily for safety-related defects based on their own research, though sometimes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandates then based on investigations spurred by owner complaints and/or accident data. While many recalls are initiated to resolve serious issues that could lead to crashes, injuries or even fatalities, others can be more benign, such as when the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ sports cars were recalled in 2012 to replace a few misprinted pages in their owners' manuals.
When a recall is issued the manufacturer is required to contact every owner of record for that particular model by mail. By happenstance, however, this usually excludes second or third owners. Fortunately, NHTSA recently launched a free online database that allows consumers to determine if cars they currently own – as well as those they're considering buying in the resale market or are renting (the latter being an issue that's woefully overlooked) – are at risk because of uncorrected safety-related recalls.
Available at www.safercar.org/vinlookup, users simply enter a model's vehicle identification number. Also known as a VIN, it's both noted on a car or truck's title and can be found at the dashboard on the driver's side of the vehicle, or on the driver's side door on the door post. The system will list any unresolved recalls, or if there are none, will simply report, "No Open Recalls."
Owners can also register their vehicles with NHTSA and be contacted automatically if a safety issue is discovered, via a downloadable app for Apple iOS and Android phones. The free app also enables motorists to submit complaints to NHTSA regarding possible safety problems with their vehicles.
Depending on the nature of the recall, you may want to limit driving it until the repair is completed; in rare instances an automaker may inform owners to leave the vehicle parked until a dealership can resolve the issue. For example, again as originally reported here by Micheline Maynard, GM is telling owners of the since discontinued Pontiac Vibe not to allow passengers to sit in the front seat until cars can be repaired over concerns about a defective airbag inflator.
Because too many consumers tend to mistake recall announcements for junk mail, NHTSA is mandating that manufacturers begin using a distinctive label with the phrase, "important safety recall information issued in accordance with federal law," prominently displayed to distinguish future notifications from other automaker-related missives.
Such notices typically include an explanation of the recall issue, what potential risk or hazard is involved, any warning signs the owner should be aware of, how the automaker intends to remedy the problem and instructions on how to get the problem corrected.
Whether or not you've received a notice, if you discover that your car or truck has been recalled, contact your local dealership immediately to set up a service appointment (if the recall involves the vehicle's tires, an owner is limited to a 60-day period after notification to have the issue addressed). Owners should not be charged for recall-related repairs.
Unfortunately, with so many makes and models being recalled this year, getting an appointment to have a specified repair initiated at a local dealership may take some time. To make matters worse, replacement parts (especially with the aforementioned 7.8 million cars being recalled to swap out faulty airbags), may be scarce for an extended period, which will further test the patience of already concerned vehicle owners. Still, the best advice is to persevere until the problem, whether major or minor, is resolved.
"Just as every single automaker should never hesitate to recall a defective vehicle, consumers should never hesitate to get their recalled vehicle fixed," says NHTSA deputy administrator David Friedman.
Having trouble getting a recall resolved? Let us know via the Comments section below.
UPDATE: Models affected by Takata airbag recall:
BMW: 2000 – 2005 3 Series Sedan 2000 – 2006 3 Series Coupe 2000 – 2005 3 Series Sports Wagon 2000 – 2006 3 Series Convertible 2001 – 2006 M3 Coupe 2001 – 2006 M3 Convertible
Bentley's limited edition GT3-R, which the company's CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer described to Forbes as the "road-leading derivative of the GT3 race-car," made its North American debut this week.
"Bentley has a very strong racing heritage," Dürheimer explained, which makes this 2.4 ton vehicle a highly relevant addition to the brand's collection. With two seats and the ability to go from 0 to 60 in 3.6 seconds, this isn't your average over-sized touring Bentley.
Although today most people don't necessarily link the Bentley brand with racing, history reflects Dürheimer's explanation. Bentley Motors won the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times between 1924 and 1930. The company is now trying to win back that prestige in the racing world, and the release of the $337,000 GT3-R marks a giant step toward that goal. This new model is something between a race car and a touring vehicle, with a 4.0-liter twin turbocharged V8 engine, 572 brake horsepower, and 518 pound-feet of torque. The car's front wheels feature 16.5-inch carbon ceramic brakes–the biggest on any production car in the world, capable of absorbing 10 megajoules of energy in one stop.
Right down to its green-striped exterior and black-finished 21-inch wheels, the vehicle is race-inspired. Its body is made from steel and aluminum, with a carbon fiber front splitter and rear wing. The bonnet also has cooling vents, typical of a race car. Bentley is manufacturing just 300 of the cars, which operate on 13 miles per gallon of gasoline. Their gas mileage might be less than impressive and design and color customization is not even an option, but Bentley notes that the GT3-R is more of a collector's item than a practical touring vehicle.
In the realm of self-driving cars, Google tends to get all the attention. Its vehicles have covered more than 700,000 miles on their own, and an adorable, steering wheel-free prototype joined the family in May. But Audi is no less serious about autonomous technology, and to prove it, it sent an RS7 flying around Germany's Hockenheimring at race pace. Without a driver inside.
On Sunday, a group of Audi engineers closely watched as the largely stock RS7, nicknamed "Bobby," lapped the Formula One track. The 560-horsepower car took the six straightaways at full throttle. It precisely hit each of the 17 turns, topping out at 149 mph. It completed the lap in roughly 2 minutes, 10 seconds, about 30 seconds slower than the times posted by the professionally-trained humans in the DTM races held after the Audi demonstration.
"We wanted to come close to matching the speed, precision, and vehicle control of a professional racer," says project manager Peter Bergmiller. "We took the sportiest piloted driving car in the world to the race track and did just that."
Taking a ride in Google's self-driving car comes with a quiet wow factor: At low speeds on suburban roads, sitting in the Lexus SUV is super boring—that's how good the system is. When Audi wants to show off its technology, which it's been working on for over a decade, it's not quite as subtle. In 2009, its self-driving TTS hit 130 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats and carved the brand's four-ring logo into the ground. The next year, that same car ran the 156-turn Pikes Peak mountain race circuit in 27 minutes (the course record is 8 minutes, 13.9 seconds, set by Sebastien Loeb in 2013). The TTS took on California's Thunderhill Race Track in 2012.
At each, the car performed magnificently, making us humans feel excited, but also increasingly irrelevant. Those tests show two things: 1) autonomous cars can be a freaking blast, and 2) Audi's approach to the technology is very different from Google's.
Those tests are a complete blast for people who love watching cars race, but they don't make much sense at first glance. At this point, the real challenge of getting self-driving cars on the market is proving they can safely handle a huge range of situations, the most difficult of which involve unexpected obstacles like cyclists, pedestrians, and construction. So why test on a racetrack lacking those variables?
It's to see "how do you control a car at the limit," says Thomas Mueller, Audi's head of development of braking, steering, and driver assistance systems. While the RS7's computer had a detailed digital map of the track and was following an optimized path through it, Audi did not preprogram things like torque or steering. It was up to the car to decide how to keep up speed and stay on track. It had to adjust to things like changing traction and grip, and the chance to see how it fared is what makes this testing useful.
That shows us how Audi's approach to autonomy—in its parlance, "piloted driving"—is fundamentally different from Google's. The tech giant calls its approach a "moonshot"—it plans to introduce a fully self-driving car as its commercial debut. To get there, it tests its cars on public roads all day, getting better and better in those conditions. Audi, like other automakers, is taking a gradual, evolutionary approach, installing autonomous technologies one by one as they are proved reliable. It's the safer approach, and lets it steadily add features to add to its latest models.
Many cars today, including Audi's, can stay in their lane, adjust their speed on the highway, and hit the brakes in emergency situations, all on their own. But while Mercedes and Nissan talk about putting a fully self-driving car on the market within a few years, Audi is more circumspect. Yes, it has a self-driving car prototype. No, it doesn't think it will be ready for customers in the near future. But it's making progress.
The hardware and software in the RS7 aren't much different from Audi's competitors are using. The car has a laser system to read its surroundings, along with radar, cameras, and an ultrasonic system. Mueller, though, emphasizes what Audi calls zFAS (why it felt the need to abbreviate zentrale Fahrerassistenzsteuergerät isn't clear to us), a computer system that brings data from those disparate systems into one place. It's "a central brain like the one we have in our head," Mueller says. Two years ago, it took up the whole trunk of Audi's demonstration vehicle. By January 2014, when it was shown at CES, it was half as big as a shoebox, and had as much computing power as the entire A4 sedan has today.
Audi's TTS races up Pikes Peak in 2010, a joint project with Stanford University. Audi
One thing Audi wants to add to its car next, Mueller says, is the ability to automatically and suddenly change lanes to avoid collisions on the highway. To do that, it has to know how the car handles at extremes. The Hockenheim lap, which doubled nicely as a PR stunt, gave Audi the chance to collect that data.
Audi also does more mundane—and possibly more important—testing in California, where it was the first company to be licensed to use autonomous technology on public roads. But watching an autonomous car patiently wait to turn left at an intersection is way less fun than seeing one barrel around a Formula One track, and the public relations significance of that isn't lost on the Germans. Pushing a car, especially one as fast and powerful as the RS7, to its limit without a human at the wheel, is an exhilarating, attention-grabbing way to show everyone what it's up to.
An NYPD officer monitors the scene where a Honda jumped a sidewalk in the Bronx and killed an 8-year-old. 
Todd Maisel/New York Daily News The 8-year-old girl was struck in front of Public School 307 in the Bronx Friday.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
