2011

Subaru gives upcoming BRZ the STI treatment

The highly anticipated sports car collaboration between Subaru and Toyota gets STI performance additions for Los Angeles.

Subaru says at the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show this month it will show the BRZ STI concept, a version of the new BRZ sports car due next year. Subaru fans will know that those three letters, STI, mean outstanding performance from Subaru Tecnica International, the tuner division of Subaru.

The photos released by Subaru show a very slick-looking sports coupe, with similarities to the Nissan 370Z and Hyundai Genesis Coupe. The BRZ comes from a collaboration between Subaru and Toyota. For Subaru, it represents a unique rear-wheel-drive car in its lineup, which is currently exclusively all-wheel drive.… Read more

Fiat 500 Abarth showing in L.A.

If you've driven the Fiat 500 and found it underpowered, things are about to get more interesting. Fiat will bring out the tuned Abarth version at the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show.

Fiat made its return to the U.S. market this year with the 2012 Fiat 500c, an inexpensive city car with cute retro looks. To increase appeal among a more power-hungry set of drivers, Fiat is bringing the tuned Abarth version to the U.S., and it gets its first showing next month in Los Angeles. … Read more

10 creepy video games for Halloween

It's that time of the year again. A time to turn off the lights and snuggle up with a game that's guaranteed to scare you silly. We've compiled a list of titles that are sure to keep you awake at night and a few that will be haunting you early next year.

But consider yourself warned; these games are not for trick-or-treaters.

Have a favorite scary game you'd like to share? Be sure to comment below. You can also check out which games made last year's list or watch our CNET TV feature that covers what we think are the seven scariest video games of all time!… Read more

Ford shifts its focus to smaller customs at SEMA 2011

At the annual SEMA Show in Las Vegas, seeing 100 different custom incarnations of big, powerful Ford Mustangs is par for the course. This year, however, Ford is thinking small.

This year, Ford is choosing to focus on the B- and C-segment 2011 Fiesta and 2012 Focus and will be filling its booth with custom examples of each. We got a sneak peek at 10 renderings of these tiny customs and are happy to see that they run the gamut. From high-performance examples by Roush, Steeda, and Cobb Tuning to styling exercises by the ID Agency, M2-Motoring, and 3dCarbon, if … Read more

Mazda Takeri concept previews the next Mazda6

Mazda takes a stab at wrapping its new "Kodo: Soul of Motion" design language around the lithe proportions of a sporty sedan in December, when it will debut its Takeri concept at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

The inverted, pentagonal grille and angry eyes of the Kodo style, which debuted first on the Shinari concept and will hit the road on the CX-5 small crossover, seem particularly suited for the Takeri sedan. From the looks of the photos, this could eventually manifest as the next incarnation of the Mazda6 midsize sedan. The Takeri isn't just a pretty … Read more

2012 Green Car of the Year finalists named

The 2012 Ford Focus Electric, 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas, 2012 Mitsubishi i, 2012 Toyota Prius v, and 2012 Volkswagen Passat TDI are all finalists for 2012 Green Car of the Year, Green Car Journal announced today in a press release.

The winner will be announced during a press conference at a Los Angeles Auto Show press day on November 17. This marks the seventh consecutive year the award has been given out.

Green Car Journal editors considered dozens of models that were designed to reduce their environmental impact and be more energy-efficient. According to the press release, the cars … Read more

PR2 robot learns to scoop poop

Everything cool in technology eventually becomes mundane. I think history shall record that robots, once the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, crossed this threshold when they began picking poop off the floor.

Willow Garage's PR2, a humanoid with an evolving MacGyver skillset, has added shit disturber to its many talents.

Ben Cohen and friends at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab recently took the wraps off this awesome new technology, named POOP SCOOP (Perception of Offensive Products and Sensorized Control of Object Pickup). Hello, Ig Nobel prize. … Read more

Electric vehicles and building out the smart grid

How do you integrate electric vehicles with the building out of the smart grid? One session at the Networked EV conference in San Francisco yesterday tackled that topic.

Speaking as part of the panel, Phil Davis, a senior manager at Schneider Electric, and John LoPorto, president and CEO of Power Tagging, gave their perspective on the subject.

Electric vehicle powers house

Making electric vehicles louder: Can you hear them coming?

Two new money-making platforms for social content creators

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." That simple comment by Andrew Lewis on a MetaFilter post in 2010 did a great job, I think, of capturing some of the subconscious discomfort users accumulate as they put more and more of their lives on social networks like Facebook. But two new social products on display at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week, Chime.in and Mightybell, turn the equation around a bit, allowing social network contributors to take some of their content and turn … Read more

Sergey Brin: I was wrong about Google+

Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the Web 2.0 Summit dais with scheduled speaker Google Senior Vice President of Social Business Vic Gundotra to discuss the rollout of Google+, and how pieces of it came to be.

Brin said, "I'm not a very social person myself," and that he fought many of the features of the new social network being built inside his company. "I was wrong," he said, adding that he found Google+ "instantly compelling." Gundotra, the man behind the Google+ project, said that its design owes a lot to Brin's … Read more