audi

Audi may be the first car with its own app store, Mercury dies so Lincoln can live, Chevy Volt and other electric cars are tricky for first responders, Motorola launches safe-driving Android apps, and will the real James Bond Aston Martin please start up?

• Audi rumored to have apps coming to unlock features in its cars

• Ford pulls the plug on Mercury

• CNET drives the 2010 Infiniti EX35 Journey

• Pedal-powered Porsche looks great, goes slow!

• "Original" James Bond DB5 goes on sale for the first time--but it's not really the "original"… Read more

Red lights aren't just torture devices that make your daily commute worse or God's way of keeping you from having fun; they're also a huge waste of fuel. Tackling that problem, Audi demonstrated Wednesday in Germany its "travolution" technology that enables cars to communicate with traffic singles using wireless LANs and UMTS links so drivers can better time the lights and reduce fuel consumption.

It's not just the flow of traffic that's improved by missing red lights--a 2006 study revealed that reducing waiting times at traffic lights could cut fuel consumption by 17 percent. In Germany, this calculation would save almost 185,000 gallons of fuel each year.… Read more

For a car that doesn't yet exist, it has a solid marketing plan. The Financial Times reports that Audi is targeting its rumored all-electric A2  toward megacities with populations of more than 5 million people.

And, of course, there will be an app store.

The hypothetical app store will let A2 owners download upgrades for their car from the comfort and convenience of their home, Peter Schwarzenbauer, Audi's head of marketing and sales, told the Financial Times. The apps will let drivers customize their car's interior, driving style, as well as add features.

Potentially, Audi may … Read more

We think of SUVs as lumbering beasts rolling sedately down the road, approaching slight turns with trepidation lest there top-heavy bodies tip them. However, a few models stand apart. They can tear through corners as if they were plot twists on Lost. We found five SUVs that, despite their bulky bodies and high riding style, handle better than most cars do.

Technically, all of these vehicles are crossovers. Although they have typically SUV-like bodies, they all have a  unibody, rather than body-on-frame, design. Having a unibody construction helps them with handling, but all of these vehicles use technology to … Read more

While it has been fun watching Jeremy Clarkson of BBC's "Top Gear" fame test out fantastic rides for a thrill, I figured why not keep the fun going and bring on all the guys from "Top Gear"--Anthony Davidson and The Stig in this instance--as they try to figure out what the best car is for drifting.

In case you didn't know, drifting is "a driving technique and to a motor sport where the driver intentionally oversteers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels through turns, while maintaining vehicle control and a … Read more

We used to think that if we wanted speed, we had to sacrifice fuel economy. But we still held up as an ideal a fast car that wouldn't drain its tank after 200 miles. Audi comes the closest we've seen to date with the new S4.

Using a supercharged 3-liter V-6, the S4 easily averages more than 20 mpg, while at the same time hitting 60 mph in less than five seconds. OK, it's not as fast as a BMW M3, but we found its performance thrilling and excellent for throwing around winding country roads, its Quattro … Read more

NEW YORK--U.S. leaders of Europe's luxury brands say the time may be right to offer premium-badged small cars here.

BMW is considering selling a front-drive car slotted below the 1 series in this country. Mercedes may offer its next-generation B class in the United States.

Audi and Volvo say they're watching the trends and considering similar vehicles.

The small BMW has been approved for production, although timing is unclear. It will break from the company's rear-drive tradition by sharing a platform with the front-drive Mini.

"We have a couple of challenges in front of us,&… Read more

Watching a self-parking car turn the wheel as it backs into a parallel parking spot is a delightfully eerie experience. Sitting in Stanford's driverless Audi TTS as it races up straight-aways and shuffles the steering wheel through turn after turn on a dirt oval makes you believe there's a ghost in the machine.

Stanford's Center for Automotive Research invited us out to a test day, where Professor Chris Gerdes and his team of graduate students sent the driverless TTS, named Shelley, around and around an oval track in an open field. Besides the sheer entertainment value, the team used the laps to collect data on how well the car stuck to its programmed path.

The car is a 2009 Audi TTS, a sport-tuned version of the standard Audi TT, featuring a 2-liter turbocharged direct injection four-cylinder engine, dual clutch transmission, and Audi's Quattro all-wheel drive. Normally that engine produces 265 horsepower, but as the students involved in the project are automotive enthusiasts, they chipped it to 320 horsepower.

High-tech gear sits under the back hatch of Shelley, although it uses surprisingly little computing power. The main processor is a 1.6GHz Pentium 3 housed in a ruggedized case sending commands to individual boards that control steering, braking, transmission, and acceleration. Unlike the DARPA competitors built by Stanford's AI lab for the Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, Shelley doesn't take in external sensor input to see the landscape. Rather, it uses GPS and an inertial sensor to know where it is in the world.

… Read more

GENEVA--Audi plans a rapid expansion of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles over the next few years as a key component in Volkswagen Group's strategy to dominate the alternative-power train market by decade's end.

Michael Dick, Audi's board member for technical development, told Automotive News that the next-generation A6 sedan will have the potential to be a full hybrid by the end of 2012. The A6 would join the recently introduced hybrid A8 sedan at the Geneva auto show and the soon-to-be-launched Q5 hybrid crossover.

Hybrid capability may stretch to each part of Audi's lineup by the … Read more