cars

Today, Sony announced two new HD radio products: one for the home and one for the car. Now, if you gave up on terrestrial radio ages ago--either for the iPod, Internet radio, and/or satellite radio--you're probably not all that concerned about new developments in that area. But for those who still enjoy AM/FM radio programming, HD Radio offers some compelling developments. Namely, it allows for a wider selection of channels via substations, and it provides better quality audio than standard AM/FM radio--"crystal-clear digital sound" by some accounts. We ain't talking CD-quality … Read more

Following our round up of state-of-the-art car safety features, we're continuing our Car Tech safety kick with a roundup of the 18 vehicles that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has chosen as its top safety picks.

The shortlist is pretty evenly split between American, European, and Asian manufacturers, with two entries each from Ford, Acura, Subaru, and Audi. Take a look at the gallery here.

One often-cited alternative to gasoline-powered cars is hydrogen. Editors Michael Kanellos and Brian Cooley took a look at one example of a hydrogen-powered test car, a small Mercedes. To keep Kanellos from endangering himself and said vehicle, they set the top speed on this hydro-chariot at only 85 miles per hour. Take a look.

Here's a story for you. I recently invested in a cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard, and one of the things I love about it most is that there's no more need for triple-tapping or that whole T9word thing. The thing I hated most about T9word was its tendency to say "car" instead of "bar" when I was trying to text my friends and say "We're at this bar..." (Yes, I know there's a "next" key. That's way too complicated after midnight.)

That was more or less … Read more

Panasonic took a leap into the in-dash navigation market this month with the release of its catchy-named Strada CN-NVD905U. The touch screen device uses a 30GB hard drive to store mapping data, and can be used to play a variety of digital audio formats as well as DVD video. Check out our slide show.

We have seen a succession of in-car touch screen navigation/ multimedia devices over the past few months. While the hard drive-based Pioneer AVIC Z-1 still sets the standard for these systems, a number of lesser-known manufacturers have been rolling out their own systems. Eclipse's AVN5510 is a good contender for an entry-level all-in-one system.

The AVN5510 might not have a hard drive for navigation data or media storage, but it does have some very attractive features. Check out our slide show for the details and some beauty shots.

In what looks like an example of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have come up with a way of turning water in hydrogen using an aluminum alloy. If the process is replicable on a large scale, it could have a massive impact on the market for hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars, which could use the technology as a source of onboard hydrogen generation.

The process relies on the use of aluminum pellets, which are mixed into liquid gallium (a metal that liquefies at just over room temperature) to produce a liquid aluminum-gallium. When water is added to the … Read more

Bugatti is a name that would never be associated with "ordinary," so it makes perfect sense that the music system for its "Veyron" uber-car would be something special. And they certainly didn't disappoint anyone with the German-made Burmester system that was created specifically to meet the unique needs and design of the Veyron, one of the world's fastest street-legal cars.

Here's why an off-the-shelf stereo from Best Buy wouldn't have done the trick: The Burmeister CD player alone is constructed to operate without a single skip at 250 miles per hour. Sybarites … Read more

Here at CNET Car Tech, we never tire of banging on about the latest in-car audio technology. But what if you don't have the requisite $2,000 to fork over for a hard-drive-enabled in-car media player with a touch screen? Here is one solution that's cheap and cheerful, and will let you play MP3 discs and portable audio players in your car for less than $300. Check out our slide show for photos of the Kenwood DPX302.