cars

There's one thing that brings people together every holiday season, and we're not talking about the mall: It's car accidents. Bad weather, bad drivers, bad last-minute-shopping attitudes make for a deadly combination. So Crave is doing our part to spread cheery thoughts by passing along the "RoadBox."

This "vehicle accident camera system" from South Korea, according to Red Ferret, "incorporates a speed and acceleration monitor to give you some all round information about the circumstances leading up to the crash, 14 seconds before and 6 seconds after." It just goes to … Read more

Most people don't go out driving to make friends, but that's the philosophy behind a new (and extremely optimistic) social networking SMS service called PL8Scan, which enables cell phone-wielding drivers to contact other drivers by text message via the latter's license plate numbers.

Having signed up to PL8Scan, drivers who wish to initiate contact with other road users send a text message to a central repository using a five-digit number. In the message, the driver includes the license plate number of the intended recipient (including details of the state in which it is registered), as well as … Read more

All you Hemingway wannabes out there no longer have to freeze in the winter in your old drafty Defender. New, improved versions, resembling Papa's old British jeep, are finally on the way.

Rumors of a Land Rover Defender returning to the North American market are true. The car will be back in 2007 as a 2008 model. Soft-top, long-wheelbase and short-wheelbase versions are also "in the works," according to Atlantic British, which would probably know as the leading U.S. supplier of after-market parts for Land Rovers in the United States.

Land Rover wants to recreate the … Read more

Ford let us take one of its preproduction 2008 Escape Hybrids for a couple of days to get an early look at the next major upgrade for this little environmentally oriented SUV. This new generation of the Escape Hybrid brings its tech up to modern standards and is a big improvement over the 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid. Where the 2007 model had sporty lines, the 2008 upgrade looks much tougher. It has square indentations along the sides and rear bumper, fog lights molded into the front bumper that echo earlier Land Rovers, and high wheel arches. But it also has … Read more

Meet the Dolphin, a three-wheeled, two-seater concept car that carries driver and passenger in tandem configuration. The aerodynamic prototype (pictured left) weighs just 475 pounds, and relies on a 200cc Piaggio scooter engine. According to this article in the U.K.'s Telegraph, the Dolphin can reach speeds of more than 60mph and gets an average fuel economy of 90 miles per gallon.

While the Dolphin is still a concept, a tandem-style, three-wheeled, two-seater production vehicle is not that far off. Myers Motors is scheduled to launch its electric-powered Qui Moto (right)--a successor to the Corbin Sparrow and NmG … Read more

If phones, cameras, printers and anything else can be dipped in gold, why not cars?

A company called RealGold apparently will gold-plate your grille (the one on your car, not your teeth) or any other part of your vehicle as long as the price is right. Some of its work was featured at this year's Bucharest Luxury Show, where the Hummer pictured here was on blinding display with its 24k-plated parts. As BornRich says, it would look fetching in the garage next to your chrome-covered BMW and diamond-encrusted Mercedes.

Automobiles have paved the way for hybrid and alternative energies in transportation, but other vehicles are quickly following their tracks. We've seen trains, golf carts and even wheelchairs running on non-fossil power sources in recent months alone. But one there's one category we hadn't anticipated: toys.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies first made headlines with its hydrogen-powered "H-racer" remote-controlled miniature car, which Gizmag says is the "best-selling fuel cell product in the world." Now, Horizon has developed what it calls the "H-cell" power source, which it claims allows miniature cars to reach … Read more

Forget coin meters and time-stamped windshield stickers. A new service called Mobile Parking Service, launched this week by Irish company ParkMagic, in collaboration with Verizon's Skytel subsidiary, brings parking into the digital age.

Rather than digging around for coins down the back of the passenger seat, drivers use the service to pay for parking by making a call from their cell phones, which debits a prepaid account. A message is then sent wirelessly to a digital display on the car's dashboard to show the parking time remaining. The service, which will be coming to cities across the U.… Read more

We just got back from a spin in the 2007 Infiniti M35, and we have to admit that on first impressions, we like it. After playing around with the M35's 8-inch rear-seat entertainment system, programming the in-dash GPS navigation unit, and goading the 275-horsepower V-6 in short bursts of urban driving exuberance, we were faced with the final car tech challenge: operating the voice-recognition interface. Regular readers of CNET Car Tech will know that we are hard to please when it comes to in-car voice-command interfaces. (For detailed examples, feel free to check out our reviews of the 2007 Toyota Camry, … Read more