bmw

We know that the BMW's M6 is lighter, faster, and more expensive than its sibling the BMW M5. But just how much faster is it really? Is it worth $16,000 more and two fewer doors for a slightly faster lap time? Fifth Gear's Vicki Butler-Henderson aims to find out in this video. Though I think she's slightly more interested in powerslides than price-points.

Mini is recruiting 500 drivers in California, New York, and New Jersey to lease its electric car for a year.

In the two weeks that MiniUSA.com has been offering a peek at the Mini E, 9,500 people have signed up for more information, says Trudy Hardy, Mini USA's manager of marketing communications. Although the Mini E will take over the site in mid-November, marketing will still be low-key because "we don't want to turn too many people away," Hardy says.

The Mini E debuts this month at the Los Angeles Auto Show as a … Read more

Forecasters see 2010 as the big year for Europe's manufacturers of stop-start systems, which turn the engine off when a vehicle stops and restarts it when the driver's foot leaves the brake.

An estimated 2.8 million vehicles with stop-start will be made globally that year. About 2.5 million of those vehicles will be made in Europe and the rest in Asia, according to consultancy IHS Global Insight. That's up dramatically from last year, when about 54,000 stop-stop-equipped vehicles were made, an estimated 53,350 in Europe.

Stop-start maker Valeo SA is looking forward to the surge because it does not make a profit on the system at current volumes. "Today we manufacture 1,000 a month, so it doesn't make sense. But we knew that," Valeo CEO Thierry Morin told Automotive News Europe earlier this year. "It will be a profitable business by 2011, when we have the volumes, in particular from PSA."

The French supplier has a contract with PSA/Peugeot-Citroen to equip more than 1 million vehicles with a stop-start system by 2011. Valeo says the contract is worth 700 million euros, or $897.4 million at current exchange rates. Valeo now supplies stop-start for Citroen, Mercedes, and Smart vehicles.… Read more

On today's show, it appears that the person who caused Apple's stock to drop like a stone on reports of a Steve Jobs heart attack was just "doing it for the lulz." So, he didn't even short-sell the stock? Wow. Stupid trolls. Also, Oprah declares the Amazon Kindle her most favoritest gadget of all time. Wow. Kindle for President?

Report: Teen planted fake story about Steve Jobs http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10074401-37.html

Will the Kindle Get an Oprah Bump? http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2008/10/24/24gigaom-will-the-kindle-get-an-oprah-bump-26376.html… Read more

Open-source software is being used just about everywhere to power everything from ERP systems to email. BMW, however, has even better plans for open source:

It wants The Ultimate Driving Machine to be powered by The Ultimate Software Development Methodology. In other words, we may have the chance to drive open source in the near future:

...BMW [recently] revealed it is looking for partners as it pursues an open-source car computing platform. The German company is enthusiastic about the potential for such an open-source system's potential to keep up with the rapid advances in technology and features in the … Read more

What will race cars look like in 2025? The Los Angeles Auto Show, in its fifth annual Design Challenge, posed this question to automakers' design studios. Entrants from Audi, BMW, GM, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Volkswagen show off differing takes of what will be required for future racetracks.

Click here for renderings of future race cars.

Throughout the year, we've seen some pretty amazing cars at CNET Car Tech, but two stood out for our sports car-oriented gear heads. We reviewed two versions of the BMW M3, the first a coupe with a manual transmission, the second a convertible with an automated dual-clutch transmission. Given the model history, we expected these cars to be good, and they were. Between these reviews, we had the 2009 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG, which proved a more than pleasant surprise. Similar in size and price to the M3, the C63 is Mercedes-Benz's idea of a small high-end sports car, … Read more

At the 2008 Paris Motor Show, we got our first chance to try out the new version of BMW's iDrive in the new version of the 7-series. Unfortunately, the language was set to French so we only had a vague idea of what we were accomplishing by selecting various menu areas. But it was still enlightening to get a feel for the new interface and imagine how it might work in English. From what we could tell, it will be a vast improvement over the current system, and take away our major criticism of BMW's cabin tech.

Click here for photos of BMW's updated 7-series with the new iDrive system.. … Read more

We've all thought of some prohibitively expensive or impractical vehicle customization that would convert our daily driver into a dream car. For example, I've always wanted to convert my Acura RSX Type-S into a midengined, rear wheel drive sports coupe, but for the money, it'd be cheaper to just buy a Porsche Cayman S and be done with it. But what happens when there is nothing vehicle on the market that fits your dream? What if your dream car is an M-Powered pickup truck? Australian golfer Stuart Appleby found himself in this situation, so he built his … Read more