Infiniti's first hybrid will be the 2012 M35.
(Credit: Infiniti)Nissan/Infiniti has so far only dabbled in hybrids, choosing to buy technology from Toyota for the Nissan Altima Hybrid. The company is really attempting to leap past that technology by going straight to electric vehicles, with the Nissan Leaf. But the upcoming Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid must have lit a fire under someone at Infiniti, because the company just announced the Infiniti M35 Hybrid.
The M35 Hybrid will use a mild hybrid system.
(Credit: Infiniti)With a V-6 engine mated to what sounds like a mild hybrid system, the car will be aimed more at performance than maximum fuel economy. Infiniti describes the hybrid system, which was built in-house, as combining twin clutches and an electric motor on the propeller shaft coming out of the engine. This arrangement allows the electric motor to provide extra boost to the rear wheels and, according to Infiniti, drive the car under only electric power under certain circumstances.
Honda says the same of its mild hybrid system, but we've never actually noticed pure electric drive power in any Honda hybrid. Infiniti is using the same laminated lithium ion batteries in the Infiniti Hybrid as will be used in the Nissan Leaf.
The Infiniti M35 Hybrid will come out in 2011 as a 2012 model.
The Nissan GT-R proves that the coupe is the best body style in the world.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)
I love coupes. I would go so far as to say that the coupe is the best style of car in the world. Limiting a full-size car to two doors may fly in the face of practicality, but it allows for much more body style than a sedan. Automotive designers get to play with the roofline and equip a coupe with real fenders, making for a sporty-looking package. The best a sedan can do is look stately.
Roadsters are loads of fun, but a soft top just says you're not taking driving that seriously. A coupe means business, ready to take on all sorts of weather, with a hard top that can be shaped for aerodynamics.
The only negative aspect of a coupe is the rear seat. Most coupe rear seats are a joke, cramped little spaces that serve as much purpose as your appendix, or a vestigial tail.
In honor of the coupe, I've collected our last 10 coupe reviews and added a little commentary about those rear seats. Enjoy! I certainly did while driving these cars.
While Taito has already released an iPhone port of the original Space Invaders, we'd recommend you slide past that and buy, instead, a spectacular revamp that launched this week on the App Store by the name of Space Invaders Infinity Gene.
As you'll quickly see from the trailer above and gallery below, this shooter is Space Invaders in spirit and design, but in execution it's a full-fledged arcade onslaught of power-ups, boss battles, and a thumping techno soundtrack that pulses along perfectly. This isn't Taito's first reinvention of Space Invaders: its Space Invaders Extreme was received with warm reviews and a cult following, and currently lives on the Nintendo DS, PSP, and Xbox Live Arcade.
Infinity Gene is a port of a Japanese cell phone game, with more minimal line-drawn graphics than Extreme. The title screen is actually a direct port of the original Space Invaders, before transforming into a start menu that consists of a branching level tree. Based on how you perform across dozens of levels, new weapons variations and options will become unlocked. Your ship can move all across the board, unlike the original Space Invaders, and while your ship autofires, your finger can drag anywhere onscreen to move your ship around. This keeps your digits from getting in the way of the finely rendered artillery attacks.
One of the most exciting new features, something that extends the life of this title to the near-infinite, is Music mode. You can pick any song on your iPhone or iPod Touch to play along to, and Infinity Gene generates a unique level matched to your music. I'm not sure what the secret sauce is to this mode, but I took some screenshots to show what levels were created for some of the tracks that live on my own musically cluttered iPhone 3GS.
Infinity Gene is available now for $4.99, and it's easily one of the best neo-retro experiences on the iPhone yet.
Sorry, don't expect anything like this.
(Credit: Joystiq)Whether or not you actually want one, Joystiq is reporting that Infinity Ward (the developer behind most of the Call of Duty franchise) is helping design a branded controller to coincide with the release of Modern Warfare 2.
However, while you'll be able to purchase actual working night goggles with the Prestige Edition of the game, early details suggest this new device won't look much different from a normal video game controller.
(Credit:
GameSpot)
Sure, it's nice to have peripherals made exclusively for playing with specific games, but what's the incentive to get a special controller when in fact there's nothing special about it at all?
What do you think? Do you have a soft spot for branded controllers? Tell us below.
Modern Warfare 2 will be released on November 10.
The 370Z might get extra boost from an electric motor, if the rumors are true.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)Rumors running around the Internet suggest that Nissan will offer a hybrid version of its 370Z sports car somewhere around 2012. Currently, Nissan's only hybrid is the Altima sedan, with a power train licensed from Toyota. But Nissan has long promised a car with a hybrid system developed in-house, and showed off a concept car that would use this system, the Essence, at the Geneva auto show. The first production car featuring Nissan's own hybrid system should be based on the Infiniti M45, expected to come out in 2010. Nissan has been working on lithium ion battery development in partnership with NEC.
The 370Z hybrid could be the first hybrid sports car, although Honda has been working on its own CR-Z, which should come out as a sporty but compact hybrid. Even if Honda beats Nissan to the punch, a 370Z hybrid would be more powerful and likely have better handling, if our experience with the 2009 Nissan 370Z is any indication. According to the rumors, the 370Z hybrid would use the same 3.7-liter V-6 as the standard version, but would get extra boost from an electric motor. The car is supposed to also have plug-in capability, and use similar battery technology to that which Nissan is developing for its pure electric vehicle.
(Source: 370Z.com)
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)
Currently, Infiniti offers some of the best cabin tech in the automotive world, and the 2009 Infiniti G37 Sedan exemplifies a balance of modern convenience and sport driving prowess. Although we recently reviewed the 2009 Infiniti G37 Coupe with all-wheel-drive, we took a look at the G37 Sedan to test out Infiniti's new adaptive cruise control system.
Where the Coupe shows off a sports car look with its quick drop from the roof line towards the trunk, the Sedan has that bubble design for the cabin common among modern cars. Of course, the extra doors and higher roof mean a much more usable back seat and make the car useful as a family hauler for the driver who also wants some power.
Cabin tech between the Sedan and Coupe is identical, with both featuring a hard drive-based navigation system that operates quickly and shows live traffic. The navigation system also does text-to-speech, reading out the names of upcoming streets.
The G37's navigation system points out bad traffic areas.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)The audio system has a ridiculous number of digital audio sources, too, which includes iPod integration, satellite radio, a Compact Flash slot, auxiliary in, MP3-capable CD player, and the ability to rip CDs to the car's own hard drive. The audio quality is very good with the premium sound system, although not the best we've heard.
The Bluetooth system in these cars is also pretty good, although we ran into a problem due to the fact that you have to push contacts from a paired cell phone to the car. Our paired iPhone lacked the capability to populate the car's phone book in that manner, so we would have had to make entries manually.
For cabin tech, the Lincoln MKS edges out the G37 Sedan slightly, due to the excellent capabilities of Ford Sync and the THX sound system, but the G37 has the edge in performance.
You can feel the power surge when you hit the gas pedal, tapping the 328 horsepower from the 3.7-liter V-6 engine. The G37 has responsive acceleration, along a new seven-speed automatic transmission. The Sport mode on this transmission shifts properly when you drive aggressively. If you go at moderate speed into a turn and give it a little brake, the transmission assumes you aren't serious and stays in its current gear. It's only when you hammer the throttle until the last minute, then use heavy braking, that the transmission kicks down, giving good power to accelerate out of the turn.
Infiniti's steering column-mounted paddle shifters show the car means business. Getting into manual mode and using the paddles, we found that downshifts were pleasingly fast, but upshifts seemed much slower, which could have just been the car's way of saying it wanted to stay in the heavy power band, economy be damned.
Dynamic cruise control information displays on the instrument panel.
(Credit: CNET)The new feature, adaptive cruise control, is more suited to those long freeway trips with moderate to light traffic. Set the car's speed at 80 mph, then watch as it slows down for slower traffic ahead. Don't worry, it will slow down. With the following distance set at its shortest among the three options, we were on the edge of the seat as the car sped towards a slower car up ahead. Under these circumstances, the car hit its brakes surprisingly hard before matching speed with the slowpoke in our lane.
Passing cars with this cruise control system can be a little scary, depending on conditions. We moved a lane to the left, and the G37 took a moment to decide it was okay to get up to speed, a good safety feature, but bad if someone is coming up fast in the lane you just moved into. When it decided the lane was clear, the G37 roared up to our set speed.
The 2009 Infiniti G37 Sedan makes an excellent all-around car. You get the practicality of four doors and useful cabin electronics, but you can also stretch its legs out on winding mountain roads. At our test car's $43,288 price tag, it doesn't seem like a budget automobile, but when compared to competitors from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, it starts to look like a bargain.
GT cars, the stuff that posters on the walls of high school boys' bedrooms are made of, made a strong showing at the 2009 Geneva auto show, with new examples from Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Lamborghini, among others. The variety we found at the show included standard gas engines, hybrids, and full electric versions, and all boast astounding performance figures.
From our reviews, we round up the most expensive, geekiest cars available. These big sedans average around one-hundred grand and feature some of the latest automotive technology available. Want a massage? Try out the Mercedes-Benz CL550. Want to know if cars are in your blind spots? Give the Audi S8 a spin. Feeling a little green? The Lexus LS 600h delivers luxury and a hybrid power train.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
In December we invited you to vote for the 2008 Tech Car of the Year from our five nominees. Well, no upset this year, as our staff judges agreed with the voting public: the 2009 Nissan GT-R is our Tech Car of the Year. Nissan has been putting top-notch cabin tech into its Infiniti models, and applied the same gear to the GT-R. But that's only the beginning, as you can almost feel the circuitry running through the GT-R's advanced suspensions and road-holding systems. Likewise, the engine is a pretty impressive piece of engineering, bringing in supercar acceleration from a V-6, not to mention the new double-clutch gearbox.
The GT-R has some faults, such as the overly stiff ride, which isn't really mitigated by the Comfort setting for the suspension. And we had some staff disagreement about that double-clutch gearbox: Brian Cooley found problems with using it in traffic, while Wayne Cunningham felt it worked very smoothly. But we couldn't deny the tech tour de force that the Nissan GT-R represents.
... Read More
(Credit:
CBS Interactive)
As the year winds down, we look back at the cars we've reviewed in 2008, and try to figure out which one qualifies as the Tech Car of the Year. To that end, our staff has boiled the choices down to five nominees, and, as in past years, you can vote for your favorite. These nominees represent the best cabin and performance tech available in a production car today. To make the list, they also have to exhibit at least one over-the-top tech feature. Check out the nominees, vote in our poll, and discuss your choice. The final winner will be decided by your vote and our panel of staff judges. We will post the winner, along with The Car Tech 10 awards, in the second week of January.
Nominees
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
The new M3 is the current apex of BMW technology for performance and cabin tech. The DCT, BMW's new dual-clutch transmission, is a tech stand-out.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
We surprised ourselves by picking the Dodge Ram, but this truck packs all the latest cabin tech, including a rear-seat entertainment system with satellite TV and hard drive-based navigation that shows traffic.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
Infiniti has been pushing the cabin tech envelope, and the EX35 represents the height of achievement, with driver aids that keep you from drifting out of your lane and a set of cameras that help you park in tight spaces.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
Lincoln's MKS uses tech to give driver and passengers an exceptional in-car experience, with a THX audio system, Sync MP3 player and phone integration, and Sirius Travel Link, which lets you see traffic, weather, and gas prices on the navigation screen.
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)
Godzilla hit U.S. shores this year, sporting an incredible package of performance tech that wrings amazing horsepower out of a six-cylinder engine. Cabin tech isn't left behind, either, complementing the usual infotainment package with a very cool performance computer.
