bmw

Plenty of cars can look cool and run green these days, but now designers are taking such concepts to extremes. The BMW Lovos has 260 exterior flaps that can collect solar power and act as airbrakes at the same time.

Here’s an innovative application for augmented reality: telling you how to do stuff you should already know how to do. BMW have developed a concept for AR glasses that can assist their own mechanics in performing maintenance on the company’s high-performance cars. The glasses read the field of view, point out the part that needs replacing, the screw that needs turning, or the cap that needs tightening (and even tells users which way to turn it).

BMW's new experimental vehicle may get 63 miles on a gallon of diesel and can travel 31 miles in all-electric mode, but it also scores in the performance realm -- with a zero-to-60-mph time in the de rigueur modern sports-car range of under five seconds.

Fans of progressive auto design will likely cock an eye at its posturing curves and layered surfaces, but the big story is the Vision's plug-in hybrid drive system, which pairs two electric motors with a 1.5-liter, three-cylinder turbodiesel engine, together producing 356 horsepower.

A new autonomous vehicle-control system on the BMW drawing board could prolong drivers' lives behind the wheel, without sacrificing their own and others' safety. That's good news for elderly drivers. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports crash fatalities among drivers over the age of 70 fell 21 percent between 1997 and 2006, despite a 10 percent increase in that population. The decline is likely due to elderly drivers self-limiting their driving. But hanging up their keys means a loss of independence and lower quality of life for older drivers -- especially in rural areas.

Hybrid cars may be a favorite among commuters looking to save fuel, but they're yet to appear on a single driving enthusiast's bucket list. It's no secret why: A 2009 Prius gets from zero to 60 mph barely faster than a plumber's van.

How do you make hybrid cars a little rougher on the adrenal glands without sacrificing the good fuel economy and low emissions? Engineers at Austrian tech firm AVL took a page from the motorsports playbook, using a turbocharger to boost the performance of a standard gas-electric hybrid.

The movement of the crowds at the semi-funereal 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show said it all. No one, it seemed, wanted to hang out with the most beleaguered of the Detroit automakers, Chrysler and GM. As plenty of attendees noticed, Chrysler’s large expanse of showroom floor was all but empty most hours of the day. Same across the room at the General Motors stand: Aside from a small group milling about the Chevy Volt, all was quiet.

As California returns to requiring automakers to sell zero-emissions vehicles, BMW is apparently aiming to get in first on the gold rush. Automotive News reports BMW will export an electric version of its Mini to California. The state's zero-emissions vehicle program will require nearly 60,000 plug-in cars to be sold in the state between 2012 and 2014.