cars

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.

Formula One is introducing a hybrid-drive system for the 2009 season, but the first road car to benefit from the trickle-down effect may come from Ferrari

Is Formula One racing out of step with an auto industry whose greatest innovations have been in the area of fuel economy?

Passenger-car gasoline in Italy costs the equivalent of around nine bucks a gallon. Formula One racing fuel goes for several euros more. And at a (full-speed) fuel consumption rate of between three and four miles per gallon, Ferrari's F1 cars can burn through heaps of Italian green during track testing. That's one reason the company, along with a few other F1-entrenched firms, are betting on the latest virtualization tech to help shave a few Euros off the high cost of testing.

British industrial designer James Dyson made a fortune turning a pedestrian household appliance into a fashion item for suburban strivers. Box-store shoppers recognize his bagless vacuum cleaner by that future-sexy, ultra-maneuverable yellow orb that stands in for wheels. Now, according to the UK's Daily Mail Dyson is turning his attention from closet to garage: his firm is reportedly developing an electric car.

As the host of one of the oldest and most famous racing events in the world, Indiana has always been known for fast cars. For now, those cars are still stuck on the racetrack, but a new study in the journal Transportation Research Record claims the roads are no more dangerous when motorists drive at Andretti-like speeds, providing further data in support of an American autobahn.

Among his other unusual hobbies (he also builds sculptures featuring fire-spewing robots), 32-year-old Justin Gray makes custom electric motorcycles. To create his latest drag racer, the R144, Gray tore the motor and gasoline systems out of a 1999 Yamaha R1, a bike with a frame large enough to hold the extra parts he needed for the conversion. Since the gas engine had been an important structural element in the original bike, he built his own aluminum motor bracket to hold the modified bike together.

Twenty years ago, duck hunter Stan Hewitt built his first amphibious vehicle, a clunky 10-wheeled truck-boat hybrid that topped out at 10 mph on land and just 7 mph on water. Hewitt wanted to tackle the prime duck habitat of the Alaskan tundra, an area hard to access using regular vehicles, and needed to improve the craft’s speed and maneuverability to handle the currents there.

Stuntman Ray Baumann is accustomed to vehicles that soar through the air, vaulting over rows of cars. But the Australian’s latest ride makes its bones on the ground. It’s the Monster Motorbike from Hell, a 10-foot-tall, 15-ton beast that drags vans around racetracks and flattens sedans as if they were soda cans.

The race may not always be to the swift, but, like Damon Runyon said, "that's the way to bet." With auto races often decided in the space between seconds, every fraction saved during pit stops is time in the bank. That means race teams' pit crews are as much a component to winning as is a set of tires, an engine or the driver. Tomorrow, the best crews in Nascar's Sprint Cup series will square off at the Sprint Pit Crew Challenge in Charlotte, NC. Twenty-four teams will compete over the whine of air wrenches for the title of fastest pit crew in the business.

The Internet loves a scoop, and car lovers love to speculate on new models. That's the perfect environment in which to incubate Photoshop renderings of sports cars hinted at, but unconfirmed. The latest engagement of wishful thinking hit the Internet this past weekend. It's a take on a car BMW officials have yet to announce but which the German media has been predicting for several years: the return of the BMW M1, a two-seat sports car the Munich-based company built in the mid-1970s.

Could new federal fuel mileage regulations kill sports-car specialists like Porsche? Probably not, but those companies may have to pay heavy fines as the cost of doing business or radically change their US product mix. That's AutoWeek's interpretation of new rules proposed by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Transport a 2008 Toyota Camry back to the "Car of Tomorrow" exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair and they'd never buy the hype. "Seven airbags?" they'd say, "And no jet pack? Yeah, sure." Those were the days before Ralph Nader penned his auto-safety call to arms, "Unsafe at Any Speed," putting auto safety on regulators' and engineers' short lists for the next several decades. And it's far from over: A massive road-safety research initiative in Europe is aiming for a technological framework within which cars would be entirely smash-proof.

In 2007, registrations of new hybrid vehicles jumped by 38 percent to 350,289 vehicles, according to a new report from R.L. Polk & Company. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it's got something to do with rising prices at the pump, or climate change. Or maybe there's something bigger at play.

High drama in the electric car world: According to the New York Times, electric sports-car manufacturer Tesla is suing Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler of Fisker Coachbuild, charging that Fisker fraudulently signed on to design Teslas White Star sedan, sabotaged the sedan project by doing substandard work, then stole confidential information and went on to build a competing car—the Fisker Karma.