fuel efficiency

Auto racing wonks know Gordon Murray as a designer of winning Formula One cars, who also happened to devise one of the fastest sports cars of the past 20 years -- the McLaren F1. But as we've mentioned, Murray's been spending most of his time lately on slower pursuits; in particular, a fuel-efficient city car. New details on that car, named T.25, came to light today, as Gordon Murray Design revealed a striking new seating layout.

The wind tunnel is an invaluable tool for designing cars that can slice through the air with a minimum of drag. But a team of researchers in the UK are gleaning new aerodynamic insight from a more revealing medium: soap bubbles. Engineers at automotive research consultancy Mira rigged a system of motion-tracking cameras to track the movement of tiny, helium-filled soap bubbles as they swirl around a subject vehicle, capturing its airflow profile in more detail than a wind tunnel ever could.

A team of gearheads at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an engine that can handle a blend of gasoline and diesel fuel. It outputs low emissions, and offers up to 20 percent greater fuel efficiency.

At ten feet long, the Cygnet is two feet shorter than the Mini Cooper, and decked out in Aston Martin luxury. Based on the Toyota iQ, but with a few extra features including an upgraded interior and external detailing meant to match the luxury design of Aston Martin's significantly more expensive roadsters, the Cygnet -- which is currently a limited concept car that might debut next year -- seats three comfortably, or a fourth passenger can squeeze in behind the driver for a somewhat tighter ride.

This shiny little black car is the first real Chevy Volt—the first of many hand-built but bona-fide production-intent prototypes that will roll out of GM’s pre-production workshop in the coming weeks. This car is the next big step in the production process after the testing of the Volt “mules”—test cars with a Chevy Cruze body and a Volt powertrain. (We drove one of the mules last month; see our full review here.)

Today Mitsubishi unveiled the production version of the iMiEV, the company’s pure-electric car, and announced that it will come to market pretty much right away—next month, in Japan. (No North American launch date has been announced.) Mitsubishi is calling the four-seat minicar the “ultimate eco-car,” the first step toward making EVs 20 percent of its business by 2020.

Invention: GenShock
Inventor: Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson, Zack Jackowski, Ryan Bavetta and Vladimir Tarasov
Cost: $100,000
Time: 2 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

The idea for an energy-producing shock absorber started humbly enough, just another wild invention tossed out during a late-night dorm-room bull session. Only, the students involved were among MIT's best, and they actually went ahead and built it. Two years later, they've got a shiny Hummer H1, loaned by the manufacturer to use as a rolling testbed, and their GenShock may soon find its way into the military's fleet of Humvees.

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.