Dan Carney

Contributor, Tech

Dan Carney has been an automotive contributor to Popular Science since 1998. Along the way he’s charted the evolution of electric vehicle technology from costly, impractical science projects to vehicles that are now on the brink of mainstream market acceptance. He’s also seen the rise of driver assistance technology and its potential eventual development into autonomous vehicles. He lives in Virginia with his wife; the kids are mostly out of the house.

Highlights

Relentless tinkerer and disassembler (and sometime reassembler) of things
Sports Car Club of America racing license holder
Bylines in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Motor Trend, Road & Track, AutoWeek, Maxim, NBCnews.com, BBC.com

Experience

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks of the world, the automotive engineering centers in the US, Europe, and Japan, the crash-test labs striving toward safer cars, wind tunnels, vehicle simulators, and the amazing auto shows highlighting what’s to come.

He is a past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association, a winner of the International Motor Press Association’s Ken Purdy Award for excellence in automotive journalism, and a Sports Car Club of America race winner in his Swift DB-1 Formula Ford race car. Dan has been invited as the automotive guest on NPR’s Kojo Nnamdi Show and to drive race cars for BMW, Mazda, and Volkswagen.

He is a juror for the North American Car, Truck, and SUV of the Year Award, and serves as a judge for the Society of Automotive Engineers Formula SAE race car engineering competition for university student teams.

Education

Dan graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in communications.

Favorite weird science fact

Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest or uniform motion will continue at rest or uniform motion until acted upon by an outside force. This underpins virtually everything automotive.