Nissan is set to make the required tire pressure monitoring systems much smarter in all 2013 vehicles starting with its new Altima. The new system is called the Easy Fill Tire Alert. The new system has that dummy light on instrument cluster, but it will also tell you which specific wheel is low – a feature that’s only been available in more costly vehicles until now. The coolest part of the new system is that you don’t have to mess with the tire gauge at all.

All you have to do is connect the filling hose to the tire and the four-way running lights on the car will flash to let you know air is going into the tire. When you reach the ideal pressure, the car’s horn will beep one time. If you overfill, the tire the horn will beep three times and the running lights will flash. Once you let air out of the tire and reach normal pressure, the horn will beep again. I love features like this that seem so simple, but make such a big difference for drivers.

[via Nissan]

This guy is officially the real world MacGyver. Unless this is some kind of a hoax, he did this totally un-prepared. It seems like he managed to drill holes by bending metal and sawing at it, then un-bending it to be flat again, which makes sense. It took him twelve days to construct this vehicle. Sure, it sounds fishy, but like Fox and Mulder, I want to believe.

[via Reddit via Hack A Day]

The car is the Porsche 918 Spyder and this sexy beast is a plug-in hybrid. The car uses a traditional four-liter V8 engine producing 500 hp along with a pair of electric motors. The V8 engine propels the back wheels, while each of the front wheels gets its own electric motor making for an all wheel drive vehicle. The car is capable of using the electric power alone to propel itself up to 94 mph. The 918 pushes out an incredible 770 horsepowere when the V8 and electric engines are combined, and consumes 3 liters of fuel for every 100 km driven. Top speed is 199 mph and it can hit 60 mph in 3.1 seconds.

It’s not clear how long the car can drive on electric power alone, but it apparently gets 78 mpg on the EU test cycle. The car you see in the picture here is a prototype wearing black and white camouflage, reminiscent of Porsche 917 racecars from the past. Of course, all of this comes at a price – the 918 Spyder hybrid is expected to sell for $845,000 (USD) when it’s released by the end of 2013.

[via Autoblog Green]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pegy1ZjDO8I#!

The motion is a bit eerie (but awesome!) and makes you look to the sky to see if Skynet is orbiting above your house. This is the eighth revision of the Transformer robot, so it’s clear that Kenji has been working on perfecting it for years.

[via Plastic Pals via Geek]

The Croation-born EV is now up for pre-sale with production set to start next year. Only 88 will be produced at a whopping $980,000 each. The car has electric motor for each individual wheel for a combined 1088 hp and 2800 pound-feet of torque. The car required specially designed tires to handle the massive power output.

The maker claims the car that hit 60 mph in 2.8 seconds on its way to the top speed of 190 mph. As fast as the car is, Rimac claims it’s good for 372 miles on a single charge, thanks to a battery pack that stores 92 kWh of energy. For nearly a million dollars, the Concept One had better live up to its promises.

[via Fox News]

Chevrolet has promoted the commercial as the 2012 Chevy Cruze being the car most feared by zombies. The reason they fear it has nothing to do with spinning blades of death or anything else that might kill zombies. Rather zombies fear the car for its fuel efficiency.

The commercial has a newscaster interviewing some zombies asking them what really gets under their skin. The zombie in the interview starts talking about things that bother the undead including mannequins, flossing, and of course, the Chevy Cruze. Check out commercial for yourself, it’s pretty funny.

The technology is able to steer, stay in the lane, and accelerate or stop with no interaction from the driver. The tech will work as long as the various cameras and sensors on board have a good view of the street lanes. If the car can’t sense the lane markers well enough the driver will have to steer.

The system uses radar, GPS, ultrasonic sensors, and cameras to drive itself. GM says that the GPS data is used to allow the car to know when a turn is coming up. I hope its GPS maps are good so it doesn’t send the car careenining into a ditch. I think self-driving vehicles are an awesome idea to allow you to relax a little when stuck in traffic.

Chrysler Group and Mopar have announced the industry’s first in-vehicle wireless charging option that will come on the 2013 Dodge Dart.

This will be a dealer-installed option costing $199.99(USD) including the case your smartphone needs. It’s not clear what smartphones will work with the system other than the iPhone. Installation itself is an additional charge.

With the wireless charging solution installed, the user just has to place the phone into the bin in front of the gear shifter in the center stack. The phone will then be charged automatically, using induction charging. The only thing I worry about is how much the phone will move around if you’re turning or if you have to brake quickly. Still, I’d definitely like this option in my car.

The main difference between these two cars is that the Infiniti LE concept is much, much better looking than the Leaf. The Infiniti and the Leaf are sort of like the Kardashian sisters with the Infiniti being Kim and the Leaf being Khloe. Similar genetics certainly doesn’t guarantee similar looks and appeal. Underneath the Infiniti’s sexy bodywork hides an upgraded version of the same electric engine the Leaf uses.

The Nissan Leaf electric engine produces 110 hp and 210 lb-ft. of torque. Infiniti tweaked their engine to produce 134 hp and 240 lb-ft. of torque. The Infiniti is estimated to have a 100-mile driving range, pretty much the same as the Leaf.

The Infiniti LE will also offer a wireless charging system for juicing up in your garage with ease.

A production version of the LE Concept is expected to hit dealer lots in about two years at an undisclosed price.

[via Wired]

Google’s self-driving car seems like a cool gadget on one hand, and it is, but I think many people don’t see the real benefit to this sort of technology. I think that self-driving cars hold the biggest potential benefit for people that can’t drive on their own for a multitude of reasons. Recently, a man named Steve Mahan, who happens to be blind, got to go for a ride in Google self-driving car. He said, “Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things.”

This technology could really change lives for many people and I’m glad several states are working to approve the operation of these vehicles on public streets. Check out the video above to see Steve during his test drive – and a stop by Taco Bell for lunch.

[via LA Times]

The car also has blue lights all over the place; it rather reminds me of TRON. Inside the car, it has a custom digital dash gauge cluster that allows the driver to see exactly what they want.

It also has Microsoft Xbox 360 with Kinect (built into one of the tail lights,) web connectivity, and many of the systems can be remote controlled using a Windows Phone smartphone with a custom app. The car also has digital cameras all around line people inside to see what’s going on around the vehicle when parked.

The rear window even can flip up and act as a projection screen for playing the car’s Xbox 360 or watching movies.

If you want to know more about this build, it will be featured on an episode of Inside West Coast Customs this Sunday at 9 PM Eastern. Microsoft hopes that the high-tech car will lure in more developers to build custom apps and hardware for vehicles. It’s an awesome car anyway, you cut it.

[via CNET]

The Handpresso Auto is a neat, single-serve portable espresso machine that will give you a perfect, steaming cup of espresso, anytime and anywhere you want one. It’s shaped like a tumbler so it can fit into your car’s cup holder and plugs into the car lighter socket for power.

All you need to get your coffee fix is water, an ESE espresso pod of your choice, and a few seconds of waiting before your cup of coffee is ready.

The Handpresso Auto Machine is available online for €149.00 (~$197.)

A developer hacked all of these pieces together and created this neat little car for the robot ball. The Sphero drives by rolling on top of the trackball sensor. The ball is controlled by a smartphone app that can also change the color that the ball glows. The problem with the Sphero is that it is just a glowing ball and it gets old quick, but with a vehicle? Now we are talking fun.

That’s just the kind of thing Orbotix, the company behind the Sphero, is trying to encourage as they curate a development community for this little ball. They want to provide owners with as many new ideas and games as possible.

[via TechCrunch]

The Grippy Pad uses no velcro, no magnets, just the principles of science! It turns out science can be cool without being explosive! “I think… what we’re seeing here… is going to be dubbed an anomaly in the annals of scientific research.” Yes, it is strange how I’m getting that same feeling that I got when we blew up those pumpkins in the name of science. Write that down.

The Grippy Pad is available in gray, black, white, and red, so you can get one that fits your style. Or if your parents bought you a car from the sixties that has a maroon dashboard, you can add a bit of “the present era” to your vehicle.

This geeky product is also perfect for putting GPS devices on your dash – yes, it’s that strong. Unless you’re going 90 in the dunes of Egypt, nothing is going to fall off of your Grippy Pad.

You can pick one of these up from Firebox for just $11 (USD), or you can stay here with me and have another cup of tea. While you sip on that tea, check out some other cool stuff for your mobile gadgets, like the iLoop Phone Stand and the Siri 3D Printed iPhone Case.

Jack Kieffer owns Cool Gizmo Toys, a site that loves all things geeky.

The 2013 Volvo V40 has been outfitted with the first ever production use of Pedestrian Safety Airbags. These special airbags deploy in the event that the vehicle ends up in an unavoidable collision with a pedestrian, potentially protecting both the walker and the driver of the car. The system uses special sensors which automatically recognize pedestrian contact, then fire off a large, wide airbag that covers the lower third of the windshield. It’s also taller along the edges, to reduce the impact against the metal beams along the sides of the windshield.

While it doesn’t really do anything to reduce the initial impact of the front grille, fender and hood, it certainly could reduce the severity of injury – plus make it less likely that they’d end up flying through the windshield. I wonder if it would work with animals crossing the road too. As friends of mine have learned, a 200 pound deer smashing through your windshield isn’t exactly a good thing either.

Personally, I’ve always thought the second your car detects an impending collision, it should deploy a giant protective orb around the vehicle, turning you into an oversize one of those balls you sit on at the gym. Maybe someday that’ll be a standard feature too.

[via egmCarTech]

Touch-based controls steer and drive the vehicle, and the app shows you in real time what the car’s onboard camera sees. That means that you could send this car into a scary cave, the sewer system, anywhere you want to explore, but don’t actually want to enter physically.

Looks like a fun project that lets you create a spy car while using your tablet. Does this make you want to get a PlayBook? Looks like you can do more with it than we thought, plus remote-controlled cars are always fun.

[via BerryReview via Ubergizmo]

I recently went on a book buying spree on eBay, and let me just say that when all of my books arrive, I’ll have enough to fill a small library. That said, I’ve been on the lookout for a new bookshelf, and when I saw this vintage car bookshelf, let me just say that I was literally blown away.

This vintage car bookshelf was just one of the unique, re-worked objects in the interior of the impressive Dutch Mountain home decorated by design studio Denieuwegeneratie. The bookshelf is made from an actual Jaguar, with the engine removed and the trunk transformed into a cabinet. A large rectangle has been cut out on the roof and shelves fitted, where your books are to be placed.

There’s no chance I’ll be getting a bookshelf as cool as this, though, but really, it’s just a cool sight for sore eyes.

[via this isn't happiness via My Modern Met]

To promote its zero-emission F-CELL fuel cell technology, Mercedes funded the creation of a vehicle that could be turned “invisible” – in reference to the vehicle’s limited impact on the environment. They pulled it off by wrapping their ride in flexible sheets covered with a grid of LEDs. A camera on each side of the vehicle then relays what it’s seeing to the other side of the minivan, creating the illusion of invisibility. You can see the invisible Mercedes in action in the video clip:

It’s a pretty cool concept, though you have to stand back pretty far and be viewing the vehicle at an exactly 90-degree angle for the effect to work. I’d love to see someone work out higher resolution version of this illusion, along with head tracking so it would work no matter what angle you were standing at (like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’s invisbility shield.) Still, Mercedes’ promo beats your average crummy ad campaign, IMHO.

To see some behind the scenes photos from the shoot, head on over to Mashable and check out their gallery.

They call this thing a kids toy, but any of us adult children would also enjoy having a little 1.75″ long vehicle that can drive up, down or sideways across our refrigerator doors for sure. Of course it doesn’t actually defy gravity – it simply uses small magnets to hold in place as the wind-up vehicle scurries along. Still, it’s pretty cool. And at just $4.99(USD), it’s pretty cheap too.

Head on over to ThinkGeek if you want one. Personally, if I had a fridge that actually held magnets, I’d buy a fleet of 10 of these. Or an actual anti-gravity fridge.

Terrafugia has been working on a street legal aircraft called Transition that will make its auto show debut in New York between April 6th and 15th, 2012. Granted it’s not a motorcycle turns into a helicopter, but it’s probably as close as I’ll ever get.

The Transition is a sub-compact car that has folding wings and is small enough to fit inside most garages. The aircraft has been seen at air shows in the past, but the New York International Auto Show will be its first car show appearance. At the show, visitors will be able to see video of the car on the streets and in the air. The company will also be showing off wing folding demonstrations – but naturally won’t be flying it around the Javits Center.

I’m no pilot so I can’t say for sure, but those wings sure seem to be close to the ground when you’re coming in for a landing. If any of you are pilots, let me know if wings that close to the ground could prove hazardous during landings. The Transition is expected to sell for about $275,000 and the version that the auto show will be a production prototype.

[via PCMag]