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After Math: Hello from the auto show
With Thanksgiving already in the rearview and New Years still on the horizon, you know what time it is: it's auto show season! Engadget just wrapped up a week of reporting from the Los Angeles auto show and have plenty of posts to show for it. Volvo unveiled their subscription-based car service, VW showed off their all-electric crossover, and Desert Bus got itself a VR makeover. Numbers, because how else will you know how long it'll be until we get there?
Volvo wants to sell cars like Verizon sells phones
At the 2017 LA Auto Show on Wednesday, Volvo revealed a monumental new means of owning and operating their vehicles. For $600 a month, the car company will sell customers an XC40 crossover SUV. That figure includes not only the cost of the car, tax and delivery, but also insurance (regardless of your age or location) and access to Volvo's new "concierge" service. All you have to pay for is the gas you use. They're calling it Care by Volvo.
The 2018 CLS will be Mercedes' smartest coupe yet
Mercedes showed off its 2018 CLS coupe at the 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show on Wednesday. In addition to its sleek styling and five full seats, the car will offer a number of autonomous driver assist features that have, until now, been reserved for the company's higher-end models.
Intel wants to make your autonomous car rides more entertaining
Once autonomous cars can routinely take over the monotonous, minute-to-minute responsibilities of actually driving, what are their human passengers supposed to do with themselves? Well, if Intel has any say, people will spend their trips being immersed in interactive fantasy lands.
Infiniti unveils a semi-autonomous QX50 for 2019
After nearly a year of teasing, Infiniti finally debuted its newest QX50 crossover at the 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show on Tuesday. The vehicle features not only an inline-4 engine capable of adjusting the length of each cylinder's piston stroke on the fly, it's also the first Infiniti to incorporate Nissan's ProPilot semi-autonomous driver assist system.
Hyundai adds on-demand car washes to its Blue Link service
In a world where you can have your McDonald's delivered and the UPS driver has access to your Amazon-enabled foyer, keeping the family car clean remains a decidedly low tech affair. You've got the choice between pulling out the mop and bucket yourself or driving down to the gas station to have a room-sized robotic arm do it instead.
The Morning After: Thursday, November 17, 2016
We put the 4K-ready Chromecast to the test, saw increasingly less snow around the US, and gawp at the first hybrid Mini -- as well as a whole bunch of new cars coming out of the LA Auto Show. There's also the discovery of a "Watch Dogs 2" character that has fully rendered sex organs for no apparent reason whatsoever. Not just another Thursday.
Honda's fuel cell car is late, so look at this concept car instead
It's the LA Auto Show this week, but one company that won't be there is Honda, mostly because it overslept. The outfit has announced - with toothpaste smears all over its face - that it's had to delay the launch of its new production fuel cell car from 2015 all the way back to March 2016, where it'll hit the road in Japan, with the US and Europe coming at some point in afterward. In the meantime, Honda is hoping to distract you from its slipped deadlines (and incorrectly done shirt buttons) with the natty-looking FCV Concept. According to the press release, the vehicle "strives to achieve harmony between man and machine by taking advantage of new powertrain packaging efficiencies," which, as we all know, is marketing-speak for "the engine's smaller, therefore there's more legroom." Honda's now been seen shuffling to the nearest coffee house in the hope that it can take a look at Toyota's notes before the afternoon begins.
Apple devices seen everywhere at the LA Auto Show
Tech blog Cosby Sweaters noticed something interesting at the recent LA Auto Show: Apple was there in force. Not officially -- there is no iCar being sold just yet. But iPads and iMacs were used for a surprising amount of the kiosk displays by manufacturers. Lexus even had a 15-iPod touch display (as seen above) set up to demonstrate features and functions of its new cars. When it comes to functionality, security, and usability, Apple's devices are actually relatively cheap to set up, create as a kiosk and then use at a show. This is probably far from the last time we'll see iPod touches and iPads used in this way at conventions.
Mitsubishi i is the new name of the i MiEV for American market, coming next fall for $30,000
Mitsubishi promised it'd bring the i MiEV over to the US before 2012 and now it's rehashed that pledge with a slightly more detailed roadmap and an indicative price point to boot. Maurice Durand, the company's communications manager for North America, is quoted as saying the newly renamed i will cost "around $30,000" when it launches, which is expected to happen in fall 2011. Sales expectations are a very modest 20,000 units by 2015, but apparently the idea is for Mitsu to just get its foot in the US electric vehicle market before introducing more powerful and versatile people carriers. The i is pitched as primarily a commuter's vehicle, though it has been enlarged slightly to accommodate US safety regulations and "larger frame people." Be honest, Maurice, you mean larger waistline, not frame.
Chevy Volt to get an iPhone app
Want to check the charge on your electric car? There's going to be an app for that -- our friends at Engadget report that the upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric car will have an iPhone app that goes along with it. Features aren't firmed up yet, but ideas being passed around after a demo at last week's LA Auto Show include both setting up functions inside the car like scheduling when a charge happens (to take advantage of late-night power rates) and receiving notifications from the car, including when it's charged and/or when you forgot to plug it in for the night or other worrying situations like that. I'd love to even see an app that can track mileage from the car, or give you diagnostic information when something is wrong. Obviously, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky at this point (and implementation is obviously tougher than coming up with ideas for it), but I'm all for it. With the advent of the iPhone and all of the things it can do, it's quickly becoming a one-stop shop for communication between all your various networks and appliances. Why not have your car text you when it needs something? Oh wait, I've got to go -- my car just texted me that it's lonely out there in the parking lot. Back in a bit.
Chevy Volt shows up at fast food joint, practices lines for LA Auto Show
You might've seen the Volt make a guest appearance on the futuristic Surrogates movie already, but now Chevy's taking the opposite approach by looking toward the past to promote its PHEV. Bob's Big Boy fast food restaurant in California got treated to a surprise visit by a production model of that most bodacious Chevrolet, and as you can see above, it doesn't look horribly out of place seated in among its elders, a 1969 Camaro and an Impala SS. Joining in the weekly classic car meetup hosted by the restaurant, this appearance was a prelude to the production Volt being shown off at the LA Auto Show, which kicks off this coming Friday. So if you wanna see it, you can either attend the event or wait for the car to roll up at your nearest Wendy's.
Honda's FC Sport fuel-cell hybrid debuts in a puff of conceptual smoke
If the Tesla Roadster has proven anything other than the disruptive effects of a hyper-inflated ego, it's that well designed eco-vehicles will sell... at any price. Yet the general design theme amongst hybrid builders appears to be your grandfather's loafer. Honda too, just look at the FCX Clarity. So we're pretty stoked to see Honda roll out its FC Sport concept three-seater (driver front-and-center) at the LA Auto Show using the same V-Flow fuel cell stack and electric drivetrain found in the FCX Clarity. Only thing is, it's a non-functional concept with little hope of hitting the market anytime soon if history serves. Good news for GM but bad news for consumers. As a wise man of consumer electronics once said: "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse." Or to paraphrase: It's like asking for a Big Mac and getting a fish sandwich.Read -- Parable of the Concept Car Read -- FC Sport
