Who Invented The Wheel? And How Did They Do It?
The wagon—and the wagon wheel—could not have been put together in stages. Either it works, or it doesn’t. And it enabled humans to spread rapidly into huge parts of the world.
The wagon—and the wagon wheel—could not have been put together in stages. Either it works, or it doesn’t. And it enabled humans to spread rapidly into huge parts of the world.
BYD Co. is the No. 1 producer of plug-in vehicles globally, attracting a tiny fraction of the attention of Elon Musk’s company while powering, to a significant extent, a transition to electrified mobility that’s moving faster in China than in any other country.
I was biking home when you barreled into me with your car and left me to die. And I would have died if Tim Gillach, a cyclist and insurance salesman from Colorado’s Front Range, hadn’t caught a fleeting glimpse of my face as he drove past.
Goodyear developed the first tubeless tyre around 65 years ago. Now, it is working to develop a tyre that replaces itself when it wears out. The reCharge tyre is designed for a future where driverless cars are the norm – a future that may be fast approaching.
The state of Italian motorways is a national scandal. There are about twenty badly-damaged motorway bridges in Italy currently under investigation. There are also 200 illegal tunnels, which don’t comply with European standards and 1,000 viaducts which haven’t been monitored for years.
In many places, car-curbing efforts have begun to gain traction, driven in part by citizen activism. Cities like Paris have proclaimed car-free days. There are also plans to oust private vehicles from major metropolitan areas and there have even been proposals to create entirely new car-free cities from scratch.
She was once billed as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” and that bored her. She wanted to fight Nazis, and to be taken seriously for her technical knowledge and creativity. She wanted control.
This series entitled Wedged Wonders by Docubyte, features some of the most thrilling and yes – wedge-shaped concept cars of the late 1960s and 70s. The expressiveness and boldly raked hoodlines make them stand out, even by today’s standards.
Nearly 30 years before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, engineers at Ford designed and made a 3/8 scale model of a car, which it said would be powered by a nuclear reactor in the trunk.
McLaren plans to produce a development car that runs on synthetic fuel to showcase the technology’s potential. The company says the fuel would require minimal tweaks to today’s internal combustion engine, and it’d still be much better for the environment from a CO2 standpoint.
The city of Barcelona is testing out an urban design trick that can give cities back to pedestrians. It involves taking nine square city blocks and closing off the inside to through traffic. Buses, big freight trucks — or any vehicles that are trying to get from one part of town to the next — have to drive around the perimeter.
The booming global tire market is worth billions – but this comes at a high price, both to humans and the environment. Over 50 million car tires are sold each year in Germany alone. But where does the natural rubber for them come from?
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler funded the most powerful racing program in the world. An American heiress, a Jewish driver, and a struggling French automaker banded together to defeat them on the racetrack.
The Japanese brand might be celebrating their 100 year anniversary in 2020 but it was 60 years ago that one model, in particular, set the benchmark for Mazda and microcars at large. priced at just 300,000 ¥ (around $830 USD), the small, adorable Mazda R360 coupe was more than a city car.
Although Tesla reigns as king of the EV market thanks to its Model 3, Volkswagen has a plan in place to outsell them in the next few years. The automaker has set its sights on becoming a major name in the EV game, investing $37 billion in its electric car program.
Traffic modeling is a complex branch of applied mathematics, partially because it assumes that drivers are selfish and pursuing their own goals, rather than any predictable or shared efforts.
Twenty-four people have died and hundreds have been seriously injured from exploding Takata airbags. In 2000, Takata knew about the problem with their ammonium nitrate inflators, they knew they were exploding in their own labs, and they covered up the problem.
We all know cars getting bigger and heavier. Most of us know why they are getting bigger, too. To comply with today’s stringent crash regulations – by passing offset, side and roof impact tests, as well as those evaluating pedestrian protection performance – cars require considerable cubic metres of controllably crushable bodywork.
The querkraft-designed IKEA store in Vienna seeks to create a friendly, open, unconventional, and informal experience for users. The new building will be situated in an urban setting, and with no allotted parking, customers are expected to arrive by means of public transportation.
It was a huge success: Parking spots are now bike lanes, transit is fast and easy, and the streets (and local businesses) are full of people. Several other cities are also working to reduce car use, such as Madrid, which limits access to the city center for anyone other than the people who live there.
In cities like New York, Paris, Rotterdam, and soon San Francisco, car-free streets are emerging amid a growing movement. Cities have limited space, and how it is allocated is tremendously important for people. The denser a place, the dearer each square foot is. Yet all over the world, cities were retrofitted to accommodate cars.
The man known as the Taxi King arrived at his 2014 holiday party in a $384,000 Ferrari, wearing a custom Italian suit. Five years later, that man, Evgeny A. Freidman, stood in a mostly empty courtroom in Albany, N.Y., as a judge sentenced him to probation for tax fraud.
Alaina Gassler built a prototype system with a webcam, projector, and 3D-printed materials to fill in the space the car frame blocks from drivers. She mounted the webcam outside the passenger side A-pillar on a car and then displayed the live video on the inside pillar from a projector.
Volkswagen has replaced the original internal-combustion engine of this 1972 Type 2 Microbus with an electric powertrain. The German automaker commissioned EV West — a company that specializes in electric conversions on the west coast.
An unusual billboard was recently set up at a crosswalk in France to promote pedestrian safety. Whenever a pedestrian was detected crossing while the “red man” light was on, the billboard would emit a loud tire screeching sound. A camera built into the billboard would then capture the terrified face of the jaywalker.
Parking eats up an incredible amount of space and costs America’s cities an extraordinary amount of money. That’s the main takeaway of a new study that looks in detail at parking in five U.S. cities: New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming.
If you’ve ever purchased two articles of the same clothing because you couldn’t decide on a color, here’s a game-changer: color-changing ink. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a “reprogrammable ink” that lets you change the color of objects whenever you wish by exposing them to light of various wavelengths.
If there’s traffic in the area and you want to follow the law, you need to find a crosswalk. And if there’s a traffic light, you need to wait for it to change to green. Fail to do so, and you’re committing a crime: jaywalking. It’s the result of an aggressive, forgotten 1920s campaign led by auto groups and manufacturers.
For drivers, roads are safer than ever – but for people on foot, they are getting deadlier. In 2018, 41% more US pedestrians were killed than in 2008. Car companies and Silicon Valley claim that they have the solution. But is that too good to be true?
Volkswagen Car2X technology warns the driver of problems such as roadside breakdowns, the end of a traffic jam or the location of an accident. But also emergency braking situations: if a driver slams on the brakes, other vehicles are informed of sudden braking maneuvers by other traffic participants.
