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Driverless Cars On The Road

A good look at and the specs on “the world’s fastest and most powerful production car” the Koenigsegg Regera Megacar is provided by Ed Jones writing for the duPont Registry.

Autowriters Pit Notes: Koenigsegg Regera Megacar

Carrie Thompson sent along a graphic (as she terms it) from England on the  Evolution of the 250+ MPH Super Car. It highlights the first super car in 1926 to the Bugatti Veyron of today
– taking you on a journey of amazing cars evolving with more power,Autowriters Pit Notes: Evolution of the 250+ MPH Super Car sleekness and stunningly fast 0-60 times. Stats for each car, include:

0-60 speed
Top speed
BHP
Engine size
Production years
Price on release
Number produced
and more!

View the full graphic here.

CarMagazine’s list of South Africa’s 12 top buys in 2015 includes a Chevy Sport Campus; Ford Kuga (crossover) and Ford Double Cab Ranger, as reported by Biz Community  . . . .The Detroit  News’ Melissa Preddy reports, “For employees disenchanted with their 9-to-5 grind, or young people looking for alternatives to liberal arts college, a career working with adrenaline-inducing vehicles might not be too far out of reach.” In interviews with performance and repair shop operators, she found concurrence that there is a dearth of people with the skills needed for
many well- paying jobs in the field.

Ron Beasley forwarded a piece and photos of a sleek silver Mercedes self-driving car tooling the streets of San Francisco. The story was written by Sally Jane Evans for the UK’s Daily Mail with ample photos from various internet sources. See:

Pit Notes: Mercedes Driverless Car

In TechNewsWorld.com Peter Suciu describes and provides an impressive look at the self-driving car Volvo plans to test with a fleet of 100 autonomous vehicles on the streets and highways of Gothenburg, Sweden in 2017.

Britain already has controlled tests of driverless vehicles underway in four of its cities and, according to Ann Reddaway of TU-Auto.com, the UN is working on a global regulatory framework for autonomous cars. For details: tu-auto.com/detroit/autonomous cars.

Driverless cars will consume more energy than cars with drivers Isaac Arnsdorf writes in a
Bloomberg News report on a University of Michigan research study. He says the chief reason, they’d use more energy than conventional cars: more trips.

Mothers Big Rig Hits the Road

Mothers has announced the 2015 schedule for its trick truck’s tour. Check here for details: www.mothers.com/bigrig.

It appears from Karl Greenberg’s Marketing Daily report of the Indy Car – USA Today marketing agreement, that it is a win-win deal but not a native advertising, paid content arrangement. In return for providing the media company “special access to develop content around the sport and its races,” it gives the sport’s sponsors, “entry to USA Today’s Sports Media Group around advertising and IndyCar-themed special sections.” Close but different, maybe.

Brett Berk provides a different look at the Geneva Auto Show where the accent usually is on the glamour. His Men’s Journal piece highlights tech trends at this year’s gathering. . . . Also from the Geneva Auto Show, The Bold Ride Daily pictured two new concept tires from Goodyear: the BHO3 and the Triple Tube. The BHO3 is an idea that would help give electric cars better range, and the Triple Tube is a tire that would self-adjust its shape depending on the type of driving.

Goodyear Tires

Michael Karesh’s True Delta web site, www.truedelta.com that accumulates
actual drivers experience with their vehicles has added some new stats and graphs to report on reliability of brands and models over time. Karesh says, “The new features report the repair frequencies of 2009-2014 cars over the past five years. They’re set up so the repair frequencies are by the age of the car, with their “birthdays” set to March (about halfway through the model year). If the model years have all trended similarly, the lines would be nearly the same. They usually differ, though. If a line starts high then rapidly drops, this indicates some glitches early in a cars run. If the line starts low then starts shooting up at one point, this suggests good initial reliability, but an increasing number of problems after the inflection point. Sometimes there’s a blip in the line. This often indicates a specific problem common at a specific age, e.g. water pumps or fuel pumps that fail around age two, etc.” Used car buyers have found the graphs help when making their purchase
decision.