cars

Soon you'll never have to leave your car while on business out of town. Starting in March, Avis will make any one of its rentals a potential Wi-Fi hot spot using a service from a San Francisco-based start-up called Autonet Mobile.

For $10.95 a day, according to The Raw Feed, customers can rent a portable "In-Car-Router" that provides wireless high-speed Net access. The main challenge will be dropped signals, which have bedeviled other mobile access products, but Autonet told the International Herald Tribune that it has overcome that problem with a new "wireless router" … Read more

If you think you need one of Novomax's "Bluetooth Soundstations," you're spending far too much time on the phone while behind the wheel. According to the product description on its Web site, the car kit "displays caller ID, battery status, phone book downloading, etc." (We can only speculate what the "etc." stands for. Doing laundry?)

It's frightening that some people would find the need to have all this information constantly within their line of sight while they're supposed to have their eyes on the road. And as if that's … Read more

The winner is: Volkswagen's GTI. Automobile magazine may be published in Michigan, but it picked the VW GTI as its Automobile of the Year for 2007. Here's what our CNET car tech editors thought about the 2006 GTI.

Automobile's site won't have this information until January 7, but it released the winner's name on CNBC TV today. Its pick for best design? 2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage. Our editors got inside a V8 Vantage at the Los Angeles Auto Show, as you can see on this video. We'll be looking over the GTI, Vantage … Read more

Earlier this week we spoke with Microsoft, who confirmed that they would be partnering with Ford on a new in-car tech initiative some time in the New Year. Beyond that, Redmond was pretty tight-lipped, declining to comment further on what shape the partnership would take. Well, thanks to Engadget, we now have a clearer idea. According to an article published today, Ford and Microsoft are planning to announce the availability of the Blue&Me in the United States with coinciding announcements at CES and the Detroit Auto Show.

Apparently, the system "will have cross-platform smartphone support (i.e., … Read more

There's one thing that brings people together every holiday season, and we're not talking about the mall: It's car accidents. Bad weather, bad drivers, bad last-minute-shopping attitudes make for a deadly combination. So Crave is doing our part to spread cheery thoughts by passing along the "RoadBox."

This "vehicle accident camera system" from South Korea, according to Red Ferret, "incorporates a speed and acceleration monitor to give you some all round information about the circumstances leading up to the crash, 14 seconds before and 6 seconds after." It just goes to … Read more

Most people don't go out driving to make friends, but that's the philosophy behind a new (and extremely optimistic) social networking SMS service called PL8Scan, which enables cell phone-wielding drivers to contact other drivers by text message via the latter's license plate numbers.

Having signed up to PL8Scan, drivers who wish to initiate contact with other road users send a text message to a central repository using a five-digit number. In the message, the driver includes the license plate number of the intended recipient (including details of the state in which it is registered), as well as … Read more

All you Hemingway wannabes out there no longer have to freeze in the winter in your old drafty Defender. New, improved versions, resembling Papa's old British jeep, are finally on the way.

Rumors of a Land Rover Defender returning to the North American market are true. The car will be back in 2007 as a 2008 model. Soft-top, long-wheelbase and short-wheelbase versions are also "in the works," according to Atlantic British, which would probably know as the leading U.S. supplier of after-market parts for Land Rovers in the United States.

Land Rover wants to recreate the … Read more

Ford let us take one of its preproduction 2008 Escape Hybrids for a couple of days to get an early look at the next major upgrade for this little environmentally oriented SUV. This new generation of the Escape Hybrid brings its tech up to modern standards and is a big improvement over the 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid. Where the 2007 model had sporty lines, the 2008 upgrade looks much tougher. It has square indentations along the sides and rear bumper, fog lights molded into the front bumper that echo earlier Land Rovers, and high wheel arches. But it also has … Read more

Meet the Dolphin, a three-wheeled, two-seater concept car that carries driver and passenger in tandem configuration. The aerodynamic prototype (pictured left) weighs just 475 pounds, and relies on a 200cc Piaggio scooter engine. According to this article in the U.K.'s Telegraph, the Dolphin can reach speeds of more than 60mph and gets an average fuel economy of 90 miles per gallon.

While the Dolphin is still a concept, a tandem-style, three-wheeled, two-seater production vehicle is not that far off. Myers Motors is scheduled to launch its electric-powered Qui Moto (right)--a successor to the Corbin Sparrow and NmG … Read more