Transportation

I'm a devotee of the Yacht Rock school of sailing, which means smooth music from the late 1970s with plenty of cocktails. Worrying about winds, sandbars, and fuel supplies is someone else's job.

I'm nearly useless as a crew member, but at least I can provide some ballast. That's why I'm hoping to sail the seas aboard a superyacht one day.

These ultra-luxurious vessels are enormous and enormously expensive. They're private mini cruise ships with the amenities of five-star hotels, and although the market for these floating gin palaces took a serious beating with the 2008 financial crisis, there are signs it's cruising back to life. … Read more

Designers and makers have been busy imagining uses for 3D printers, ranging from casts to houses to duck feet. Vehicle designer Nir Siegel doesn't just want to 3D-print cars, he wants them to assemble themselves.

Siegel's Genesis concept would involve the delivery of a specialized 3D printer to a car buyer. The printer would then print out a car all around itself to match the buyer's specifications.… Read more

A Tesla fan is asking the White House for help. He wants the federal government to stop states from requiring that cars be sold only by third-party dealers.

In a White House petition he created, the fan asks the Obama administration to "allow Tesla Motors to sell directly to consumers in all 50 states." He believes that states shouldn't be allowed to stop the electric car company from selling autos directly to customers.

"The state legislators are trying to unfairly protect automobile dealers in their states from competition," the fan writes in the petition. "… Read more

When Britain's Salon Prive luxury car fair opens in September, visitors will get a chance to gawk at the Vencer Sarthe, a new hand-built supercar from the Netherlands. We're already planning to sneak in.

The Sarthe is one of many ridiculously crushworthy cars we wish we could afford, along with our recent fantasizing about $8 million gold speakers, luxury timepieces, and diamond-encrusted tablets and smartphones.

The Sarthe was named after the Circuit de la Sarthe course, a famed venue of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. It has a 510-horsepower, 8-cylinder engine; six-speed manual gearbox; and a top speed of 202 mph. It can do 0 to 62 mph in 3.8 seconds. … Read more

Which is faster: changing a battery in Tesla's Model S sports sedan or filling up a car's gas tank?

The electric automaker put that question to the test in a Fast Pack Swap Event captured on video Thursday.

Posted on Vimeo, the video revs up with Tesla CEO Elon Musk touting that owners of the Model S will face two choices when their car's battery is almost depleted. At a Tesla station, they can either have the battery recharged for free or have it swapped out for another battery. The choice, according to Musk, is whether you … Read more

The road to becoming one of the innovators of American manufacturing wasn't always smooth for Henry Ford.

Ford tried and failed many times before establishing the Ford Motor Company -- which proved to have some longevity -- and producing the Model A, which first came off the assembly line 110 years ago this week. In a coincidence of round numbers, it was also 150 years ago this July that Henry Ford was born.

Fighting a poor public perception of motor-driven carriages in the 1890s, Ford captured the public's attention by racing his cars, setting records, and engaging a … Read more

Imagine a souped-up Google Glass built into a motorcycle or bicycle helmet that superimposes information and directions in front of your eyes as you speed down a highway or move through a congested downtown area.

LiveMap, a startup based in Moscow, is developing a motorcycle helmet with a head-mounted display, built-in navigation, and Siri-like voice recognition. The helmet will have a translucent, color display that's projected on the visor in the center of the field of vision, and a custom user interface, English language-only at launch, based on Android.

Unlike visor-mounted heads-up displays, which have been available for a … Read more

The solar-powered Solar Impulse is on its way to the nation's capital -- with a slight layover in Cincinnati.

The plane took off from Lambert-St.Louis International Airport early Friday morning with Solar Impulse co-founder and CEO André Borschberg at the controls. But before heading all the way to Washington, the Solar Impulse will make a pit stop at Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport to avoid "challenging weather."

"The flight will be split in two because strong cross and head winds would slow the aircraft and make it impossible for the pilot to reach the nation'… Read more

Pigs may not be flying yet, but a bicycle just recently took to the air in a successful test flight. The flying electric bike is the creation of several Czech companies that have been developing a prototype. The proof-of-concept bicycle looks a bit like a regular bike crossed with a giant RC quadcopter.

The unusual vehicle demonstrated its chops with a flight that lasted a few minutes, carrying a dummy onboard. It was radio-controlled from the ground. The 220-pound bike got off the ground thanks to six battery-powered propellers. This is enough to spark dreams of peddling down the road and then suddenly taking off to fly over obstacles or impress strangers.… Read more