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The automaker recently settled a lawsuit over emissions cheating Fiat Chrysler has become the latest automaker to turn its back on diesel-powered engines as more of the industry pivots to battery-electric vehicles. According to the Financial Times, the Italian-American carmaker will end production of its diesel passenger vehicles by 2022. FCA, which manufacturers Jeep, Dodge, Ram, Chrysler, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat, will unveil its four-year plan to phase out diesel vehicles on June 1st, the Times says. A spokesperson declined to comment. "Diesel has been falling out of favor" Diesel has long been promoted by governments and carmakers as...

This illustration shows the formation of complex ion clusters during the cycling of a lithium-sulfur battery cell. The clusters consist of cationic polymer binders, battery electrolyte, and anionic sulfur-active materials. Credit: Berkeley Lab _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lithium-sulfur batteries are promising candidates for replacing common lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles since they are cheaper, weigh less, and can store nearly double the energy for the same mass. However, lithium-sulfur batteries become unstable over time, and their electrodes deteriorate, limiting widespread adoption. Now, a team of researchers led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported...

New Honda Accord a major step backwards - and that's a good thing!By Jim BrayTechnoFile.comIt may not be back completely but, as evidenced by the newly redesigned 2018 Honda Accord, it looks as if the honoured Japanese carmaker is back on track. Or at least well on the way.I've been particularly vociferous about my Honda angst in recent years. The company makes terrific cars - and they still do, for the most part - but somewhere along the way between adding all the new drivers' aids and pursuing ever more strict fuel economy mandates the company seemed to lose its...

Stanford University researcher used a computer algorithm to determined whether a neighborhood leaned to the left or right by looking at vehicles in 50 millions of images from Google Street View in 200 American cities. When sedans outnumbered pickup trucks, there was an 88 percent chance the city would vote Democratic. In areas with more pickup trucks, the odds switched to 82 percent in favor of Republicans, the researchers concluded.

Lamborghini has created the world's first self-healing sports car. The Terzo Millennio, which translates as third millennium in Italian, has the ability to detect and repair cracks in its body work. Using sensors the car can conduct its own health check to detect any damages and self-repair itself by filling the crack with nanotubes to prevent it spreading. The super car was created in collaboration with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. ... The all-electric car is powered by supercapacitors rather than conventional batteries. ... Each of the car's wheels includes its own integrated electric engine...

A self-driving car is not a self-driving car is not a self-driving car. That is the message Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, tried to send on Monday, when it invited a group of reporters to visit Castle, a facility in California’s Central Valley that it has been using as a training course for its self-driving vehicles. Castle, which is built on a decommissioned Air Force base roughly 120 miles from San Francisco, resembles a miniature city, with many of the realistic elements a self-driving car might encounter on the road — like cul-de-sacs, traffic signals...

Jaguar Land Rover will make all its new vehicles available in electric or hybrid models from 2020, it said on Thursday, two months after a similar announcement from Volvo. The JLR group is the latest carmaker to embrace the move away from internal combustion engines in the wake of stricter government proposals after the Paris climate accord. "We will introduce a portfolio of electrified products across our model range, embracing fully electric, plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid vehicles," JLR chief executive Ralf Speth said. Sweden's Volvo is also moving away from internal combustion engines, announcing in July that it plans...

A new car engine will eventually come on the scene. This week's car watching sites have reacted to Tuesday's announcement from Mazda with interest. At a time when the total focus appears to be on electric cars as our driving future, Mazda is ushering in a type of car engine that they call Skyactiv-X. The Hiroshima, Japan-datelined Tuesday announcement from Mazda said it is introducing the world's "first commercial gasoline engine to use compression ignition." Reuters quoted what Mazda R&D head Kiyoshi Fujiwara told reporters. "We think it is an imperative and fundamental job for us to pursue the ideal...

IBM scientists recently discovered that a drop of oil doesn't look like a drop at all if it is small, to the scale of one billionth of a billionth of a liter, or attoliter. Rather, a nanoscale oil droplet looks more like a flat film against a solid surface. This discovery reveals that the simulation tools and techniques commonly employed by the oil industry do not take into account the increased energy required to extract these oil molecules. And it results in 60 percent or more of a well's oil being left behind, for example, in the nanoscale capillaries of...

DETROIT - President Donald Trump is set to visit the Detroit area on Wednesday. The White House said the President will be making remarks at the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti. READ: President Trump expected to discuss fuel economy during Michigan visit Air Force One is scheduled to arrive at Detroit Metro Airport about 12:15 p.m. Wednesday. Trump is expected to make remarks at the American Center for Mobility about 2:20 p.m.

There are huge, heavy duty machines, this one in New Jersey, that can turn the largest of cars into tiny pieces of recyclable scrap metal. When you're watching this process, it's as if the machine is giving birth to a car. It's truly a sight to behold.

I want to replace the broken driver's seat in our Monte Carlo. Need help - mostly just info.

In the history of data from The Fed, this has never happened before... Aggregate Auto Loan volume actually fell last week... And less loans means one simple thing... less sales (because prices have never been higher and no one is paying cash)... Which is a major problem since motor vehicle production continues to rise as management is blindly belieiving the Hillbama narrative that everything is (and will be) awesome. The problem is... inventories are already at near record highs relative to sales (which are anything but plateauing)... In fact, the last time inventories were this high relative to sales, GM...

A University of Texas at Dallas researcher has made a discovery that could open the door to cellphone and car batteries that last five times longer than current ones. Dr. Kyeongjae Cho, professor of materials science and engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, has discovered new catalyst materials for lithium-air batteries that jumpstart efforts at expanding battery capacity. The research was published in Nature Energy. "There's huge promise in lithium-air batteries. However, despite the aggressive research being done by groups all over the world, those promises are not being delivered in real life," Cho said....

The race starts today 1-30-16 at 4 pm EST and ends tomorrow at the same time. Coverage at the web site or Fox Sports 1 Starting at 2 pm EST and switching to Fox Sports 2 at 4 pm EST. A very interesting race this year with the first race for the new Ford GT with two cars entered by Ford/Chip Gnassi Racing in the GTLM (GT Le Mans) class. In the Prototype class Scott Pruett is trying to break his tie with Hurley Haywood for most Daytona 24 overall wins where they each have 5 wins. A mix of...

Thanks to RobStark on the Tesla Motors Club forum, we've got news that the Tesla Model S was the #1 best-selling large luxury car (or "premium car," as some might prefer to call the class) in the United States in 2015. As we all know, Tesla doesn't report sales/deliveries by country. However, various outlets estimate Tesla sales using a variety of methods. EV Obsession estimated 26,566 Tesla Model S sales in the US in 2015. Rob notes that the lowest estimate was 24,200. In either case, the Model S outsold the Mercedes S-Class, the BMW 7-Series, the BMW 6-Series, the...

Bought a 2007 Subaru Forester 5K cash, 150K miles earlier this year against my better judgement--hubs was insistent it was reliable. They USED to be reliable. I had an 88 Justy that you couldn't kill. BTW I live in upstate NY with its harsh winters. Seems they now have major engine problems. Something I've found out the hard way. Any recommendations on a new car?

Within walking distance of Tesla Motors' Palo Alto headquarters and across the street from Hewlett-Packard, Ford Motor Co. has set up a new Silicon Valley outpost. With a team of 100 reporting to a former Apple engineer, the Detroit giant is researching how humans experience machines, running autonomous-vehicle driving simulations and testing software that examines how bicycles and cars interact. "For 100 years, automobiles have been a mechanical engineering industry," said the center's director, Dragos Maciuca, who on his morning commute drives past a nearby research center of German automotive electronics and parts supplier Bosch. "Now, there is the shift...

A Volkswagen Touareg diesel is tested in the Environmental Protection Agency's cold temperature test facility, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Volkswagen has disclosed to U.S. regulators that there's additional suspect software in its 2016 diesel models that would potentially help their exhaust systems run cleaner during government tests. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) **************************************************************************************************************************************** U.S. regulators say they have a lot more questions for Volkswagen, triggered by the company's recent disclosure of additional suspect software in 2016 diesel models that potentially would help exhaust systems run cleaner during government tests. That's more bad news for VW dealers looking for...

In the wake of the VW diesel scandal, German magazine Autobild found the Euro-market BMW X3 xDrive 20d also exceeds emissions limits by a significant amount. Volkswagen's unfolding diesel emissions crisis may prove to involve other automakers as well: German magazine Autobild reports that ​a German-market, diesel-powered BMW X3 xDrive 20d put out 11 times the legal limit of pollution in a test commissioned by the magazine. (Update below) Automotive News, which translated the Autobild report, explains that the BMW was tested by the International Council on Clean Transportation, the same group whose findings led U.S. regulators to investigate Volkswagen's...