Monthly Archives February 2015

Self-driving car is no more a sci-fi term these days, a handful of auto makers have already been working on it for a while. One famous example is the Mercedes-Benz F015 concept which was debuted during last month’s 2015 CES in Las Vegas.

Volvo is another auto maker that has been actively pursue this technology. Today it announced its own autonomous driving technology, called the “Drive Me project“.

Basically speaking, Volvo’s Drive Me technology is NOT something that you pick point A and point B and then the car will automatically send you to the destination...

The Aston Martin V12 Vantage is one of the cars in US markets that are still using a V12 engine. Yesterday, Aston Martin announced a special edition based on the V12 Vantage: The Vantage GT3.

By its name the Vantage GT3 is track-ready. Aston Martin replaced the exterior with carbon fiber panels in some car body sections (for example: front fenders, hood and doors etc.); interior also received similar treatments. All these efforts result in a 200+ lbs weight reduction compared to the standard V12 Vantage.

The Vantage GT3 also has engine upgrades...

What is “Mille Miglia”? – It is an Italian open-road endurance race which was held from 1927 to 1957. Mercedes-Benz had won this race twice in history (1931: SSK and also 1955: 300 SLR).

Today Mercedes announced a special edition of the SL550, to commemorate the 1955 Mille Miglia winning. This special edition is named “Mille Miglia 417”. Here, the number “417” means the race car’s start time (4:17 am). For the Mille Miglia racing, cars did not start at the same time; instead they started the trip in different time intervals (smaller displacement/slower cars started first)...

When talking about electric vehicles, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is definitely not a newbie in the market.

In fact, JLR has mastered the latest electric powertrain technologies 5 years ago: back in the 2010 Paris motor show, Jaguar has debuted the C-X75 plug-in concept, which uses 4 electric motors to drive the 4 wheels respectively. The power comes from a battery pack. One very distinct feature of the C-X75 is: the battery pack is charged by two gas turbine engine (something similar to the turboprop engine on airplanes).

Above Image: the Jaguar C-X75 Concept

With Tesla’s success in the past few years, plus the recent news that Porsche is going to produce an EV sports car,...

Two days ago Audi showed us a teaser image of the new 2016 R8’s headlights. Although Audi has not officially publish the detail spec, today we managed to get some preliminary numbers and details.

Here are the highlights:

– No V8 engine during initial product launch
– 5.2L V10 Plus trim: 610hp@8,150RPM, 413 lb-ft torque@6,500RPM
– 5.2L V10 trim: 540hp@8,000RPM, 398 lb-ft torque@6,500RPM
– 7-speed S-Tronic dual clutch transmission
– No manual transmission
– Quattro AWD (electro-hydraulically multi-plate clutch center differential, not the viscous coupling type in the current R8)
– V10 Plus 0-62mph: 3.2s; top speed: 205mph
– Standard tire size: 235/35ZR19 (front), 295/30 ZR...