Iraqi officials say a car bomb has exploded at a funeral in Baghdad, killing at least 35 people, VOA reports. The blast Thursday in a mainly Shi’ite area of the capital also wounded at least 65 others.
Posts Tagged ‘car’
Chasing cars
January 21st, 2011 |
No Comments
News that the French Gendarmerie Nationale is to kit itself out with the rather sporty Megane RS model reminds me of a time I spent in the back of a Paris police car.
I hasten to add it wasn’t my fault. I’d been er, done over by a group of ne’er-do-wells after taking the wrong fork in the Metro en route to Charles-de-Gaulle airport – not a mistake I’ll be making again.
Anyway, after being involuntarily relieved of my passport, phone and work items, two gendarmes found me and asked incredulously what I was doing in such a tough neighbourhood – a stone’s throw from the Stade de France.
Kindly they said they would take me to the airport after going to the station to give a statement – and sort out how I was going to get home without a passport – but as we were driving – a Peugeot 308 from recollection – the car in front jumped the lights leading our driver to put his siren on and give chase.
I held on avoiding the CS gas canister that was rolling about as the police Peugeot tore ahead – reflecting that 20min ago I should have checked in. After stopping the speedster and calling another patrol car, we went back to the station.
A few minutes after we were there, a fire engine roared up and several ‘pompiers’ dragged out some more individuals who were clearly not best pleased with the turn of events.
That will be – hopefully – my one and only experience of French police – although these were the smart, cap-wearing variety. At the Paris Motor Show last autumn, there must have been nearly 20 vans loaded with the CRS variety in their paramilitary uniforms as President Sarkozy arrived for a visit. Not to be messed with.
Car set on fire in Kosovska Mitrovica
January 21st, 2011 |
No Comments
Unidentified persons torched a car on Thursday evening in northern Kosovska Mitrovica, said reports. Regional spokesperson of the Kosovo police, KPS, Besim Hoti, told Tanjug that the incident occurred in the vicinity of the Faculty of Economics, adding that unidentified persons threw a Molotov cocktail on a parked vehicle owned by a Kosovo Serb, a security worker at the Faculty.
Car parking systems making life easier Posted By : Scott Allerdice
January 18th, 2011 |
No Comments
The modern car parking systems may use barcode, magnetic stripe or chip coin system.
Range anxiety – has the realisation yet to dawn?
January 17th, 2011 |
No Comments
This BBC report summarises the difficulties at the heart of the electric car proposition. There’s just no getting away from it: low range between battery charges will put people off of pure electric vehicles, at least in terms of replacing a typical one-car-does-all household’s vehicle.
The BBC journalist’s London-Edinburgh run in a Mini E highlights the problems associated with both low range and range anxiety. Despite his parting shot that the car successfully made it, you’d be mad to attempt such a journey in an electric car recharging as you go – it took him almost four days. Pure EVs will have a place in the market, but you wouldn’t use one for a journey like that if you had to rely on charging the battery along the way. A trip of several hundred miles would obviously suit a conventional vehicle or, dare I say it, a train or plane. The pure EV will find a niche in an urban setting or as a low daily mileage second car.
That will probably mean, in practice, reliance on domestic charging, but with users also prepared to do slightly longer journeys where they can leave the car’s battery to recharge – say, while they go shopping or at a place of work. A battery charging infrastructure will get some use (though I wonder how much…) and is also important to offer some peace of mind to EV users.
But these are clearly niche market vehicles and when it comes to journeys of several hundred miles, a pure EV just isn’t quite the ticket. I just wonder whether people who say ‘yes, I’ll have an electric car please, especially given the rising price of petrol’, will be as keen when they consider the occasional need for a longer journey than their daily average (in exceptional circumstances) and the premium they are paying on purchase price. It boils down to this: just how big is the car using segment for whom the EV really works and are there enough customers to go round – fleet and retail?
(And the media should be looking at how pure electric vehicles work in their planned market settings rather than unrealistic journeys like that one…I think I can see the shape of the Volt/Ampera ‘range anxiety busting’ BBC report later this year already…)
Electric car challenge: Arrival in Edinburgh
just-auto management briefing EV battery charging networks and roll-out issues
Amtek up on surge in China car sales
January 14th, 2011 |
No Comments
Shares of Amtek Engineering (AMEL.SI), which manufactures precision engineering, plastic and rubber components, rose as much as 6.1% on Friday as investors were bullish that the firm would benefit from China’s buoyant car market.
At 3:08 p.m., Amtek shares were up 3.8% at $1.37 on a volume of 9.1 million shares. The broader Straits Times Index <.FTSTI> was down 0.3%.
A crowded car industry: From Big Three to Magnificent Seven
January 13th, 2011 |
No Comments
America’s carmakers are back. A posse of tough competitors is waiting for them
FOR the past two years the Detroit motor show has been a dismal affair. But this year the parties were in full swing again. Helped by government bail-outs and with debt burdens lightened by bankruptcy, Chrysler and GM are back on their feet; Ford, the other member of Detroit’s Big Three, is thriving. It took America’s car industry 20 years and a world war to recover the three-quarters of production wiped out by the 1929 crash. By comparison, the aftermath of the latest recession has been surprisingly comfortable.
Ominously for the locals, though, the biggest splash on opening day was made by a Volkswagen saloon, which is to be built in a new factory in Tennessee. Europe’s best big carmaker is taking aim at the heart of the American market for the first time in over 20 years. Its bold move is just one sign of growing fragmentation in a market once dominated by the Big Three and a small clutch of Japanese rivals. …
Einstein and car batteries: A spark of genius
January 13th, 2011 |
No Comments
Without the magic of relativity, a car’s starter motor would not turn
ALBERT EINSTEIN never learned to drive. He thought it too complicated and in any case he preferred walking. What he did not know—indeed, what no one knew until now—is that most cars would not work without the intervention of one of his most famous discoveries, the special theory of relativity.
Special relativity deals with physical extremes. It governs the behaviour of subatomic particles zipping around powerful accelerators at close to the speed of light and its equations foresaw the conversion of mass into energy in nuclear bombs. A paper in Physical Review Letters, however, reports a more prosaic application. According to the calculations of Pekka Pyykko of the University of Helsinki and his colleagues, the familiar lead-acid battery that sits under a car’s bonnet and provides the oomph to get the engine turning owes its ability to do so to special relativity. …
Peter Fonda Found Dead Body In Car
January 13th, 2011 |
No Comments
Yikes! Cops in Los Angeles are scratching their heads after a dead body turned up in a car belonging to Hollywood veteran Peter Fonda. Sergeant Carlton Cook at the West Los Angeles Community Police Station says the 3:10 to Yuma actor called 911 on Wednesday after he got into his car — which had been [...]
Two dead in car crash in central Serbia
January 9th, 2011 |
No Comments
Two persons died and one was seriously injured in last night’s car crash at the Ibar highway near the town of Ušće.
Driver of Volkswagen Golf Milivoje Gajović (51) and his ten-year-old daughter Milica were killed, while his 15-year-old son Radovan was seriously injured.
Withings Blood Pressure monitor, Speakal offers new docks, Oxygen Audio car docks
January 5th, 2011 |
No Comments
Withings has unveiled a new medical gadget for the iPhone that allows the tracking and monitoring of blood pressure. The iPhone has an app for storing readings and the cuff plugs into the sync port of the iPhone. Speakal has unveiled a new line of speaker and alarm clock docks for the iPhone and other [...]
3 dead in car crash in central Serbia
January 1st, 2011 |
No Comments
A woman and two men in their early twenties died after midnight this morning in a traffic accident near ÄŒaÄak in central Serbia, said reports. The victims’ Renault Cleo passenger car first hit a tree and then plunged into the Velika Morava River.
Lesbian Car Ad Banned In Italy
December 21st, 2010 |
No Comments
Public relations hotshots swear by the phrase “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But an European automobile manufacturer is questioning that adage after one of its ads. which features two lesbians hooking up at a party, was branded obscene and banned in Italy earlier this month. Italian TV chiefs are refusing to broadcast the [...]
Kragujevac: First Fiat test car in late 2011
December 19th, 2010 |
No Comments
Reconstruction of the Fiat factory in Kragujevac will be completed in the first half of 2011, Fiat automobili Srbija Director Giovanni de Filippis said Sunday.
He added that the first test car for the new Fiat model would be produced by the end of next year.
Hamilton impressed by 2011 McLaren Formula One car
December 2nd, 2010 |
No Comments
Former Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton has said that he is impressed by next year”s McLaren Formula One car. The 2008 world champ gave his verdict after jumping into the “cockpit” of the new MP4-26 for a virtual test on the Woking team”s simulator, The Sun reports. He had several tweaks to try out, including [...]
Car set on fire in northern K. Mitrovica
November 29th, 2010 |
No Comments
A car belonging to a Kosovo Serb was set on fire in the northern part of the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica on Monday morning . Another vehicle which was parked nearby was also damaged.
Woods’ mistresses ‘to celebrate 1yr anniversary of his infamous car crash’
November 26th, 2010 |
No Comments
Three of Tiger Woods’ alleged mistresses Jamie Jungers, Joslyn James, Holly Sampson are having a “Reunion” cocktail party to mark the golfer’s infamous car crash that led to his divorce with Elin Nordegren. According to RadarOnline, the party will be held at Zin Bistro in a Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village on December 3. [...]
Nov. 24, 1903: Starting Your Car Gets a Bit Easier
November 24th, 2010 |
No Comments
1903: Clyde J. Coleman is issued a patent for an electric automobile starter.
Coleman originally applied for the patent in 1899, but his early designs proved impractical. The need for this kind of starter for an internal combustion engine was obvious. Automobiles were getting larger, and hand-cranking — the method used to get the pistons moving [...]
Stripper with a satellite dish
November 22nd, 2010 |
No Comments
Three days in LA on the way back from my native Antipodean land necessitated a rental car so to the land of Alamo I went. “Take any compact in the line” translated into two white Chevy Cobalts, only one of which had an ignition key, or a pleasant blue coloured Hyundai Accent so I went Korean for the duration.
Both the sedan body style and what one UK magazine memorably referred to as ‘hearing aid beige’ interior would be non-starters for the UK as would the entry-level specification which results in DIY locks, mirrors and windows when electric everything seems to be standard on just about everything over here these days.
But the Accent started on the key, got me everywhere I needed to go on the city’s overcrowded freeways and had some nice automated touches such as a sensor than only activates the passenger airbag if someone is in the seat and a four-speed automatic that automatically selects an economy mode when justified. The little 1.6 had just enough grunt to scurry up freeway onramps without being run over by a Hummer but the car – GS spec – could have done with a bit more sound insulation to ‘ush the mechanical noise and tyre roar on those concrete roads.
The bit I liked, didn’t expect in a ‘stripper’ and didn’t discover until my second drive, was the XM satellite radio, the first time I’ve tried this in a car. I lost count of the channels – seemed to be loads of sport options – but appreciated a fine mix of jazz varieties, 60s and 70s music and a traffic/weather channel devoted to LA, and all without the interminable ads that blight the city’s FM channels.
Hardly an option one expects to find in the lowliest line at the rental lot.
This week, the return from lands of blue sky, sun and warmth to one of grey, drizzle and freezing has been tempered by the arrival of a BMW 520d Touring wagon to play with. More on that when I stop drooling…
“Mad Men’s†Vincent Kartheiser: No Car, No Meat, No Kids…No Toilet?!
November 19th, 2010 |
No Comments
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Sorry Leonardo DiCaprio, there’s a new uber-hippie in Hollywood. Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser is our new green-living hero. On Wednesday, the actor dropped by MSNBC in celebration of “Green Week” to chat about how he’s able to live car-free in Los Angeles, a [...]