Harley Davidson 2007 Flhx Street Glide Ignition Coil on 2040-parts.com

The Porsche P1 is lighter, greener and more exclusive than McLaren's new hypercar

Long before the legendary Porsche 911 -- before, even, the Porsche 356 -- Ferdinand Porsche was tinkering with alternative powertrains and designing road-worthy vehicles. Though it wasn't the first vehicle to bear his name, the “Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model” was the earliest result of his efforts. Perhaps getting the jump on the modern alpha-numeric craze/plague, it was shortened to a simple “P1.” The P1 (we'll refer to it as the Porsche P1 from here on out to avoid confusion) made its first appearance in Vienna on June 26, 1898, and it didn't last long in the public eye: Before Porsche decided to pull it out and put it on display, it had reportedly been sitting in a warehouse, untouched, since 1902.

New VW Golf BlueMotion: Paris 2012

Volkswagen has revealed the MK 7 version of the Golf Bluemotion in Paris, offering 88.3mpg and 85g/km emissions. Volkswagen are billing the Golf BlueMotion as a concept, but it’s heading for production and is expected to offer the same emissions and economy figures as the BlueMotion Concept – 88.3mpg and 85g/km. That makes it 15 per cent more efficient than the outgoing BlueMotion.

How Google's autonomous car navigates city streets

Google's self-driving car has been on the road for five years now, at various levels of autonomy. From the ease and relative serenity of California's arrow-straight highways, the car drove hundreds of thousands of miles with a greater level of concentration and mastery than the wandering attention spans of humans could accomplish. In 2012, Google shifted from the freeways to the cities, navigating a far more convoluted set of challenges: the slow-speed chaos that comes with any city, any suburb, any place with people and cars in it.