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CES: GM to open the dashboard to developers

At last year's Autoweek Design Forum, father of the iPod and Nest Labs co-founder Tony Fadell suggested that automakers concentrate on designing and building cars, leaving handset makers to handle infotainment. The latest announcements from Ford and GM -- in conjunction with the International CES -- suggest that automakers would rather treat the dashboard space as a handset. Yesterday, Dearborn, Mich., announced the Ford Developer Program, which opens up Sync to outside application development; now General Motors has announced a similar initiative.

What's different about electric cars this time? A column by Kevin A. Wilson

Thirteen years after the General Motors EV1 was rolled out to cheers from advocates of a revolution in the way we power automobiles, those same advocates are out front cheerleading yet another revival of an idea as old as the automobile itself: Run 'em on batteries. Batteries aren't a source of energy. They're just storage units, a convenient means of making power portable.

Camaro, Sonic fill the Chevrolet stand at SEMA

Custom Camaro and Sonic models lead the way at the Chevroletstand at SEMA this year, with a green electroluminescent Hot Wheels Camaro leading the pack. The paint on the Hot Wheels car was not actually plugged in to an electrical source to make it glow so bright, but it sure seemed like it was. The idea was to get the same metallic finish that shined on the first 1:64 scale Hot Wheels Camaro, one of the original 16 die-casts that debuted from Mattel in 1968.