Raytheon Chartplotter Rc530 on 2040-parts.com

Interior Motives Design Awards 2013 launched

Registration for the eleventh Interior Motives Student Design Awards has now opened. This is your chance to take part in one of the most important events on the design calendar, and to display your talent and fresh thinking to the world's top vehicle designers and automotive press. The theme of this year's competition is ‘The Connected Car'.

Like it or not, autonomous cars are here -- almost

One of the odder things about living in "the future" is that things develop so gradually, hardly any of the really amazing things we're exposed to every day seem amazing or futuristic. If the iPhone had just appeared from nowhere in 2007, there would have been riots, demonstrations and legislation. But since we had a Blackberry first, and dedicated cellphones before that, the iPhone and its progeny were never quite shocking.

The Petersen Museum isn't going belly up

I hate writing columns like this, the kind where one media outlet calls out another's mistakes. There but for the grace of God go I and all that… But the shrieking and hysteria over the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles going to hell in a handbasket -- that's what the LA Times reported -- is over the top, and it's turned into a fiasco. Here's the background.