Walker 50053 Muffler on 2040-parts.com

2014 Ford Mondeo testing autonomous driving technologies (video)

The Ford Fusion with its LIDAR ears allowing autonomous driving Car makers are starting to take self-driving, autonomous cars very seriously, and we’ve recently seen Mercedes testing their autonomous driving S-Class in Berlin, Volvo planning a big trial of 100 self-driving cars in Gothenberg and Tesla planning systems that will do 90 per cent of your driving within 3 years. Now it’s Ford’s turn. Ford has equipped a Fusion Hybrid (that’s the North American version of the new Ford Mondeo we still haven’t got in the UK) with its autonomous vehicle technology to conduct research in partnership with the University of Michigan and State Farm (a big group of insurance companies in the US). The test Fusion gets a system called LIDAR (light detection and range – the funny looking ears on the top of the Fusion in the picture above) which can scan the road ahead up to 2.5 million times a second and create a 3D map of the surroundings.

New Toyota Avenis (2012) at Frankfurt plus new Prius family and 2012 Yaris

2012 Toyota Avensis - teased ahead of Frankfurt 2011 As Frankfurt draws close its Toyota’s turn to reveal their 2011 offerings at the show, which will include the 2012 facelift Toyota Avensis. The new Avensis is the only Toyota at Frankfurt we haven’t already seen, and Toyota hasn’t done much more than send us the teaser photo you see at the top. But we do know Toyota re claiming the 2012 Avensis is the ‘Most expensive mid-life facelift’ they have ever undertaken.

Volkswagen e-Up makes some noise

NOW HERE’S a left-field solution to the problem of silent electric cars going unnoticed by pedestrians in town. Volkswagen has taken its new e-Up electric city car to Stockholm, fitted with hidden speakers, a microphone and a beatbox artist, Fatih Sahin, on the rear bench seat. And they filmed it.