Autonomous racing company Roborace demonstrated their latest technology for the crowd at the 2018 Festival of Speed. Read the rest

Mike Prichinello co-founded Classic Car Club in Manhattan, which recently moved into a beautiful new space. Mauricio Mochon shot some of the gorgeous cars on display. Read the rest

At first I was disappointed that the Mystery Machine and Knight 2000 weren't invited but then I realized they were probably on a separate TV star car field trip.

All of these iconic autos and many more are available for rental from Movie Cars Central in France.

(via r/pics) Read the rest

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) posted this video of a batshit driver near Canal Winchester, Ohio. Amazingly, there were no collisions. "Don't be that driver," says ODOT.

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Well, this should soften Elon Musk’s opinions about journalism: According to Engadget, Musk’s electric car-making baby, Tesla Motors, has had to return almost one quarter of the pre-order money it received from its American customers for the company’s delayed Tesla Model 3.

From Engadget:

Tesla raked in hundreds of thousands of pre-orders for its Model 3 after it unveiled the vehicle in 2016, but a report from analytics firm Second Measure shows that a good chunk of US pre-orders have since been refunded. As of April, the company's analysis shows that 23 percent of those who placed a pre-order in the US have had their $1,000 deposit refunded. A Tesla spokesperson told Recode that Second Measure's findings didn't match the automaker's own numbers, but declined to say by how much they were off. However, last August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that 12 percent of reservations had been cancelled at the time – data that aligned with Second Measure's analysis.

Engadget’s Mallory Locklear reckons that the rampant production delays associated with the Model 3’s production are a viable culprit for the refund requests. That said, buying any new car, let alone a premium ride like the ones that Tesla offers, is an expensive undertaking. A person’s fortunes can turn pretty quickly within the space of a few months. Having the money to be able plunk down a grand to reserve the right to purchase a new car back then doesn’t translate into being flush enough to seal the deal now. Read the rest

"I can't be the only person who saw the sparks and thought this," writes Barry Dennen, "so apologies if it's been done already."

It has not only been done, but it will be done again forever! Read the rest

Crazy Carts are souped-up electric go-karts with rear wheels like the ones on the front of shopping carts. Some goofballs decided to turn a real car into a Crazy Cart by replacing the rear tires with caster wheels. Read the rest

Edwin Olding hacked together a Barbie Power Wheels Ford Mustang chassis with an old go-kart frame and a customized Honda dirt bike engine. This hot pink whip now races at 70 mph. From The Drive:

Olding told The Drive, "I wanted to find the cutest Barbie Power Wheels car online and turn it into a drift kart."

With the miniature Mustang's tiny electric motor and plastic tires, that would not be an easy task. Instead of trying to boost the Power Wheels' weak performance, Olding decided to chop out everything that wasn't the car's outer shell and drop that onto a pre-built go-kart found on Craigslist. That, however, presented its own problems. The kart's frame couldn't fit into the Mustang's 36-inch wheelbase, so it had to be cut down and welded back together.

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YouTuber euverus modded Cities: Skylines to demonstrate how 30 different types of intersections have dramatically different amounts of traffic flow. A four-way intersection with no traffic lights gets a flow of 191 vehicles per minute, where a stack interchange can handle 1099 vehicles in the same time frame.

The mods used, Traffic Manager: President Edition and Network Extensions 2, are both available for free on Steam.

The big surprise for me was the roundabout, because we rarely have them in the Midwest or the West Coast. They seemed like a lot of extra space needed for an incremental benefit, but it appears they can be more efficient and safer, even weird ones.

• Traffic flow measured on 30 different 4-way junctions (YouTube / euverus) Read the rest

YouTuber JerryRigEverything had a chance to fire some bullets at a bullet-proof car. The physics are interesting to watch as the energy disperses into the materials in slow motion. Read the rest

This commentary titled Never Just A Car is a nice montage of iconic cars in films, making it fun to guess the film as each car whizzes by. Read the rest

Deep-sky photographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo did the calculations, then managed to catch footage of Starman and the Tesla Roadster that were launched via the Falcon Heavy rocket. Read the rest

This week's most widely-lifted viral image is this delight from a car owner whose vanity plate, "Cruz Fan," has evidently led to embarassing misapprehensions in our new golden age of loony conservatives in government. I have no idea who the owner or the photographer were, sadly. I would love to credit both the particle and the observer for generating this tiny quantum of joy. Read the rest

Some of these near-misses would probably have been catastrophic and unavoidable without predictive autopilot. Read the rest

On Sunday night, Orange County Fire Authority tweeted images from Santa Ana, California of a car that hit a center divider and flew into the air before embedding itself in the second floor of a building. Amazingly, both people in the car only suffered "minor injuries."

DASH CAM VIDEO: Bus barely misses getting hit by a car that went airborne and crashes into 2nd floor of a Santa Ana dental office. We showed you surveillance of 2 near misses, including this bus. Now, a look from the bus driver's view. @nbcla @KHOLMESlive pic.twitter.com/WiMCXr0RF4

— Christine Kim (@ChristineNBCLA) January 16, 2018

OCFA in Santa Ana with a vehicle that crashed into the second floor of a small Office building. The vehicle hit the center divider and went airborne and landed into the building. One person self extricated, the other person is still trapped in the vehicle. USAR from OCFA On scene pic.twitter.com/Lm5b4oyCIm

— OCFA PIO (@OCFA_PIO) January 14, 2018

OCFA in Santa Ana of a vehicle that crashed into the building. The fire was quickly extinguished, both victims are out of the vehicle safely with minor injuries. Members from OCFA & LA COUNTY Urban Search & Rescue teams are removing the vehicle from the building. pic.twitter.com/x29WvTkNGk

— OCFA PIO (@OCFA_PIO) January 14, 2018

Unbelievable new surveillance video shows a car hitting a median and launching into the second story of a Santa Ana dentist office. Driver and passenger transported with minor injuries. @NBCLA @ChristineNBCLA pic.twitter.com/Yw4poZXUNR

— Kenny Holmes (@KHOLMESlive) January 15, 2018

Runaway Match, aka Marriage by Motor, a 1903 silent film directed by Alfred Collins, features the first car chase in a movie. For a directory of movie car chases, zoom on over to VARACES: the Car Chase Community.

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Bravo, sir.

(via DIGG)

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