Free Republic

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is considering a plan that would impose new tariffs on imported vehicles on national-security grounds, according to industry officials briefed on broad outlines of the plan. President Donald Trump has already used a legal provision known as Section 232 to impose global tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and now the administration is considering starting a probe of imported cars under the same law, possibly applying tariffs at the end, the people said. Mr. Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of tariffs on auto imports in meetings. The plan remains in its early stages, and is likely...

Self-driving vehicles have been proposed as a solution for the rapidly increasing number of fatal traffic accidents, which now claim a staggering 1.3 million casualties each year. While we have made strides in advancing self-driving technology, we have yet to explore at length how autonomous vehicles will be programmed to deal with situations that endanger human life, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. To understand how self-driving cars might make these judgments, the researchers looked at how humans deal with similar driving dilemmas. When faced with driving dilemmas, people show a high willingness to sacrifice...

Ford's plan to reduce its passenger car lineup to just two models, and GM's difficulty selling passenger cars in the U.S. show how much tastes are drifting toward trucks, SUVs and crossovers. Ford will only update the Focus Active crossover and Mustang for the U.S. market, while GM called out a challenging passenger car environment. ====================================================================================================== So is it really the end of the American car on its home turf? From the way Detroit's major executives are talking, it would seem so. Ford said Wednesday it will only offer two new cars in North America over the coming years —...

As an innovator and early adopter of freeways, California became the symbolic capital of car culture. But the ease of movement conferred by the massive postwar freeway building boom was short-lived, turning the dream of car travel into a nightmare of congestion and long commutes. The story of how Californians went from getting around to getting stuck behind the wheel is deeply entwined with the history of the urban freeway, an enterprise that advanced earlier and on a larger scale here than anywhere else in the country. Half a century ago, there was reason for optimism about cars. Los Angeles...

The Trump administration is pursuing ways to protect domestic vehicle manufacturing by forcing imported cars to meet stricter environmental rules when entering the country, according to senior administration and industry officials, a move that would make imports more expensive. The cost of meeting the stiffer import standards would, at least in part, be passed along to U.S. consumers. This style of “nontariff barrier”—a protectionist stratagem the U.S. has long condemned in other countries—is designed to reduce the relative cost of cars manufactured in the U.S., by American workers, the officials said. Mr. Trump has asked the Environmental Protection Agency and...

Impaired Driving: Get the Facts Every day, 28 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This is one death every 51 minutes.1 The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $44 billion.2 Thankfully, there are effective measures that can help prevent injuries and deaths from alcohol-impaired driving.Every day, 28 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This is one death every 51 minutes.1 The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $44 billion.2 Thankfully, there are effective measures that can help prevent...

CNN and the Reagan administration were born in the same year. Presidencies have been partly a “reality show” ever since. The Donald Trump reality show this week turns to overhauling the Obama fuel-economy mandate. Let’s recall a few things about how those rules were born. Team Obama’s target of 54.5 miles per gallon, as a congressional investigation later found, was not the product of science and engineering but the White House’s desire for an impressive sounding “headline number.” (The decimal was apparently included to show the White House had a sense of humor.) So full of loopholes, credits (including for...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday took the Obama fuel economy rules off autopilot. This is good news for consumers, automakers and the U.S. economy, but the Trump Administration’s big test will be negotiating around the political potholes. Corporate average fuel economy (Cafe) standards are a vestige of the 1970s gas shortages. Like the Nixon-era price controls, the fuel standards were intended to reduce gas consumption. But the environmental left long ago hijacked the rules to impose their vision of an electric-car future. In 2012 the Obama EPA turned up the Cafe dial and mandated a fleetwide average of 54.5...

Even long cons can only run for so long. Elon Musk’s electric car con may be on the verge – finally – of coming unglued. This week, he’ll be forced to reveal actual production numbers for the first quarter of the year which are expected to fall well short of what he promised investors – and buyers, who ponied up deposits based on those promises. Last year, Musk breezily assured both groups that an improbable 5,000 Model 3s – Tesla’s first “mass-produced” electric car – would be rolling off the production line in Fremont, CA each week. He’s come as...

Apple could soon revolutionise how people spend their time on the road by building virtual reality 'entertainment hubs' into self-driving cars. The firm has filed a patent that describes how passengers in autonomous vehicles could pass the time with VR headsets. The headsets would allow passengers to play games, or, if they choose, create a 'relaxing' environment for them while on their journey. Apple also suggests that future cars could lack windows, instead using interior screens alongside the VR headsets to display virtual surroundings.

Will you tone it down, Maverick? A driver in Colorado felt the need for speed, which initially attracted, and later repelled responding red-and-blue. The Denver Post reports that an unknown individual, in an older, dark-colored Ford Mustang, blitzed along a stretch of Interstate 70 that follows the contours of the Colorado River, west of the mountain town Glenwood Springs. Their speed scratched 140 miles per hour, and when the Colorado State Patrol began pursuit with full sirens and flashing lights around 12:30 a.m., the errant driver's speed increased to 150 miles per hour. "They tried to catch up. They weren’t...

In California, the Center for Climate Protection is pushing legislation that would ban gasoline-powered vehicles after Jan 1, 2040. A bill drafted by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) would require that only vehicles relying on “clean” technologies could be registered in the state. Even hybrids that sometimes use gasoline would be barred from being registered. “I envision a future where the roads are traveled by nonpolluting vehicles using batteries, fuel cells, or wind as their source of energy,” Ting imagined. “My favorite, of course, is the wind-powered car. For centuries humans traveled the seas with only wind to push them...

Could there be anything less American than driverless cars?  I suppose sexbots might quality but certainly driverless cars are right up there.Why would you NOT want to drive this?Seriously, driverless cars have no place in the land that practically invented the open road, hit-the-road-Jack-never-come-back motif. And Michael Walsh agrees: …these vehicles are emasculating, imprisoning, anti-American, and inhuman. And now, in the wake of the first fatal accident involving an “autonomous vehicle,” they’re deadly as well. Whence comes this rush to robot cars? Did the public demand it? Or have our betters in the tech industry and in the bowels of...

Now that an Arizona woman was killed after being struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle many questions come to mind not that they shouldn’t.We live in Pittsburgh, lots of hills, and lots of snow and ice.There are times when we have difficulty controlling a car in those conditions (our weather forecast is for 6 inches of snow later today and tonight). A couple months ago my wife, after driving to and from work in terrible road conditions, wondered how a self-driving car would handle it. What do you think of these self-driving cars navigating snow and ice?

You might find it hard to miss these unusual wheel accessories, but then they aren't made to be missed. Bemused passengers filmed the hilarious moment they spotted a car driving on the motorway with foot-and-a-half long protruding spinners on the wheels. The video shows a Cadillac driving on the busy motorway in Houston, Texas with the unusually long wheel ornaments on all four of its tires.

The Nissan Xterra. It was an instant success when it first appeared in 1999. The SUV craze was in full bloom and every auto maker had at leat one SUV model for sale. And for good reason, Minivans were no longer cool. People were buying SUV's. In 2005 Nissan bought out the second generation of the Xterra. It was near as perfect a small SUV as you could get. 2 wheel drive or four. Automatic or six speed manual. 265 hp V6 motor. Rugged, tough and dependable In 2006, Motor Trend named the Xterra 'SUV of the Year'. And that's...

Amelia Earhart went missing in 1937, and nearly 80 years after her mysterious disappearance, a car that once belonged to the aviation pioneer was reported stolen. The car was found on Monday night on the corner of Lombardy and Alhambra in El Sereno. It was towed by law enforcement so it could be returned to its original owner. The car was found thanks to a a CBS2 viewer tip. The viewer saw the story we aired and called the LAPD to take a look to see if it was the car. Jim Somers, the man from the city of Orange...

Owners of cars using the keyless entry system are at risk of having their vehicles stolen in minutes by a frequency­-hacking device that is available locally. The device, which costs about RM150 (S$50.30) and can be obtained online or at some electronics stores, can unlock a car and start its engine by hacking its radio frequency identification (RFID) information. A source said the device could open almost every car with keyless entry. The source said car thieves recruited hackers to install the required software onto their laptops and teach them how to operate the device. "Some local hackers have been...

Amazon’s Alexa voice-controlled virtual assistant is the Chatty Cathy of the tech world, a digital darling that consumers can’t get enough of. It can tell chicken jokes, order pizza and turn off the kitchen faucet. So it’s not surprising that Alexa has made the leap from the home to the car. But just as Alexa promises added hands-free convenience for drivers, researchers and engineers warn that it also opens new avenues for hacking, tracking and sonic attacks. Depending on how voice-activated assistants are connected, such hacks could range from annoying pranks like opening a car’s windows in the rain to...

An Indonesian mechanic spent six months created the two-headed Toyota that has double engines, pedals, gears and steering wheel THIS bizarre two-faced car has been turning heads of confused onlookers - but has now been banned by police. The two-headed Toyota is the brainchild of 71-year-old Indonesian mechanic who spent six months creating the unusual motor. Bizarre two-headed Toyota took six months to buildTATAR IMAJI 7 Bizarre two-headed Toyota took six months to build Roni Gunawan from Bandung in Indonesia's West Java Province split two Toyota Limbo cars in half before welding them back together to create the mirror image....