Others, including Honda, have argued that TrueCar could open the door to unscrupulous dealers trying to sell a more expensive car or more options once they get the customers in the door — which Honda said reflected poorly on the brand. Honda also threatened to cut off marketing dollars to dealers who promoted its cars on the site below the invoice price, a price that is supposed to represent something close to the dealer’s cost (though dealers usually make more money on other manufacturer incentives and programs).

• Bridgestone has designed some air-free tires from recyclable plastics. These tires aren't quite ready for full-size cars yet, but maybe someday no one will have to check the air pressure in tires. [url]
• Replacing steel in cars with composite materials will make our four-wheeled friends lighter and more fuel efficient. Unfortunately, carbon fiber car parts are still a bit too expensive, but that could change.... [url]
• Car parts from mad cows? Does anyone want to drive a car made from infected cow skulls, brains, nerves, eyes, tonsils and spinal cords? Oh, Canada! [url]
• To discover more interesting car-related content, check out what's driving around StumbleUpon. [url]  

And so it will come as a great shock to perhaps a couple of loin-cloth clad pygmies somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest when reader JMT alerts us that Disney, all-powerful harborer of their intellectual property, managed to be so inspired by a New Zealand-created supercar (called the Hulme CanAm Spyder) that they pretty much copied the design exactly for their upcoming Cars 2 movie.  The link to the New Zealand Herald discusses the situation with the car manufacturer's director, Jock Freemantle:

"Everybody is telling us, 'it's your car'. I have had emails from around the world saying it looks like our car. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Oh, if only Disney had the same perspective as this Kiwi with the possibly single most-fun-to-say name of all time.  Why is it that Disney, grim reaper of the copyright/trademark realm, has no problem with this?  It's not like this is even the first time the Cars movie series has dealt with this kind of thing, having been through the court system over publicity rights concerning a car in the first Cars movie.  Take a look at the image comparison below and decide for yourself how closely Disney's car resembles the CanAm Spyder (hint: if your determination is anything other than "Disney's looks exactly the same, except Disney's looks like they fed a bunch of Skittles to pigeons and then made them fly over the car to, er, color it," then you're insane).  The irony of this rip off design bearing the name "Rip" in the movie isn't lost on anyone, either.

To make this as clear as day, the issue is not that Disney used a real life car as inspiration for one of their cartoon movie characters.  Rather, the problem is that if the roles in this story were reversed, Disney likely would have pooped its pants as a result from filing a lawsuit with the kind of speed that'd put the Spyder supercar to shame.  As one recent commentor put it in an unrelated story, Disney: Sue Thyself.

• Latex from dandelions can be used as a plastics modifier for various car parts such as floor mats, cup holders and interior trim pieces. That's nice, and dandelions can make a nice salad, as well... [url]
• Biodegradable car parts could be made with natural fiber composite materials. But will the cars biodegrade before or after 10 years or 100,000 miles? [url]
• Adding soy oil to rubber sounds like a good idea -- until little woodland creatures start chewing on your electrical wiring. Rabbits have been known to eat through that new-car wiring... [url]
• Getting the keratin from feathers into plastics could help turn a waste product into useful materials that aren't made from petroleum. But all the 3 billion pounds of leftover chicken feathers won't even put that much of a dent in petroleum-based plastics production. [url]
• To discover more interesting car-related content, check out what's driving around StumbleUpon. [url]  

The bill's definition of autonomous vehicles is unclear, even circular. Autonomous driving exists on a spectrum. Many vehicles available today have autonomous features, while falling short of complete computer control. Surely the bill's authors do not intend to require that, for instance, today's self-parking Lexus LS 460L be tested and certified.

"a fictional, talking, driver-less red race car with the number 95 on it cannot be construed as a likeness of a driver of a similarly colored/numbered race car."

The scientists say that they were able to remotely control braking and other functions, and that the car industry was running the risk of repeating the security mistakes of the PC industry....

The researchers, financed by the National Science Foundation, tested two versions of a late-model car in both laboratory and field settings. They did not identify the maker or the brand of the car, but said they believed they were representative of the computer network control systems that have proliferated in most cars today.

The researchers asked what could happen if a hacker could gain access to the network of a car, said Tadayoshi Kohno, a University of Washington computer scientist. He said the research teams were able to demonstrate their ability to circumvent a wide variety of systems critical to the safety of drivers and passengers.

They also demonstrated what they described as "composite attacks" that showed their ability to insert malicious software and then erase any evidence of tampering after a crash.

The researchers were able to activate dozens of functions and almost all of them while the car was in motion.

Ramos-Lopez’s account had been closed when he was terminated from Texas Auto Center in a workforce reduction last month, but he allegedly got in through another employee’s account, Garcia says. At first, the intruder targeted vehicles by searching on the names of specific customers. Then he discovered he could pull up a database of all 1,100 Auto Center customers whose cars were equipped with the device. He started going down the list in alphabetical order, vandalizing the records, disabling the cars and setting off the horns.

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

    1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.

If Toyota truly wanted to repair its public image and reputation for quality, it would make its source code available to anyone interested, not just a single government regulator. The public is far more likely to discover bugs and suggest improvements than a relatively small number of overworked and potentially inexperienced government employees.

Now few people would probably confuse Crocs Cayman sandal for the Porsche Cayman. After all, one sells for $29.99 and the other starts at $51,000.