Digital dashboard: your car’s next instrument panel will be one big LCD

LCD instrument panels are coming, trickling down from a handful of expensive cars today to affordable cars. You need an LCD display in front of you to process all the information you’re getting from the car and connected devices. Any car instrument panel tells you how fast you’re going and how mLCD instrument panel. They’re on a dozen premium car models today. Affordable cars are getting hybrid displays in the instrument panel: The speedometer, tachometer, and fuel gauge are traditional mechanical devices; inset among them or in a bottom strip is an LCD display that can show all the other information.

uch fuel remains. When you also want to see navigation instructions, song info, hybrid battery efficiency, and the name of an incoming caller, it’s time for a big-screen

California thinking may backfire for Google's new self-driving car

As someone who loves driving, I found it a little difficult to stomach when Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, told us earlier this month that People hate driving. Not People hate driving in traffic,or People hate driving when they need to get some work done,but simply People hate driving.

Google's attitude certainly isn't an uncommon one, but neither is it an opinion that jibes with the feelings of the driving population as a whole. Still, so long as the company's team was working on optional systems that would augment existing cars, not exclusively turn them into driverless automatons, I wasn't particularly put off.

Google's New Car Lacks A Steering Wheel (And Brakes)

Google gave us an update on its driver less car project Tuesday, posting video and images of people trying out its self-driving car. The tech company built three prototypes from scratch, creating compact cars that look like they're on an extreme no-options diet. For now, their top speed is 25 mph.

The latest version of Google's driver less car was shown off in a blog post Tuesday. The company says its goal is improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people.

NPR's Aarti Shahani took a ride in one of the prototypes — you can see how that went in her story for Morning Edition today.

BMW X1

We were really looking forward to testing the 2013 BMW X1 xDrive28i, especially in a rather snow-filled Midwest winter. From the time we stepped into the sleek luxury crossover, this new offering from BMW didn’t disappoint.