> Motorsports always has been about humans pushing themselves and their machines to the limit to extract maximum performance. From the earliest days of the automobile, racing fans have been captivated by the displays of skill, courage and technical prowess. They also enjoy the thrill of knowing that when cars are pushed to the edge, anything can go wrong. Schadenfreude is part of the sport, even if it is not politically correct to admit it.... 

The newest electric aircraft to take flight is a tiny airplane from a big airplane company. The Cri-Cri, developed by Airbus’ parent company, EADS, made its first flight Thursday at Le Bourget airport near Paris. The Cri-Cri is based on an existing design that uses two small gasoline engines. EADS swapped the gasoline engines with four small electric motors and a lithium-ion battery pack. The plane, which was unveiled in June , was airborne... 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on a mission to help create a transportation system that makes us fitter, not fatter The agency, which promotes and protects public health and safety, is pushing active transportation systems in a big way, and it’s fitting in light of the undeniable fact the United States is getting ever fatter. The number of states with an obesity rate of 30 percent or more tripled, to nine, between 2007... 

Small but interesting nugget of news out of Ford, which says it will use a liquid-cooled and heated battery in the Ford Focus Electric we’ll see late next year. Ford is still developing the car, but the prototype we drove had a 23 kilowatt-hour lithium ion pack, which makes it about the size of the air-cooled pack in the Nissan Leaf . By using active thermal management, Ford says it will maximize battery life and range and optimize charging... 

Editor’s note: Jeremy Hart, an occasional contributor to Wired.com, is driving around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road. The Wild West is still wild. As we pull into Scottsdale, Arizona, during Ford Fiesta World Tour 2010 , we get word there’s automatic gunfire coming into El Paso, Texas from across the border. This worries us, as El Paso is the next stop in this round-the-world... 

Matt Dieckmann believed the future is electric, and he died hoping to prove it. Dieckmann, the 29-year-old founder of Electric Race Bikes, was killed Monday following a collision with a car in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California. He reportedly was testing a new electric motorcycle at the time. We met Dieckmann, pictured above on the left, at Infineon Raceway during the first TTXGP electric motorcycle race of the season and found him incredibly... 

Looks like the Cygnet, which is nothing more than a reworked Toyota iQ wearing an Aston Martin badge, is headed to the United States. Aston Martin’s been hinting for a while now that it would build the crazy mashup . It always made sense for the European market, where an upscale urban commuter that beats big-city congestion charges might sell well. But Automotive News , citing absolutely no one, says Aston Martin plans to bring the car... 

General Motors has sought a trademark for the term “range anxiety,” providing a glimpse into how it might market the Chevrolet Volt. “Range anxiety” refers to the nagging concern you’ll be stuck miles from home with a dead battery, and it could be an impediment to the widespread adoption of cars like the Nissan Leaf . The Chevrolet Volt , which rolls into showrooms at the end of the year, avoids this by using a... 

Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, hopes launch its second Falcon 9 rocket in late October. The goal is putting its Dragon capsule in orbit for the first time. The launch is part of a design and test program started in 2008 after the Southern California company, founded by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, received a NASA contract for flights to the International Space Station. The $1.6 billion contract, for…  Read More →

When automakers and safety advocates show off the results of crash tests, they inevitably feature videos of their cars crashing into things, with or without dummies aboard. Back in the 1980s, federal safety regulators even turned a pair of crash test dummies into the stars of an ad campaign. What the industry doesn’t like talking about is how much safety innovation was developed testing cadavers. Cadavers have been essential to making... 

The feds, eager to make fuel economy stickers easier to understand even as new technologies enter the market, suggest assigning all new vehicles a letter grade based upon their efficiency. The best fuel misers would, as you’d expect, get an A while the worst guzzlers would get a D. Assigning each new car an overall grade based on fuel economy …  Read More →

What’s the most exciting part of setting a land speed record in an electric vehicle? Roger Schroer, who drove the student-built Buckeye Bullet to a record-breaking 307.7 mph, says the true thrill comes from witnessing the teamwork involved in building the car. No, that’s not the feel-good copy of a cheesy press release. He says setting a land speed record in the Buckeye Bullet feels more like a successful experiment than a thrill... 

> It’s that time of year again when kids load their backpacks with rented textbooks, school-sanctioned laptops and iPhones crammed with podcasts of English Lit lectures. When your kid heads back to school, chances are they’ll need a way to get there. While it would be great if every school system still ran bright yellow buses to every corner of the district and all colleges were near public transit, that’s not always the case. That’s... 

The age of the automobile started exactly 125 years ago when Gottlieb Daimler filed a patent for his revolutionary “riding car,” a two-wheeled machine driven by an internal combustion engine. His machine looks like a motorcycle with training wheels. But under the strictest etymology — the Greek auto means “self” and the Latin mobilis means “mobile” — the…  Read More →

Editor’s note: Jeremy Hart, an occasional contributor to Wired.com, is driving around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road. Cheerleaders, fanfares, a scrum of paparazzi? Not exactly. The most pizazz on the pier at Santa Monica for the start of our global drive to Sydney, Australia was glamour model in a slinky dress. But that’s how we wanted it. No, not the glamour model....