News

In the Western countries where children increasingly travel by car rather than walk or cycle, Toyota is offering drivers a glimpse of the ‘augmented reality’ they envisage for kids travelling in the back seats of cars. Toyota has turned a car’s rear window into a touch-sensitive screen that allows passengers to interact digitally with the...

The Olympic Velodrome building has been nominated for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize 2011, an award that recognises excellence in new building design. The impressive building, which was completed and unveiled earlier this year, looks set to be the jewel in the crown of the 2012 Games. Photographs and film...

Green Mayoral Candidate Jenny Jones last week joined cycle campaigners to protest at traffic pollution in London. Traffic was stopped on one of London’s busy junctions to make the point that long-term exposure to air pollution was responsible for over 4,000 early deaths in the capital each year. A spokesperson for the Environmental...

Los Angeles is widely regarded as an automotive Mecca, but a new law passed by the city council this week makes it a crime for drivers to threaten cyclists verbally or physically. Cycling groups in California have described the pioneering law as the toughest of its kind in the country, Only 13,000 people in LA commute to work by bicycle,...

A team of cycle trainers in Derby has succeeded in getting 2,000 children to regularly commute to school by bike. The Cycle Derby initiative has been running for four years and over that time has had to contend with a ‘lost generation’ of cyclists – parents who have not introduced their children to cycling because they never cycled...

A jacket that incorporates a 60” LED video display over the body and sleeves paves the way for wearable and interactive bicycle lighting. LED jackets would provide a high-tech alternative to the luminous yellow tabards favoured by some cyclists. The jacket gives off more than enough light for the urban cyclist and the moving images could...

Cyclists in Minneapolis who need to fix a puncture or make other repairs out of hours now have access to a self-service vending machine that is open 365 days a year. Bike Fixtation offers self-service kiosks on an extended-hours basis for cyclists to buy an inner tube or patch kit, pump up tyres for free, and make simple adjustments using...

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and Mercedes are amongst the car makers that have put their names to bicycles. Even Hummer, the American manufacturer of military vehicles and SUVs puts its name on a useful-looking folding full-size mountain bike. However, Toyota is the first car giant to incorporate into the design of their bicycle a...

Car makers are developing technology that paves the way for small electric vehicles that behave like robots; electric network vehicles (EN-V) will be able to drive themselves and could be sent off on their own to do the school run or pick up the weekly shop. car makers recognise that city vehicles of the future will need to be tiny in size,...

As mainstream manufacturers such as the Renault-Nissan alliance and General Motors battle to establish themselves as leaders in zero-emission transportation, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. has interesting developments in store for its i-MiEV, the world’s first mass-produced electric vehicle. Drivers of the electric cars will soon be able to...