BMW

This week we're taking a peek at a LEGO motorcycle [BMW R 1200 GS Adventure] that can be re-built as a hoverbike. It's completely batty, to be sure - but the appeal in having a BMW-branded hoverbike was more than I could handle. I had to built it - and built it I did. It took a few hours (spread out over a few days, about an hour off and on each day), and was quite enjoyable to see unfold. The build you're seeing here photographed by SlashGear is the Hoverbike part of this equation.

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Electric vehicles are only as great as the charging network available to those who buy them. We've seen different companies roll out charging stations at destinations all over the U.S., and now BMW is adding its name to the list (again) with plans to launch 100 electric vehicle charging stations at National Parks throughout the nation. The first of those 100 planned stations has gone live at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, the former home of Edison.

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Seldom is my A/B testing quite so entertaining as comparing this, the 2017 BMW M760i, with the Alpina B7. Each a riff on what a performance version of the stately 7 Series might look, sound, and drive like, the two cars may be showroom stablemates but they take very different routes to their 600+ horsepower. Few will get the opportunity to cross-shop them, much less the chance to throw them around familiar roads as I've been doing.

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You wait a couple of decades for one BMW M7 to come along, and life brings you two. Well, not quite: neither BMW's own M760i or this, the 2017 Alpina B7, is officially an M car, but then neither would you really want them to be. Go too far down that track and you end up sacrificing luxury in the name of raw performance, and that's entirely at odds with the 7 Series raison d'être. Does that make the Alpina B7 a plutocrat's sports pretender? No, no it does not.

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ASUS launched the ZenFone AR back at CES in January, but the Project Tango phone wasn't quite ready for its augmented reality close-up. Turns out, there are some ZenFone AR handsets floating around at MWC 2017 this week, not least being used by the team at BMW and Accenture for their iVisualizer demo. Imagine our surprise when the ASUS handset was whipped out - alongside the existing Lenovo Phab 2 Pro - for us to check out on video.

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LEGO blocks are the epitome of reusability. They can be used to form almost any object imaginable and then torn apart to be used to build a different object. But some LEGO blocks are made for specific designs and purposes to recreate a very specific thing, like a car or motorbike model. Can these blocks still be reused to create something else? The creative minds at BMW Motorrad and LEGO Technic think so. And to prove it, they took the LEGO Technic BMW R 1200 GS Adventure and turned it into the LEGO Technic Hover Bike.

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BMW, Google Ventures, and Lowe's have pumped $45m into a metal 3D printing startup, which plans to launch printers that can create complex one-off parts. Desktop Metal emerged back in late 2015, promising to do for custom metal fabrication what 3D printing has already done for plastic prototyping. Now, as the company's printer debut gets closer, it's cranking up its fundraising.

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It was as the 2017 BMW M760i xDrive surged at triple-digit speed into a hairpin and pirouetted neatly, rather than rolling into a spectacular fireball, that I had cause to question the laws of physics. "Sports sedan" is an overused phrase these days, applied liberally and shamelessly to any four-door with 200+ horsepower and a set of fancy wheels, but BMW has brought its feistiest 7 Series to school us on just what it really means. And, while the $154,795 starting price might seem astonishing - for the same amount you could put a new 750i xDrive and a BMW M2 in your garage - it turns out the M760i is more than just the sum of its parts.

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Tesla's 2017 Model S has failed to score top marks in auto safety crash testing, with the electric sedan falling short of IIHS' 2017 Top Safety Pick+ rating. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's trials sit alongside - and in some cases are more stringent than - the US government's own NHTSA crash testing. It's one of the organizations most notorious challenges that the Model S struggled in, though the automaker says a fix is in the works.

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McLaren is cooking up a new engine tech that promises more powerful supercars but with greener emissions, turning to new partners including BMW for development aid. The British company announced the strategic project today, with the top feature of the new technology being higher output per engine capacity than is currently possible. McLaren's current engine of choice, the M838T, currently delivers as much as 727 horsepower.

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The recent push towards autonomous cars, whether full or partial, doesn’t really excuse humans who don’t know the basics of safe driving. In order to help better train the drivers of tomorrow, and, at the same time, give them a taste of the exhilarating experience of driving a BMW car, BMW and sibling company MINI have launched a joint Driving Experience program, offering training courses for drivers of different ages and bents. That BMW and MINI Driving Experience is coming to US once again now that BMW’s Performance Center West and East now both carry that seal of approval.

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BMW and Nissan have teamed to expand access to EVgo DC Fast charging stations throughout the United States. Thanks to their effort, electric vehicle owners now have access to 174 new charging station locations across 33 different states, and there are more than fifty additional ones planned for launch throughout this year. Thanks to this expansion, EVgo’s charging network has a new total of 668 dual-port Fast charger stations.

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