The EPA plans to roll back the Obama Administration's standards on car emissions, setting the auto industry - and the Trump government - on a collision course with California. Describing the previous standards as having been made "with politically charged expediency," US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt argued that the emissions limits were "too high."
Ford may be forced to add more than a million vehicles to a previous safety recall, after reports that several more models - including the best-selling F-150 truck - could be impacted. The 2016 recall affected 153,000 vehicles at the time, spanning trucks and SUVs from the F-150, Expedition, and Navigator, to the Mustang, from the 2011 and 2012 model years.
BMW is recalling every single BMW i3 it has sold in the US, and has been forced to freeze sales after crash test concerns. The car, which is sold in pure-electric and gas-electric hybrid forms, has been on sale in the US since 2014, with new model year 2018 i3 cars due to show up in dealerships imminently. Now, though, nobody will be able to buy them.
The Tesla Model S and Model X are the safest cars in history... unless they're not. The variations in automotive crash testing are once again under the microscope, with Tesla protesting the latest batch of IIHS results after the Model S electric sedan failed again to ace the controversial small overlap frontal test. It's a frustrating blip for the EV company, which actually redesigned the car in the hope of performing better in the crash testing.
The driver killed in a high-profile Tesla crash last year repeatedly ignored warnings by the semi-autonomous Autopilot system to take control, US investigators have concluded. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had been digging into the May 2016 incident in which Ohio resident Joshua Brown's Tesla Model S collided with a tractor-semitrailer truck near Williston, Florida, and has now released its accident docket. More than 500 pages of information have been revealed about the fatal crash, including technological reports, interview transcripts, and photographs.
The Tesla Model X has become the first SUV to ever score a full 5-stars in NHTSA crash testing, with the all-electric car credited as being the safest SUV around. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration examines crash performance in categories like frontal impacts, side impacts, and pole impacts. For SUVs, though, the most arduous challenge is often the risk of overturning in an incident, which the NHTSA calls the rollover probability.
Until now, the only way one car could communicate with another was if the driver leaned on the horn or made imaginative hand-signals to their fellow motorists. With the arrival of the 2017 Cadillac CTS, though, all of a sudden the vehicle itself gets chatty. Making V2V, or Vehicle-to-Vehicle, communication a standard feature, it promises not only an increase in on-road safety but to pave the way to new semi-autonomous and self-driving features. The big question is, with Vehicle-to... well, anything still in its infancy, why is Cadillac making the jump now?
GM and Toyota will pressure lawmakers to loosen rules on self-driving cars, arguing that restrictive current regulations are leading to thousands of preventable deaths. Representatives from the two automakers will appear in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday this week, and according to prepared remarks will criticize existing laws on autonomous vehicles and the testing of such vehicles. Among their complaints are restrictions that demand traditional controls must be available.
It looks like things are coming up Tesla today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has closed its investigation into a fatal crash that was blamed on Tesla's Autopilot system, present in a variety of different Tesla models. The investigation was closed without any kind of recall, much to the joy of Elon Musk, who tweeted about the "very positive" final report.
Just when it seemed like Apple's much-rumored self-driving car project was on the verge of collapse, more evidence surfaces that Cupertino still has plans in place. A recent letter from Apple to the US's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been dug up, where the former writes that it is "investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation."
US driving safety regulators are pushing for a strict limit on what smartphone tech can be used in the car, recommending phones go into lockdown when plugged into the dashboard. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has published its first set of guidelines on driver distraction for portable and aftermarket devices, effectively outlining its goals for cutting down on unsafe smartphone use while at the wheel. Though not a law, it's nonetheless a strict set of suggestions for how platforms like iOS and Android should behave, including limitations on apps and features that may leave drivers frustrated.
The NHTSA has announced that it has set a new "Quiet Car" safety standard that will make sure that hybrids and EVs make some noise when they are traveling at low speeds. The problem with near silent EVs and hybrids is that people with low vision or who are blind may not know that the vehicles are there leading to accidents if they walk out in traffic ahead of the vehicles. The NHTSA says that mandating a certain noise level will help prevent about 2,400 injuries each year.