Review: Kia’s Luxury Sedan Takes Aim at BMW—And Misses

[HTML1] WIRED WIRED: Piles of high-tech features, a powerful V8 engine, and a swanky interior in a car that looks great and is priced well below its competition. TIRED TIRED: None of those many features are unique to Kia, and the good acceleration time doesn’t make up for the fact that you feel like you’re […]















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Boeing’s Figuring Out How to Make Jet Fuel From Tobacco

The plane maker and the airline settled on using tobacco instead of more established biofuel sources.















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The next version of Android will enhance battery life, speed up apps

Several months ago, Google added an experimental runtime option to speed up apps in Android 4.4 KitKat. A runtime, for the record, supports the apps running on your device -- without it they'd be nothing but piles of useless code. Called ART (short...

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Google reportedly wants in on Virgin Galactic's space business

Fresh from its $500 million acquisition of satellite specialist Skybox Imaging, Google appears to be ready to make another space-related investment. Sky News reports that the search giant is in advanced talks to take a minority stake in Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic business (which already counted Skybox Imaging as a potential customer) with a view to getting its internet satellite project off the ground. Google may invest around $30 million into the company, which is set to begin commercial flights to space later this year, forming a joint venture that would see Virgin Galactic offer up its technology in return.
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Tesla Just Gave All Its Patents Away to Competitors

Much like Tony Stark, Elon Musk likes to do the impossible. Electric cars, spaceships and now … patents?


Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced today that his company will not “initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” In plain English, that means that if other car companies want to produce electric cars, they can use Tesla’s technology to do it, and, in turn, advance Musk’s sustainability vision.


“The mission of the company is to accelerate the widespread adoption of electric cars,” explained Tesla spokesperson Simon Sproule in an interview before the patent announcement was made. “If Tesla acts as the catalyst for other manufacturers … that will have been achieved.”
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High-speed maglev toys are coming in 2015

Takara Tomy promised us that maglev technology would make its way to playsets next year, when we spoke at this year's Tokyo Toy Show. It had two very different toys on hand, one a train that the company claims can reach up to 600 KPH...

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Google designs new self-driving vehicles that lose the steering wheel and pedals

Google has been tweaking its self-driving car project for years, but now it's taking another big step. Later this summer it will start testing prototype vehicles it's designed from the ground up, instead of merely retrofitting existing vehicles. Announced tonight the the Code Conference, the new prototypes aren't equipped with a steering wheel, mirrors, pedals or other vestiges of vehicles gone by, and for now are limited to a maximum speed of 25MPH. As explained in an early preview to Re/code, the car is driven entirely by computer, with backup automated systems for brakes and steering that would take over in case of a failure of the primary setup. So far, Google says it's not planning to sell the vehicles itself, but is looking for "friends and partners to bring them to market. Following rumors from late last year, the automated cars could partner with a "friend" like Uber for a delivery service that runs on autopilot.












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