Gadgetory

Marcedes predicts what you'll think about when driving has become a memory a car with no transmission and scene that's top 5 affordable cars of the last year it's time to check the tech EC cars differently and under the hood but also check the tech and are known for telling it like it is ugly is included at no extra cost the good the bad the bottom line this is CNN on cars welcome to CNN on cars the show all about high tech cars of modern driving I'm Brian Cooley Mercedes fo 15 prototype car looks like it just drove in from the future doesn't it it is autonomous self-driving it is also a fuel cell car but those are almost footnotes the real story behind this is to get a sample of how we'll live differently how society will change when cars are autonomous let's drive it well ride in it and check the tech let's face all that wood and leather and $6,000 Audio upgrades are basically a way to make your time in prison more pleasant you're still suffering under the tyranny of driving you have to sit there and babysit a machine the wheel on the pedals over a repeat and route of driving that is not very interesting day-to-day this is what Mercedes is solving for not self-driving map we've already figured out this is more about what happens after you achieve self-driving how do you get real luxury out of that and the answer is twofold you get real space space is always equal to luxury and you get your time back the greatest luxury of all because mobility is to be honest it's mostly stressful to give the people the opportunity to relax to have a private place while moving yeah are the people will be more friendly very simple better mood and the changes in pursuit of that mission are clear even before you enter the f o 15 notice the shape of the vehicle is very different than let's say a current s-class this is not about having several volumes of boxes as they call it the three box design of most sedans today but instead having what's called a mono volume pushing the wheels way out to the ends and creating big spacious doors that open up to almost an entire open side of the car here's one of the various first sketches they did of it and notice how similar it looks to a very old diagram above it there is an ancient carriage from what couple hundred years ago and notice how it's got some similarities to it get rid of incursions from wheel wells drive shaft tunnels nearby firewalls and protrusions where gas tanks or batteries live and let's give the passengers the prime space all to themselves like a bird's nest it's like a like a cocoon actually that creates this atmosphere of privacy that that we consider is is the next level of modern luxury the self-driving technology enabled us to come up with a radical design concept so this is a proof that technology and design stimulates each other to have such great results that we have now in the car now here's an example of what it's like to sit in the Mercedes fo 15 as you can see now the seats are facing each other this is what they call lounge mode as opposed to everyone looking forward and some of them looking at someone else's head and that kind of communicates that everyone's view is about the drive and where they're going but again we're trying to break that tyranny the lower half of each door in this concept Bulova glass is a large screen that can do a lot of different modes one of the most important is that they call the guided path mode and you have several menus under that one which shows your point on the route when you're going to arrive there's also a social screen to show you who's around you and who is at your destination there's a places area which is kind of a rich Pio eye presentation that is again geographically sensitive great when you're visiting a new city right this is interesting beam cam this will allow you with another drivers permission to actually log into the surround cameras on their fo 15 and watch their drive and this is so the most interesting psychology of all here's the drive mode menu but I have real questions about what the nature of a cars drive mode means when you're not driving when you aren't connected to shifter wheel and pedals what do sport and dynamic modes deliver anymore aren't sporty dynamics from a car that's driving itself actually disruptive and distracting from the peaceful environment you're trying to establish in the cabin in the first place the face and rump of the FO 15 are part of a new relationship with others along with sensors and lighting they also include an array of LED indicators that can express what the car nose sees and expects from others around it the cities beam will become dens and ends up now there will be competition about public space so we its will be impossible that we maintain in the cities lanes for everybody yeah free lane for everybody at separation zone that will become shared so the machine the mobile robot so to say the car has to give science what he's doing so you have to build up the relationship between the people and the machinery well here we are this is the FO 15 let's go for a ride and see what it's like under its own control and power now the autonomous driving in the Mercedes fo 15 is not a new concept what they're doing here along with having the car figure out how to drive itself is also to allow it to be smart enough to work with new infrastructure to create dynamic shared spaces they're talking about smart pylons that could inexpensively and easily be adopted in your front yard to make sure no carver backs over the curve into your long way you're having a picnic with your kids powertrain tech isn't the main point of this car but for what it's worth it's envisioned as an electric electric hybrid that means it's a hydrogen fuel cell car that generates most electricity on demand from stored hydrogen but it also has a battery storage system charged by that same fuel cell power train or by being plugged in it all goes out to twin electric motors one on each rear wheel with a total predicted range of 680 miles 560 of those from the hydrogen fuel cell and 125 from the batteries stored charge even more than what the f o 15 tells us about itself is what it tells us about the future of automotive design reorienting interiors from the driving task taking back time from the tyranny of the commute redefining the concept of performance and rethinking how personal cars utilize road space read more about the Mercedes fo 15 from our day spent with it over at cars cnet.com the original auto safety improvements that were really technology were just three things ABS anti-lock brakes SRS supplemental restraint system also known as airbags and ESC electronic stability control but today you've got a few more to keep in mind we'll run them down when CNET on cars continues here's your new safety tech checklist when buying a car rear cameras they'll be mandatory in all new cars by May 28 team meanwhile they're becoming pretty common but look for differentiating features like a variable angle rear camp a front cam or surround view cameras cross traffic alert this warns of cars that are about to t-bone you as you creep out of a blind spot if another vehicle is approaching from the side the system notifies you with warning lights in the side mirrors and a warning beep adaptive or smart cruise control this maintains not just speed but the distance between you and the car ahead cruise control without this is beginning to seem like unguided missile mode forward collision technology it'll either warn you and lights up a warning on the dash and sounds an alarm to alert the driver to the vehicle ahead there's the warning or actually apply the brakes when you're closing too fast on something in front of you and there's the auto break people stop by itself the insurance industry has found that either version of this can make a real difference in the rate of claims blind spot tech like forward collision it will typically warn you of a car in your blind spot you'll see an Amber icon illuminated in the mirror to the same side as the overtaking vehicle and on a few cars it will take active measures to keep you from drifting into its path Blind Spot Assist can take active measures by applying the brakes on the wheels on the opposite side of the vehicle the vehicle is steered out of the danger zone lane departure tech also available as a passive warning or a corrective version note the calibration of this when you take a car on a test drive this is set at the factory and some are just sort of off adaptive headlights these steer with a car's turn they can buy you up to 15 feet of reaction time at 30 miles an hour that's about 7 pedestrian whips 6 more than you need to avoid hitting so object detection this calls out people or animals straying into your path especially at night that you may not see a variant of this is night vision display which gives you a real-time infrared view of the road ahead it's night vision the driver sees approximately three times further than is possible with conventional low beam lights the display shows the driver a clear black-and-white image of the driving scene drowsiness warning this one is still fairly rare drowsy driver alert systems use a variety of sensors and cameras to monitor your driving behavior new innovations in this area are coming a few model years down the road most of these technologies are factory installed and not something you can retrofit so it pays to double check if your next car offers them or if the other car on your list does welcome back to see net on cars coming to you from our home at the Mount Tam Motor Club just north of the Golden Gate Bridge when we cover a lot of transmission tech on this show because frankly in the last few years there's been a lot of it to cover but several of you wrote in about a transmission less technology getting rid of the gearbox entirely yet keeping the combustion engine it's from a company called Kern exec they're a boutique shop Swedish it's their direct drive platform just came out in prototype form at the Geneva Auto Show not on the road yet but it definitely is worth a look at as it is their road to the future your typical combustion engine passenger car has always put its power out through a transmission either a three five seven nine today even the 10 speed gearbox the reason that gearbox is in there is because your engine's got a relatively narrow range of rpms and sweet spot for power yet your car runs at a wide range of speeds and offers different load requirements so you broker the difference with a wide range of gears but the overall problem with transmission is amazing as they've become is that they remain a crutch ideally you'd rather not have one for three very good reasons first of all transmissions tend to be heavy and complex they're one of the most elaborate things in the modern car secondly they're expensive largely as a result of being heavy in complex expensive to put in expensive to fix that's on you and of course they tend to introduce some slop and some slow gear changes now that's been improved a lot lately but wouldn't it be nice to take all this out so cooling zeg says we can do that because of two interesting trends in power trains one we have higher rpm high-performance engines and turbos give them better lower end grunt secondly we have very torquey electric motors that are quite well proven these electric motors have all their torque from zero on up and can spin in a wide range of rpms put it all together here and maybe your powertrain has a wide enough range of rpms and abilities to deliver power that it doesn't need gears to help it let's take a look at how they lay that out here's the spine of the car you can see you've got a vertical battery pack up in between the seats basically that brings you down to the turbocharged gas engine which has an electric motor on the back side turning the crank when it needs to - more electric motors are back here that go out to your drive shaft to your rear wheels and in the middle there is a fluid coupler and a final drive here's how that looks in a schematic this fluid coupler and final drive do two important things if you didn't have that you'd have basically the automotive equivalent of a fixie a fixed-gear machine and that's not really useful in the practical world and then you do have a gearbox of sorts a reduction here it's a single speed transmission that never changes so it's very simple it's basically a free to Ones of the gas engine can run at the higher rpms which is its sweet spot without having to drive the car at like 60 to 180 miles an hour all the time now I'm not saying that this is the Beyond end-all in future drive trains we may never see this again but it does underline two important trends engines that have more grunt because of Augmented intakes from turbos and superchargers and electric motors that can pick up the slack where gas engines don't do so well put it all together you've got a spectrum of power that maybe doesn't need to change gears one day in a moment big block versus small block and five affordable cars CNET style you can seen that on cars today this of course is the Bentley Continental GT a car known and loved across the world for welcoming in the beginning of a reclamation of the original Bentley spirit the most amount of power in the smallest amount of space for the best possible weight distribution by more from the ex car team of C net UK at cnet.com slash welcome back to see net on cars I'm Brian Cooley here's the part of the show we take one of your emails this one's coming in from Mohammed in Kuwait who asks about engine blocks he says you always hear in car shows about muscle cars having big blocks or small block engines what's the difference between them he wants to know how do you tell which is which and how does a big block versus a small block affect performance and horsepower it's kind of a fuzzy question Mohammed there's no bright line between what delineate a big block engine or a small block end let's break it down briefly the block of course is the lower largest single part of the engine it's where the crank that turns here and the Pistons and there connecting rods all live above that are the heads with the valves but back down here in the block region here are two rules of thumb that make it a big block or a small block first of all what is the spacing between the bores between each of these cylinders if there's more space it tends to be a big block if they're tightly closed together it has to be a small block when they're closer and tighter the engine is more compact and yet it could have more heat generation between the cylinders which could make it harder to manage the second consideration is stroke stroke is how far up and down these Pistons travel each cycle if they travel more you can get more displacements have a bigger more powerful engine for a given diameter however to have that additional travel you have to have a crank that is more eccentric that has longer or deeper throw lobes and that means it needs more room down here that makes it a taller block so these are the two main factors little delineate a big block from a small block well you don't hear much about either anymore in the modern era it tends to be a race performance or classic car term now I recently brought you our top five cars of 2014 as judged by CNET ratings which quickly prompted many of you to ride in and say that's great now how about something I can afford we here yet instead of a list riddled with Audi rs7 s and BMW i8 s here instead is our top 5 affordable cars of the last year or so according to their C net ratings now this is by no means an exhaustive list of the entire market but it does cover cars reviewed by C net in the last year that came in under 25 grand with destination and got really great review scores basically four stars or more or an 8.0 or higher with one exception you can find cheaper cars by the way but they don't hit the top scores that we give I figured you wanted the good stuff so let's go I'm gonna rank these based on that C net score but filtering in the MSRP to new ones that a bit number 5 the Ford Fiesta ST not quite an 8.0 score you'll notice but close enough to it for one of the hottest hatches on the market right now about 200 horsepower and 200 pound feet of torque from a little engine that delivers 2635 MPG that's great and equipped with wheels suspension and torque vectoring that are all geared for the curves it's the cheapest way to show up at Auto cross and have the right gear number for the Mazda mx-5 you know it as the Miata easily the car that I would most want to drive on a nice road though not of course if that road leads to Costco the Miata just sneaks in under our price cut and even then it leaves out Bluetooth and USB unless you upgrade so buy some earbuds and realize you're in a great handling fund shifting happy revving open top icon for under 25 grand and bring something bigger to Costco number three it's a Subaru Legacy even a bass legacy has their great symmetrical all-wheel drive that's a big plus it's the only car on our list that has all the we driven Subarus not normally a cabin tech leader to be diplomatic but their system gave us less to complain about then last year and they distracted us from its shortcomings with their quite nice optional eyesight technology that handles driver assist well and again comes in at a nice price point number two is the Mini Cooper hardtop the Classic Mini now they have one less cylinder in the engine this generation but more power than they had with more cylinders the Mini connected infotainment platform is much improved now it taps much of the latest generation of BMW idrive design rather than tapping the first generation you either love the look of a mini or wish it stripe ode to the dot-com era would just go away but know that its iconic shape is now much roomier than it was last year before I get you to number one a couple cars I want to give an honorable mention to first of all you get the GMC Canyon it misses the cut on our score requirement by just a little bit but it's a real pickup in a small package that drives like a car and as far from the bottom in terms of cabin temp and I got to tip my hat of course to the VW GTI it missed the cut on cost by about 600 bucks but it scored a list topping 8.2 score thanks to great driving dynamics good cabin design and not bad technology our number one car on the list is so strongly the Mazda mazda3 it's the cheapest car in the list and it's the only one that got an editor's choice from our reviewers it's fun the drive has a choice of manual or automatic transmission you've got Pandora stitcher AHA and modern apps in the dash even a little head-up display that pops up though it's a bit like something out of a cereal box still this is your bargain choice and knowing Mazda likely built to stay that way thanks for watching hope you enjoyed this episode keep those emails coming a whole bunch of this episode was driven by your requests that's on cars at cnet.com I read them all reply to as many as I can I'll see you next time we check the tech you