The study showed that claims paid out for at-fault collisions were up to 27% lower for the XC60 than for comparable luxury SUVs, and 19% lower than other Volvos not fitted with “City Safety.” The Institute examined claim frequency and costs and found that Volvo XC60 owners weren’t filing claims under $1,500, the usual type of claim associated with minor accidents in heavy, slow traffic.

“City Safety,” which is designed to work at speeds under 19 mph, uses an infrared laser to track the speed of vehicles being approached. If it senses that the driver is too close, and not taking preventative action, the system causes the car to brake in order to avoid crashing. In addition to being standard on the Volvo XC60, it’s also standard on the 2012 versions of Volvo’s S60, S80, and XC70 wagon.

What’s in the Plus Performance Package? Well, there’s a seven-piece “ground effects” kit that not only makes the hybrid look a little cooler, but also reduces the drag coefficient, allowing it to seem a bit peppier on the road. The springs in the suspension are lowered, to reduce the overall ride height – Toyota says the suspension is actually track-tuned. As well, 17-inch wheels with a track-width-increasing custom offset are part of the package, though the tires remain the same. With the new rear sway bar added, Toyota says the Prius will turn quicker and lean less while doing so.

All this suavity will cost you, however. On most of the Prius trim levels the package costs $3,699. That price drops down to $2,999 on the Prius Five trim level, but that makes the overall price of the car $32,549 – kind of expensive for a vehicle meant to save you money on fuel.

So what is an “autonomous” vehicle? It’s a car or truck that uses a combination of artificial intelligence, GPS, and sensors to “coordinate itself without active intervention by a human operator,” according to Nevada’s new law, which also acknowledges that such operators are likely to be inattentive when the car is driving itself and therefore immune to reckless driving citations when the car is in an autonomous mode.

There’s another, related bill in the state legislature that would allow texting while driving when the car is doing its own work.

A recent story in the New York Times suggests that this legislation may be the result of some relatively low-key lobbying from Google, which, along with Volkswagen, is one of the companies at the leading edge of autonomous vehicle technology.

I’ve often heard that rumor – that you get more gas if you fill then – but I’ve never seen any science backing it up. I wanted to know if it was true.

So I did some research, and here’s what I learned: No, it actually isn’t.

Here’s why:
Gasoline does expand and contract as the temperature varies, just as all other liquids do. For example, an increase of temperature of about fifteen degrees F generally increases its volume about 1 percent, though the energy content remains the same, but gas stations usually keep their gas in tanks under the ground, where they’re protected from the greatest temperature variations. Because of this, the temperature of gas coming from the pump doesn’t really vary that much within any 24-hour period, at any particular station.

In fact, Craig Erkes, a former chairman of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America – a trade group for gas stations – said that the contraction or expansion of gasoline due to temperature shifts during the day is “…so miniscule as to be almost nonexistent.”

So when should you fill your tank, for the best fuel economy? Day or night doesn’t matter, but you want to make sure that one or two cars fill before you, especially if the weather is hot, because while gas stays at a fairly constant temperature underground, it warms fairly quickly in the actual pump.

One of the technical issues that had to be solved before a mass roll-out of the inflatable seat belt technology was the force of inflation. Because these belts don’t need to burst forth from an instrument panel, and because a significant number of back-seat passengers are children, these belts had to be much gentler than front-seat airbags. One of the other differences is that standard air bags use hot gas. These will use cool gas instead.

As part of the testing procedures, Ford actually used what they call a “sleeping child situation,” which is described as “…where the child puts his head on the seat belt and sleeps.” These belts worked well even in that situation, and when tested with various types of car seats and booster chairs.

These belts, which are already available on the 2011 Ford Explorer will be available on many more options next summer. So far, Ford has said that the three-row Ford Flex crossover and two not-yet-disclosed Lincoln models will get these belts.

Not surprisingly, the inflatable seat belts are proving to be extremely popular with parents.

If this sounds like yet another way for the federal government to invade our privacy, consider that such devices are already included in new cars, and since 2005 65% of new vehicles have boasted some kind of onboard recording device. Among the brands using them today are Ford, GM, Mazda and Toyota.

The government’s proposal, then, would simply make such devices mandatory. Already, another law set to take effect two years from now will require that the data collected by EDRs and the method of retrieving that data be made more universal. That rule came as a direct result of unintended acceleration cases in Toyota vehicles over the past few years.

Currently, most auto manufacturers are showing public support for the concept of mandatory EDRs, but they also say they don’t want such devices to be terribly complex, as this would cause them to be more expensive, which costs would have to be passed along to buyers.

With data provided by Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market, the new Classic Car Guide gives users a host of information about the exact car being purchased. All you need is the VIN and you can find out the last sale date (if it was an auction), and prive. Using the wifi capability of your iPad, you can then find the current prices of comparable cars, and how far you have to go to find one.

The app’s sponsor, Chubb Insurance, says that the Classic Car Guide can also tell you what to look for in terms of damage or detailing on your potential new purchase, and to help you, it uses a data base that compiles more than 100,000 articles from 20 year’s worth of reference materials from books and photos to Craigslist and eBay. Of course, if you provide the VIN or the make/model/year of the car you’ve fallen for, as well as your location, Chubb will kindly provide an insurance quote as well.

The Classic Car Guide iPad app is free at the iTunes store.

Previous advisories from the AAP encouraged parents to keep their children facing the rear of a vehicle for as long as possible, up to the limit of the car seat’s specs, and this hasn’t technically changed, but it also said that the minimum age/weight for flipping a seat to face forward was one year or twenty pounds.

The new policy clarifies the AAP’s guidelines, and officially raises the minimum age to two years.

A study published in the journal Injury Prevention in 2007 found that children younger than two are 75 percent less likely to be severely injured or die in a vehicle crash if they are in a rear-facing car seat, while another study said that a child facing backwards is five times safer than one facing the front.

According to Dennis Durbin, M.D., F.A.A.P., a pediatric emergency physician, co-scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and lead author of this policy statement, “A rear-facing child safety seat does a better job of supporting the head, neck and spine of infants and toddlers in a crash, because it distributes the force of the collision over the entire body.”

Of course, no car seat will work if it isn’t used properly – with chest and restraining straps tightened, and the car’s seat belt or LATCH system correctly engaged. If you’re a parent, be sure to consider whether or not a car seat will fit, and can be adequately secured, whenever you purchase a new car.

Yo Hybrid | Source: HybridCars.com | Click to enlarge

Billionaire Mikhail D. Prokhorov, the major owner of the New Jersey Nets, and the second-richest man in Russia has become one of the newest investors in the green car movement. Specifically, he’s recently unveiled the first Russian hybrid car: the YO, this week in Moscow.

The HybridCars blog offers the following description of the car:

Looking somewhat like large toy cars, the three prototypes shown—a two-door car, a minivan and a small cargo van—are touted as being the world’s first natural gas hybrid electric vehicles. The Yo’s drivetrain is a series hybrid design that operates with two small electric motors, a bank of capacitors and a small engine that can burn either gasoline or natural gas. The engine operates almost continuously, generating electricity that powers the motors directly or charges the capacitors that discharge energy for start-and-stop city driving.

Noteworthy, and perhaps suspect, the internal combustion engine is a “rotary vane” type. Rather than move up and down as in a conventional engine, the pistons move in a circular arc. The advantage of this design is there are few moving parts resulting in a smooth operation.

In the introduction to the press, it was stated that the Yo makes around 67 miles per gallon, which is better than the Toyota Prius (which only gets 51 mpg) and has a 680-mile range when both it’s gasoline and natural gas tanks are filled. It is the combination of the car’s unusual engine and light weight that give it such impressive fuel economy.

Andrei G. Ginzberg, the chief engineer of the Yo explained that the engine is an old Soviet design that saw limited use in Germany in the 1930s, but was then put aside except in the Soviet Union, where Soviet engineers and scientists continued to experiment with it. It was never used in commercial endeavors.

Specifically, according to Ford’s own press release, the car, “…will deliver a projected 40 mpg highway…” This is typical automaker language for numbers they’re certain the EPA will confirm, but haven’t actually been confirmed yet. Translation: 40 mpg highway will show up on the window sticker of the new Focus.

Also announced: the 2012 Ford Focus, which sports 2.0-liter in-line four engine can also take E85 fuel – a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. When using E85, there will be a 10-20 percent reduction in fuel economy, but the savings at the pump may be worth the difference to consumers. While, according to the AAA, there’s only a savings of about 17% when using E85 in most of the United States ($2.40/gallon as compared to $2.81/gallon for regular gasoline), certain states see significant differences. Iowans pay as little as $1.99/gallon for E85, while in Texas it can go as low as $1.68/gallon.