Car News

Heated, ventilated and cooled seats are marvellous at cosseting vehicle occupants when the weather gets too hot or too cold. Now, Tesla thinks it's figured out a better way to make you comfortable and it involves liquid. First reported by Car & Driver, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published Tesla’s patent for a seat with an integrated temperature-control system.

Nissan is hoping to commercialise its dual-sided dieless forming technique in order to create replacement parts for vehicles long since out of production, and it could prove useful for components where the original dies have been discarded. For dual-sided dieless forming, the company uses two synchronised robots with diamond-coated tools on either side of a sheet of steel.

Your next Hyundai or Kia could feature a new type of side-impact protection, with the Hyundai Motor Group revealing a front armrest-mounted side impact airbag. The new airbag is designed to stop head injuries caused by front passengers colliding with each other, or hard objects in the cabin. Research quoted by Hyundai claims 'secondary' impacts in the cabin are responsible for 45 per cent of head injuries in side-impact collisions.

If you haven’t been in a big city like Brisbane or Melbourne lately, you might not have realised how popular electric scooters have gotten. Now Hyundai is looking to get a piece of the action. The company first presented an electric scooter prototype at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The foldable scooter wore the Ioniq nameplate like their hybrid/electric hatchback and was designed to be stowed and charged in the driver’s side door pocket of the Ioniq hatch.

If you check your bank statement, you’ll probably notice a lot of separate subscription fees. From Netflix to Spotify, seemingly everything is now following the subscription model. BMW is now extending this to technical features in your car. UPDATE, 21/8/19: BMW Australia has issued a statement regarding the new subscription model for adaptive cruise control and adaptive high-beam. See bottom of article for details.