Vintage Penn Yan Boat Tunnel Drive Poster 25" X 18" - Collectible Sign on 2040-parts.com

Tesla Model S goes up in price

The electric Tesla Model S – which won’t arrive in the UK until at least late in 2013 – is going up in price in the US and gets a spec change. The Tesla Model S is perhaps, just perhaps, the only really credible electric car so far; a luxury ‘Sports’ saloon car that offers range almost comparable to an ICE car and, it seems, prices that aren’t an awful lot different. That makes it a far more appealing prospect as a replacement for an ICE car than anything we’ve previously seen.

2012 British Grand Prix: Alonso takes pole for Ferrari at Silverstone

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso has taken pole position in a rain-soaked qualifying at Silverstone for the 2012 British Grand Prix. Just like the rest of the UK in this miserable summer, Silverstone was soaked by endless rain with qualifying held up for an hour and a half as conditions became too dangerous to continue. Before the break – halfway through Q2 – Jenson Button had already succumbed to the conditions after slowing under a yellow flag after Timi Glock spun on a wet track leaving Jenson no time to set a time.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.