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Early cars, fashion on display at the Petersen

Automotivated, a new exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, traces the evolution of clothes worn in cars--from the bulky circus-tent stuff people had to wear to keep from freezing to death in the jangly, open-topped conveyances of 100 years ago, up to the height of the European Concours in the 1920s and '30s, when what you and your date wore was just as important to winning best of show as the styling of your Delahaye/Delage/Talbot Lago. “In the earliest days of the automobile, you were sitting on the car, you weren't sitting in it,” said Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen. So the first section of the exhibit shows people (mannequins dressed as people) in heavy, practical overcoats, scarves and goggles.

MIT researchers rethink electric-car batteries

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say a new battery design for electric vehicles could be a lightweight and inexpensive alternative. The goal for the team's three-year project, launched in September 2010, is to have a functioning prototype ready to be engineered as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries. At this point in the project, the prototype uses a “semi-solid flow” to separate the two functions of a battery--storing energy and discharging it when needed--into separate physical structures.

AA warns of automated penalties

DRIVERS are still suffering a year on from the time most wheelclampers were banned from operating in private car parks, according to the AA. Twelve months on, parking enforcement firms are reaping large sums from issuing automated "penalty" tickets. The AA said that while Communities Minister Eric Pickles is reining in local authorities who over-zealously use CCTV, private parking operators now rely heavily on this technology and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to watch drivers and issue tickets through the post when they put a foot wrong in parking areas.