Arias Pistons 12.5:1 Compression 82mm Bore Honda B-series on 2040-parts.com

Meet the Autoweek Best of the Best winners

Another year and another few hundred new cars and trucks have driven through the Autoweek garage for editorial evaluation. To what end? Well, other than giving you our unvarnished opinions, it really comes down to this—when we present the annual Autoweek Best of the Best/Car and Best of the Best/Truck awards.

SAE approves new fast-charging standard for EVs, plug-ins

SAE International said it has approved a new technical standard that will dramatically reduce charging times for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles. The global engineering group said the new charging standard, developed with the cooperation of more than 190 automakers, utilities and equipment builders, will allow charging times to be reduced from as long as eight hours to as short as 20 minutes. Automakers want DC direct charging to take less than 10 minutes, or roughly the time it takes to fill a tank with gasoline.The goal is to accommodate currents as high as 500 volts distributed from public charging stations.

One Lap of the Web: KERS, Klass and autonomous cars

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- KERS, the kinetic-energy-recovery system, was first seen in Formula One a few years back.