Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.

Ford Skyliner Concept debuts ahead of New York auto show

To call attention to its coming 2015 Transit full-size van, which arrives in midsummer, Ford commissioned a concept version of the big people mover. And when you say “Ford,” “concept” and “it better be done right,” there's only one place you trust to do it: Galpin Auto Sport, or GAS. Those with discriminating taste and the right cable TV package already know that GAS was the home of the seminal reality series "Pimp My Ride" for several seasons.

One Lap of the Web: Ditching Miss Belvedere

-- In the Netherlands, the street lights are expensive to run. Who knew? Hence, a much more striking vision of the future: a luminescent paint applied to the roads so its markings glow at night -- for as long as eight hours.