Ford Ford Thunderbird 1996 Left Fender Panel [4310700] on 2040-parts.com

NHTSA funds development of alcohol-measuring start button

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration awarded Takata-TruTouch some $2.25 million to continue to develop its In-Vehicle Alcohol Detection test, the company said. Takata, a safety and technology company, and TruTouch have created a vehicle start button with an integrated infrared sensor that can measure your blood-alcohol content. If the reading exceeds legal limits, the system can disable the starter.

Tomorrow's world: lightweight carbon composites

Once all the dust settles on The Great Battery Farce (the idea that the world's ills will be taken care of by sticking a battery in everything that moves and charging it up) we may eventually face up to the fact that the best way to move something around more economically, is to move less of it. That means making things lighter, a lot lighter. Car makers are working on it and manufacturers like Audi and Jaguar have already become masters in bringing aluminium to the mass production.

OFFICIAL: BMW M4 Concept

The BMW M4 Concept (pictured) has been revealed The BMW M4 heading towards Pebble Beach this weekend (and pictured above) is billed by BMW as the M4 Concept, but it’s almost exactly what you’ll get when the M4 goes on sale in 2014. As this is a ‘Concept’ BMW don’t feel the need to fill in all the details, but there’s some stuff we can see and some stuff we pretty much know. The stuff we can see includes the same CFRP roof the old M3 Coupe got (in this case titivated with BMW M colours) and CFRP for the splitter and diffuser.