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Solar-powered family car can do 370 miles on a sunny day

This solar-powered family car – aptly named ‘Stella’ by the student team behind the project at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Holland – is truly revolutionary. Apart from proving engineers do have a sense of humour with the name, this all carbonfibre creation can travel over 370 miles on a sunny day and actually contribute energy back to the grid, making this the world’s first ever ‘energy-positive’ car. This has amazing implications for the future… Click on the image above to read more about Stella, the solar-powered family car

Range Rover the must-have car this Christmas?

Eartha Kitt may have asked ‘Santa Baby’ for a ’54 convertible for Christmas, but when it comes to the rest of us, it would appear that British is best. That’s according to a survey of 55,000 petrolheads by airport and online car competitions company, Best of the Best. In the poll, not only did the Range Rover claim top spot, it also grabbed third and fourth position, with only the Aston Martin Vantage stopping the luxury off-roader from making it a perfect one, two, three.

2014 Ford Mondeo testing autonomous driving technologies (video)

The Ford Fusion with its LIDAR ears allowing autonomous driving Car makers are starting to take self-driving, autonomous cars very seriously, and we’ve recently seen Mercedes testing their autonomous driving S-Class in Berlin, Volvo planning a big trial of 100 self-driving cars in Gothenberg and Tesla planning systems that will do 90 per cent of your driving within 3 years. Now it’s Ford’s turn. Ford has equipped a Fusion Hybrid (that’s the North American version of the new Ford Mondeo we still haven’t got in the UK) with its autonomous vehicle technology to conduct research in partnership with the University of Michigan and State Farm (a big group of insurance companies in the US). The test Fusion gets a system called LIDAR (light detection and range – the funny looking ears on the top of the Fusion in the picture above) which can scan the road ahead up to 2.5 million times a second and create a 3D map of the surroundings.