Nachman Bronco 2500 Lb Winch Steel Cable on 2040-parts.com

New smart fortwo electric drive enters production

Mercedes has announced that the third generation 2012 smart fortwo electric drive has gone in to production. Mercedes may, very sensibly, be pursuing hydrogen fuel cells as the real future of motoring but they still have an eye on electric cars as urban runarounds. That urban EV takes shape as the Smart EV, and the third generation smart fortwo ED (electric drive) debuted at the Geneva Motor Show in March and has now gone in to production.

Chris Bangle Associates announces 'Illustrate the Future' design competition

Chris Bangle Associates has announced a new design contest called 'Illustrate the Future.' The competition is open to all design students across all design disciplines and coincides with the launch of Managing Director, Chris Bangle's new book. "I have written a fiction book about Car Design and the prologue takes place 25 years in the future," says Bangle. "It contains some concepts I have been working on, and this contest is to see what YOU would make of them." Bangle's novel explores the state of affairs in the car design field and also expresses his concerns about the culture future generations of designers will inherit.

One Lap of the Web: Fake movie cars, Russian dash cams and 'Forza'

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. -- We all know most movie cars can be fake, but some are a step above the rest.