Nissan Leaf with advanced-driver assist to begin public road tests in Japan

Nissan is about to begin testing advanced driver-assist systems in the real world, and a new Nissan Leaf is serving as the test bed for these technologies. This is all a part of Nissan's development of Autonomous Drive, a goal to achieve virtually zero fatalities in accidents involving its vehicles by the year 2020. Autonomous Drive can be said to be a further development of Nissan's Safety Shield, a system that has a 360-degree view around the vehicle that scans for risks and provides warnings to the driver, intervening automatically if necessary.

Hyundai to give away a free cow with every new car

It looks like Hyundai are planning to give new car buyers a free cow to save the Sunday Roast from rising fuel costs. It looks like Hyundai’s clever PR bods have found a way to boost car sales in the same way as Scrappage did, by planning to save the Sunday Roast from the inexorable rise of fuel costs. They’ve commissioned a survey to find out what motorists are having to give up as fuel costs rise, and have decided the worst thing is missing out on Sunday’s Roast Dinner.

Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles top road frustration study

Weather, crashes, traffic and attitude--these are the things that make our commutes unbearable. Now, the RoadIntel.com Web site has ranked cities based on its "road frustration index." The index is based on how weather affects the roads, the amount of traffic, the number of crashes and driver sentiment, which is calculated by searching for keywords such as "traffic jam" and "stuck" on Twitter. On the site, you can look at cities ranked day by day and even hour by hour.