2011

Squint and you are probably looking at the future of the Mercedes-Benz S Class.

With electric wheels at all four corners and hydrogen fuel cell technology feeding them, this future Benz is clearly pondering the future of the S Class, a type of car that is threatened by ever-increasing standards for fuel economy and emissions in its main markets around the world.

(CNET's full coverage of the 2011 Frankfurt auto show)

The Land Rover Defender hasn't been updated in 25 years. That's about to change dramatically.

The Defender has always been a sort of farm implement in the Land Rover lineup: stout, solid, and chunky. This new concept features huge ride height, an alloy frame, four-cylinder motors, and maybe a hybrid.

(CNET's full coverage of the 2011 Frankfurt auto show)

This Jag hybrid has very little to do with being green.

It's innovative hybrid system comes from the cutting edge of recent racing technology and is manifested in an interesting "push to pass" button on the steering wheel. That button may be the most understated thing in the car biz today! Brian Cooley takes a look from the 2011 Frankfurt auto show.

(CNET's full coverage of the 2011 Frankfurt auto show)

The picture says it all on this one.

On Black Friday, Barnes & Noble will be selling its highly-rated Nook Simple Touch for $79. That's a $20 price drop and matches the price of Amazon's entry-level non-touch, ad-supported Kindle With Special Offers. The Nook Simple Touch has no ads.

The company is calling it a "Limited Edition," and while it doesn't seem any different from the $99 model that's on sale now, on second glance the border/edging is white instead of black (the new color scheme has been confirmed by Barnes & Noble). … Read more

You can kinda be in two places at once with telepresence robots, but most machines limit you to chatting with folks on the other end and moving around. They don't even have arms.

Japanese industrial robot maker Yaskawa Electric, known for its Motoman line of robot arms, has been improving its Smartpal service robot since 2005. Once conceived as a robot bartender, the latest generation Smartpal VII is a Kinect-controlled telepresence tool that lets users tidy up at mom's house from hundreds of miles away.

That was the scenario Yaskawa presented recently at the iRex 2011 robot trade show in Tokyo, where it held a demo.

While a staffer moved his arms around in front of a Kinect, Smartpal mimicked his motions, picking up stuffed animals and tidying up, as seen in the vid below. … Read more

After Hewlett-Packard reported earnings today, CEO Meg Whitman said that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are coming to HP to get servers because of the dearth of hard disk drives.

Whitman was responding to a question from an analyst during today's earnings conference call about companies like Google and Facebook building their own servers and not getting them from the traditional sources--PC makers like HP and Dell.

"We hear all the time that people are building their own servers. There are a few...that are building their own servers," she said.

Whitman continued. "[But] … Read more

Auto shows are wondrous events where bizarre concept cars and unattainable exotics strut their stuff for automotive enthusiasts under bright lights and thumping music.

The 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show was a bit different. Most of the cars unveiled this year were of the practical sort: midsize to large premium sedans and crossovers aimed at a slightly older and more settled crowd. What's more, most of the vehicles that we saw unveiled were fully baked production models that you can expect to see on the road (and in the Car Tech garage) within the next year.

Japanese bearing-maker NSK has developed a robot guide dog for visually impaired people that can do some of the things a real dog can do. But it's a far cry from man's best friend.

Recently shown off at the iRex 2011 robot trade show in Tokyo, the imposing, black NR003 has a somewhat unusual design--four legs with wheels instead of paws.

It's designed to tackle stairs, going up and down by walking, and rolling with its wheels on flat surfaces.

Users hold a pressure-sensitive, variable-length handle on the robot while being guided around. The machine has obstacle and distance sensors in its head and legs to detect stairs. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--For such a cute little car, the Fiat 500 Abarth's scorpion logo is probably the manliest badge in automotive world.

At the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show, the peppy 101-horsepower Fiat 500 gets a heart transplant in the form of Fiat's award-winning 1.4-liter MultiAir Turbo engine that boosts available power to 160 ponies. More impressive is the torque number: 170 pound-feet, which is the same amount of twist the Honda Civic Si develops with 2.4 liters of displacement. The Abarth 500 also features a single-option five-speed manual transmission and upgraded driveline components that can withstand … Read more