car (Page 2)

Lots of people think their cars have a specific personality. A new study has discovered that many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars?a modern experience driven by our prehistoric psyches.

Researchers, product designers and, of course, animated filmmakers have long toyed with the idea that cars have faces, but this study is the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically.
read more

When the weather gets hot in the summer?and with global warming, summers are going to be hotter than ever?we’re all familiar with electrical “brown outs,” where our air conditioners and appliances don’t work as well as they used to?and sometimes even stop working, due to overload of the electrical grid. What we may not realize is that the growing number of plug-in hybrid electric cars, such as the Chevrolet “Volt” and the upcoming hybrid electric/gasoline Prius, may cause this too, depending on what time of day or night these vehicles are charged!
read more

Hopefully your next car will fix itself and run on garbage, but even if you can’t achieve those worthy goals, you can still enjoy that wonderful “new car smell.” But is it toxic?

That distinctive scent is made up of the newly-minted metal, leather, upholstery and plastic that brand-new cars are made of. Some people have postulated that there?s even a “new car smell” spray that dealers use inside cars to entice us. In LiveScience.com, Charles Q. Choi says that we’re smelling what are called “volatile organic compounds.”
read more

An airbag can save your life in a car crash?but it can also cause you to go deaf.

Researchers estimate that 17% percent of the people who are exposed to deployed airbags in American cars will suffer from permanent hearing loss, and airbag deployment is more hazardous to the ears when a car’s windows are rolled down.

Dr. G. Richard Price wanted to find out whether the danger of deafness was greater in cars with the windows down or the windows up. Previously, experts thought rolled-up windows were more dangerous because they allow for higher pressure to be created inside the cabin.
read more