It’s late night and the vehicle in the opposite direction turned on the high beam headlights for no reason. It is annoying you while you drive and dangerous. What can you do about it now? Yes you could do the high beam back to the opposite direction, or give them a honk.  What about in the morning or evening when the sun is shinning up the sky, yes you can flip down your sun visor or wear your sun glasses but these  doesn’t solve the problem properly as you might need to sacrifice your visibility area.

Soon, you will be able to counter that by using “electrochromic panels”   which will dim the brightness of certain area when voltage is apply to it.

The concept behind of this is, when the sun is shinning on the window screen the entire windscreen receive the same amount of light, is just that the hot burning ball or at night the high beam of other vehicle’s headlights on the opposite road is annoying you. So instead of dimming the whole windscreen, by using an ultrasonic range finder that could analyze the driver’s driving position and using a webcam to measure the amount of lbrightness that is coming through.

With that a micro controller will analyze and dimming the section that would strain the driver’s eye. The result, much like the Auto-dimming rear view mirror that we can find in most of the continental car on our road but in this case just an area of your windscreen will be darken. Just a tip, Peugeot 308 and Mazda 3 has auto dimming rear view mirror too.

The guys who created this prototype are two students from San Diego, United States. They are hoping the commercialized it, and hoping General Motors would be interested.

Check out the video from the Engadget post.

Source : Engadget.com

General Motors (GM) have officially announced on the same day as they posted a $4.3 billion loss for the second half of 2009. They will be shutting down the Hummer SUV brand and big discounts to move the remaining 2,200 vehicles since the chinese is not buying over it.

Buyers from USA can get $6,000 rebates on a 2009 model year Hummer H2 full-sized SUV or H3 mid-sized SUV.

General Motors is also offering $5,000 on the 2009 Hummer H3T, a pick-up version of the H3, and $4,000 on the few 2010 H3T that were made and remain in stock. Buyers with good credit can also 0% financing for six years on all Hummer models. The Hummer H3 prices start at about $31,000 in USA before discounts.

General Motors sold fewer than 300 Hummers last month. Hummer sales, which had been suffering anyway largely because of the vehicle’s reputation for poor fuel economy, have been hammered by uncertainty over the brand’s future.

To us, I think even if we have the chance to buy the H3 in Malaysia with the discounts. A $6,000 rebate may not make be a good deal since the brand will be shutting down, say five years from now, who’s going to want your car if you going to trade-in the Hummer SUV?

The International Engine of the Year Awards feature 11 Awards categories plus the coveted prize of International Engine of the Year.

The Engine of the Year award is handed out based on the voting results of 65 motor scribes polled from all around the globe. Some 32 countries are represented in the jury, including the U.S., Germany, Japan, China, the U.K., and Korea.

VW wins 2009 International Engine of the Year as the Volkswagen Group’s 1.4-litre TSI Twincharger gasoline engine has been named the grand winner at 2009 International Engine of the Year awards. This engine combines a turbocharger and supercharger in one compact unit. The result is power of up to 178bhp, but what’s most impressive is the engine’s specific power that attains 127.1bhp per litre of displacement. It is offered in a variety of cars including the VW Golf Variant, Scirocco, Eos, Jetta, Touran, Tiguan, Seat Ibiza Cupra.

Anyway, the German manufacturers dominated this year’s competition, winning 11 out of the 12 available awards. In the other categories, Porsche’s direct injection 3.8-liter flat-six was named Best New Engine of 2009 while Mercedes’ 6.2-liter V8 AMG unit won the Performance Engine of the Year as well as the Above 4-litre category.

Here’s a list of the rest of the award winners:
- Best New Engine – Porsche’s 3.8-liter 385bhp flat-six
- Green Engine of the Year – Volkswagen 1.4-litre TSI Twincharger 
- Best Performance Engine – Mercedes-AMG 6.2-liter V8
- Sub 1-liter – Toyota 1-liter three-cylinder
- 1.0-1.4L – Volkswagen 1.4-litre TSI Twincharger
- 1.4-1.8L – BMW-PSA 1.6-litre Turbo
- 1.8-2.0L – Audi 2-liter TFSI
- 2.0L-2.5L – Mercedes-Benz Diesel 2.1-litre BlueEfficiency
- 2.5L-3.9L – BMW 3-liter DI Twin Turbo
- 3.0L-4.0L – BMW 4-liter V8
- Above 4.0L – Mercedes-AMG 6.2-liter V8