Under the Hood

Putting 300,000 miles on a vehicle may seem like an impossible goal, but there are plenty of ways to extend a car's life span.

By Laurie L. Dove

Racecar driver Sam Schmidt was paralyzed in a car crash in 2000. Nevada just issued him a first-of-its-kind license to take his special car on the road.

By Laurie L. Dove

Graham is what you get when an artist, a trauma surgeon and a collision expert team up to imagine what humans would like if we evolved to fit cars.

By Ben Bowlin

On May 7, Joshua Brown died while driving his Tesla Model S with the Autopilot system engaged. What, if anything, does that mean for the future of driverless cars?

By Jonathan Strickland

A proposed bill in New York would give police access to drivers’ phones after car accidents. Yes, texting while driving is a problem — but could this be the solution?

By Jonathan Strickland

The Goodyear Eagle-360 concept tire, a spherical design, was unveiled at the 2016 Geneva International Motor Show — a tire for future autonomous vehicles.

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

Scientists propose extracting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make carbon nanotubes, and then using those to make batteries, also counteracting climate change.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Depending on how you spend your time in a driverless car, your likelihood of experiencing carsickness could drastically increase.

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

Does it feel like your new car is already old by the time it rolls off the lot? If you feel this way, remember that it's probably by design. Learn the subtle and not-so-subtle tricks car makers use to make you yearn for a new vehicle.

By Cherise Threewitt

You've proudly driven a stick shift all your life, so you already know that manual transmissions accelerate faster than automatics. End of story. Well, that was once true, but things have changed.

By Cherise Threewitt

You check the mail and notice that you've gotten another recall notice about some defect in your vehicle. Seems like they send them every day. But in reality, car companies do all they can to avoid a vehicle recall.

By Cherise Threewitt

The best part of getting a new car is that new car smell, right? Well, don't breathe it in too deeply — that smell is produced by hundreds of chemicals, many of them harmful.

By Cherise Threewitt

You simply love your car. You've been all over the place with it, but now you're staring at the 30,000-mile service — the first major check up on the vehicle. Is it worth it?

By Cherise Threewitt

Electric vehicles always seem to look so shiny and new. Shiny, yes — but they're not necessarily new. Turns out electric cars have been around since long before the Model T.

By Cherise Threewitt

There's perhaps no single person more associated with the automobile than Henry Ford, who's credited with bringing the car to the masses. But did Ford actually invent the car?

By Jamie Page Deaton

We've all heard the same old line countless times: Red cars get pulled over more often for speeding than cars of any other color. But is it true? The answer may surprise you.

By Cherise Threewitt

Most modern cars and trucks are powered by an internal combustion engine. But was there ever a time when vehicles were powered by engines that required an external source of heat?

By Cherise Threewitt

It had to seat five occupants. It had to be easy to maintain. It had to be capable of traveling quickly on the autobahn and be affordable on an average salary. Was the VW Beetle really a Nazi design?

By Cherise Threewitt

It's common knowledge that dark colors absorb heat while light colors reflect it. But does that really mean that black cars tend to get hotter in the summer?

By Cherise Threewitt

If you drive a red car, it might seem like the world is out to get you. You already get more speeding tickets. Wait, that's not true? Well, then there must be some amount of truth to the notion that red cars cost more to insure, right?

By Cherise Threewitt

There's nothing quite like the smell of a new car interior. It's not exactly a fresh scent, but it's definitely an unused scent. So what really causes that "new car smell"?

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

Henry Ford didn't just build cars — he totally revolutionized the process, inventing new systems and methods that are still in use today. But is everything you've heard about the man accurate?

By Cherise Threewitt

Each year, auto manufacturers issue about 500 recalls. Most of them are small, inexpensive, easy to repair and not terrifying at all. These are not those recalls.

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

It's arriving in bits and pieces, but there's a whole new world of automotive tech coming in the next decade. The future of self-driving cars has the potential to be pretty amazing.

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

In a truck pull competition, excessive clouds of diesel smoke are a byproduct of the truck's functionality. But coal rollers have taken this idea from the county fair to the public roads -- all in the name of making people angry.

By Cherise Threewitt