Crash test dummies - take a pace forward

Fancy taking the place of a crash-test dummy in a real-life, twisted-metal impact? Thought not. However, General Motors (GM) has worked out a way to get flesh and blood customers in America to participate in improving the crashworthiness of its cars - and none are volunteers.

Obviously it's not actually going to slam a concrete block into random US motorists – instead it is to extend the way it uses data from its existing OnStar in-car assistance and telematics service, which uses mobile-phone networks and the Global Positioning System (GPS) to transmit data between subscribers' vehicles and OnStar control centre. It offers a range of services including remote unlocking (handy if you've lost your keys), stolen vehicle tracking, breakdown assistance and help finding your car in car parks – a feature called “remote horn and lights”. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a “wake me up when we get there” feature for drivers of uninspiring US metal faced with those endless arrow-straight highways.

Anyway, with more than four million subscribers, it's an uncomfortable but unavoidable fact that some unlucky OnStar and GM customers will end their ownership experience with a short, sharp shock.

GM and OnStar plan to learn lessons from these unfortunate incidents, however. The latest OnStar system can collect and transmit real-time data detailing where a vehicle has been struck and whether it has rolled over. The firm expects to collect data on about 1,000 crashes of varying severity every month. With the occupants' permission, this vehicle data will be linked to medical information where a hospital visit is required.

Nobody wants to be in one of the unfortunate data-collecting vehicles, obviously, but no doubt we'd all appreciate travelling in future cars made safer as a result.

Mercedes-Benz wants to make you happy

In February last year, Auto IT described how BMW is getting inside the heads of its potential customers, by investigating "neuromarketing". This is effectively trying to measure exactly how the decision-making cogwheels in our brains spin when we decide we want to buy a Beemer. Or, indeed, why we might decide we'd really rather drive something less pushy instead.

BMW's big rival Mercedes-Benz is not to be left out in this pursuit of the customer's innermost reflexes. Mercedes Customer Research has enlisted the help of the Fraunhofer Institute in Rostock and the Munich Technical University to measure the driver's emotional response to piloting a three-pointed star.

MB's method, seemingly based on the Voight-Kampff test dreamed up by author Philip K Dick, combined voice analysis, facial-expression recognition and psychological questioning. Test subjects were strapped into cars and, presumably, asked to recite only the good things about their mother while trying not to crash.

To ensure they were able to establish different emotional benchmarks, the German boffins took eight drivers aged between 33 and 53 - a mix of men and women - and made them drive two different cars: a brand new C-Class and an old Mercedes-Benz 190E from 1983. Of course if it had been really sincere in plumbing the depths of negative emotions it should really have given them a Mk 1 A-Class - complete with rock-hide ride, low-rent interior, squat driving position and artic-obscuring screen-pillars. And then it could have shooed some livestock onto the test track.

"The drivers had a joyful smile on their faces more often and for longer when driving the new C-Class as opposed to the Mercedes-Benz 190E," the company reports, in a shock result for science. The firm was brave enough, however, to divulge that enjoyment varied: "The more experienced motorists also enjoyed driving the older car. For example, they smiled when the rear end drifted slightly on the tight bends of the handling course." Part of that joy, of course, might have been explained by the fact that someone else would be paying for any repair bills should everything get a little too sideways.

"The pilot study showed that driving pleasure can be measured," the company concludes. No excuse, then, for another A-Class-style clunker.

The wallet-lightening Lightning

Yesterday’s Telegraph included a fine article on Britain’s answer to Californian electric car company Tesla: the Lightning Car Company.

The two firms are not quite aiming for the same outcome – Tesla’s roadster is due to set owners back about £50,000, while the British company is asking for the same sum just as a deposit. When the Lightning eventually turns a wheel under a paying customer, it will have lightened their wallet to the tune of £150,000.

The Lightning’s aluminium honeycomb and carbon composite monocoque looks attractive – albeit in a kind of stuck-in-the-60s fashion – and the chassis will be four-wheel drive via hub-mounted motors. It’s a shame, then, that the car must suffer from such a long nose, which puts the driver’s bum a long way rearward within the wheelbase. This is not great for driving feel, nor vision at junctions, and is flatly nonsensical in a car that won’t have an engine under the bonnet.

The wheel motors that will stand in for a rumbing V8 will be supplied by a small UK company called PML Flightlink, which developed them with automotive intentions prior to the Lightning link-up. In August last year PML showed off a proof-of-concept electric vehicle based on a BMW Mini to demonstrate its technology. The deal with Lightning is not exclusive – so we can expect to hear more from PML and its “Hi-Pa Drive” motors.

The batteries will be supplied by Altair Nano of Nevada, and are reportedly top-notch, cutting-edge stuff in the world of cramming electrons into small spaces. However, the Telegraph blindly passes on the incredible claim that a 10 minute charge will yield 90 percent capacity and a 200-mile range - in a sports car designed to go haring around at high speed.

The paper neglects to mention what this might involve, but to its credit the Lightning company does explain a little more fully in the Q&A section of its web site: “Standard single-phase home-type power source can be used to charge overnight... For a fast charge a 3-phase power supply is required.”

So yes, for a fast charge owners will be mucking about with 415-volt industrial power cables. Which can be a bit on the dangerous side. Auto IT advises potential owners not to try unplugging the car in the rain, unless they wish to witness real lightning at close quarters.