Consumer & Gadgets

Can you get electrocuted by an electric vehicle?

Electric cars, scooters and bikes are everywhere. Are they safe? A Northeastern expert breaks down the safety of EV and lithium-ion batteries when they encounter water.

Energy & Green Tech

Bosnia's lithium discovery raises hopes and fears

In northeast Bosnia's rolling hills, the local community is torn between fears of environmental ruin and hopes of riches from huge deposits of the critical minerals Europe needs for its green transition.

Engineering

New truck front to save lives

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a new truck front concept to reduce fatal crashes in car-truck collisions significantly.

Consumer & Gadgets

Robot dogs and flyng cars: mobile gadget highlights

Tech companies showcased countless connected gadgets at the world's biggest wireless telecom fair, the four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which wraps up on Thursday.

page 1 from 2

Automobile

An automobile or motor car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods. However, the term automobile is far from precise, because there are many types of vehicles that do similar tasks.

As of 2002, there were 590 million passenger cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people). Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they burn over 260 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China and India.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA