2014 Honda Accord Lx on 2040-cars

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Honda Civic Type R Concept hits the ground running ahead of Geneva debut

We've seen it teased, caught it testing, hell, we've even driven the thing, but until just now, we hadn't been privy to the visual drama that is the all-new Honda Civic Type R Concept. Thankfully, the day before the start of the Geneva Motor Show is about as leaky as Robert Redford's sailboat.
We'll get the full details tomorrow - which may even include a discourse on Honda's 2.0-liter turbocharged engine that will make upwards of 280 horsepower and propel the car to Nürburgring-record-braking velocities. After all, the "Concept" portion of most Honda concept cars is generally lip-service only.
In fact, save for those blacked out windows and, perhaps, a couple millimeters of ride height and those extra-aggro wheels, we pretty much expect the production Type R to look like the beast you see here. Certainly the swooping form and 'roided wheel arches suit the boy-racer persona of the Civic very well; we wouldn't even put it past Honda's funky European arm to sell the final product with some version of that bi-plane wing.

New Honda smart cruise control predicts other motorists' future idiocy

It's not quite "Open the pod bay doors, Hal," but we're getting there: Honda is offering a predictive cruise control system on the Exectuve Grade Honda CR-V in Europe starting this year. Advancing the capabilities of the present adaptive cruise control, the Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control (i-ACC) will be able to foresee and automatically react to other vehicles cutting in ahead of you up to five seconds ahead of it happening. A research team developed the system after studying European driving patterns for years. The i-ACC keeps track of surrounding cars with a camera and radar, "evaluating relations between multiple vehicles" and running the data through an algorithm to figure out who's going to do what. If it detects another car about to move into your lane, the CR-V brakes softly and a dash light illuminates to let the driver know what's about to happen, then it brakes a little more firmly to keep the proper distance after the other car moves in. Honda says it works in the UK and on The Continent because it knows which side of the road you're driving on. That means it could work here, but our guess is that it will take a while for that happen, our driving patterns being a little more erratic - and that's putting it kindly - than those of our Euro brethren. There's a press release below with more information. Honda to Introduce World's First Predictive Safety Cruise Control System 08.01.2015 - Honda is to introduce the world's first predictive cruise control system known as Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control (i-ACC), capable of foreseeing and automatically reacting to other vehicles 'cutting-in' to the equipped vehicle's lane. Based on extensive real-world research of typical European driving styles, Honda's Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control (i-ACC) uses a camera and radar to sense the position of other vehicles on the road. It then applies an algorithm to predict the likelihood of vehicles in neighbouring lanes cutting-in by evaluating relations between multiple vehicles, enabling the equipped vehicle to react quickly, safely and comfortably. i-ACC will make its debut this year on the new European CR-V*, building upon the traditional Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system. Traditional ACC systems keep a preselected longitudinal velocity, which is only reduced for maintaining a safe distance to a car in front. However, if a vehicle cuts-in from a neighboring lane, the traditional ACC system reacts later thus requiring stronger braking.

Brand new cars are being sold with defective Takata airbags

If you just bought a 2016 Audi TT, 2017 Audi R8, 2016–17 Mitsubishi i-MiEV, or 2016 Volkswagen CC, we have some unsettling news for you. A report provided to a US Senate committee that oversees the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and reported on by Automotive News claims these vehicles were sold with defective Takata airbags. And it gets worse. Toyota and FCA are called out in the report for continuing to build vehicles that will need to be recalled down the line for the same issue. That's not all. The report also states that of the airbags that have been replaced already in the Takata recall campaign, 2.1 million will need to eventually be replaced again. They don't have the drying agent that prevents the degradation of the ammonium nitrate, which can lead to explosions that can destroy the airbag housing and propel metal fragments at occupants. So these airbags are out there already. We're not done yet. There's also a stockpile of about 580,000 airbags waiting to be installed in cars coming in to have their defective airbags replaced. These 580k airbags also don't have the drying agent. They'll need to be replaced down the road, too. A new vehicle with a defective Takata airbag should be safe to drive, but that margin of safety decreases with time. If all this has you spinning around in a frustrated, agitated mess, there's a silver lining that is better than it sounds. So take a breath, run your fingers through your hair, and read on. Our best evidence right now demonstrates that defective Takata airbags – those without the drying agent that prevents humidity from degrading the ammonium nitrate propellant – aren't dangerous yet. It takes a long period of time combined with high humidity for them to reach the point where they can rupture their housing and cause serious injury. It's a matter of years, not days. So a new vehicle with a defective Takata airbag should be safe to drive, but that margin of safety decreases with time – and six years seems to be about as early as the degradation happens in the worst possible scenario. All this is small comfort for the millions of people who just realized their brand-new car has a time bomb installed in the wheel or dashboard, or the owners who waited patiently to have their airbags replaced only to discover that the new airbag is probably defective in the same way (although newer and safer!) as the old one.