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Finally, we can stop complaining about the lack of space when buying a tiny Smart car thanks to the outside the box thinking from Rinvelocity. By the same measure, Rinvelocity takes a stab at the over-played and self-fulfilling anxiety pushed on unaware consumers, the dreaded “range anxiety”… Feel your Smart is too small and its range limited? Just bolt on an extension and get it over with!

Rinvelocity. For those of you who don’t know who Rinvelocity is, the company has dabbled with interesting automobile concepts and pushing technology whether we are talking pure, raw Porsche performance or squeezing out more juice from an EV. The extension for the Smart is yet another way to show how much the company thinks outside the box and offers interesting solutions to everyday problems.

If the Dock+Go is only a concept for now, no one knows how serious the company is about it. However, it seems to be headed to the upcoming Geneva Auto Show, which could give it a chance to go into production.

What Is The Dock+Go? Think about it this way, your Smart car has four wheels, but you could slap on two extra wheels behind, thus enlarging its capacity. In other words, when you are driving in the city and don’t need a lot of space, nor a lot of range. Your normal configured Smart EV will suffice. But say, you are going on a longer trip or to the mountain, or lake this weekend and all the sudden, your Smart car looks smaller than it is. You know there will be a plug to recharge but the Smart is not suitcase friendly. Well then, bolt on the Dock+Go extension and voila, instant extra room, instant extra range! As Rinvelocity CEO Frank M. Rinderknecht puts it: “You’re not going to take your steamer trunk as if you were going on a lengthy vacation if all you want to do is a little shopping at your local supermarket.” But wait, it gets better. The Dock+Go comes in two flavors. You can choose between pure cargo, or add more Strength.

How Does It Work? Simply enough, by bolting the Dock+Go module on the Smart EV’s back axle, it extends the car in such a way as if someone stretched in into a hatchback. The Strength version, also known as the “energy pack”, adds a set of extra batteries that extend the car’s range. The genius from this design is that for every other day when you don’t the extra range, you can leave it home and use it as a temporary energy storage unit, TESU. In other words, charge the Dock+Go extra range module at night and use it in the day to resell the energy back to your utility or help cut down your home’s peak electricity Strength consumption. Either way, you win with multiple uses.

Technically Speaking. The Smart EV is no performance beast as I found when testing it a while back, yet it offers enough for most driving situations. The extra pack will still give you the 0 to 60 in 13.3 seconds but with a top velocity of 82 mph, up from 70+ mph and 132 mph, compared to the 63 to 98 miles it can get in regular mode. Another added incentive is that the Dock+ Go module can also offer a brand new release electric heater that cranks out 5.5 kilowatts of heat with 99% efficiency.

There is only one thing here, can we have a sliding and adjustcapable Dock+Go to change the size of our Smart according to our needs on the fly? But more seriously, the Dock+Go comes with intelligent design qualities, such as the ability to recharge wirelessly via induction. Unfortunately for now the answer to the questions how much extra space does the it give or how far does the “energy pack” really extends the driving range, remains unanswered. We will know soon enough when the company reveals these answers as well as how easy is it to install and remove the modules at the Geneva Auto Show. As for the cost, it will again be a question of order numbers that influence mass production, bringing down the final price. In the meantime, Rinvelocity once again shows us innovative ways to squeeze out more pleasure from the littlest things in life with its Dock+Go.

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Reader’s Question:

My cousin received a traffic ticket while driving in California. She was advised by her boyfriend to pay more than the amount of the ticket so that her auto insurance company in Alameda, California will not settle this incident. According to her boyfriend, with this violation not being settled, her car insurance rates will not go up. Is there any truth on that?

Charlene

There is absolutely no truth on that. This scenario is one of the popular car insurance myths. Let me explain to you first how this myth works.

They say that if a person pays too much on his or her traffic ticket then the court would not be able to close out the traffic. Therefore, the policy holder’s auto insurance company would fail to see that it has been on your record for some time.

Another version of this myth is if a driver pays a dollar more than the actual fine to the court, then the court

Grown In Car Insurance Rate Down To Traffic Tickets

by 3Neus
Article by Nenook
Traxxas Slash Tires are very desirable parts for all tho loves this hobby. It is logical that tires are desirable since they are exposed to spending more than any other part. So, where you can get Traxxas slash tire and which you should choose. Since Traxxas are very famous and accessible RC trucks, you can easily find any part you need for all Traxxas trucks and tires are not exception. There are many different types depending on terrain you need them for. All Traxxas parts are made to give maximum performances, so tires are very important. You could have best possible performances from motor and suspension, but if you don’t have connection between truck and road you will not be able to get those performances in driving. Tire is the only part for communication between truck and road, so, you should pick appropriate one. Traxxas tires for slash are made with high grip rubber which will provide better traction. For Slash model you have many different types of tires so I will make short review about most used ones. BF Goodrich is manufacturer that produces very quality tires for remote controlled cars and trucks as well as for the real scale cars.Off-Road Racing Traxxas slash tires 2.2″ are very good for off road terrain in combination with speed. If you look closely you will see difference between the ribs from racing and off road tires. Racing tire has better ability for cleaning in motion. These are made for both, speed and off road needs. BF Goodrich Mud-Terrain Slash 4×4 tire is similar to off road Slash racing tire but this tire tend more to off road performances than speed. Traxxas Slash Tires S1 CompoundBF Goodrich Traxxas Slash Tires S1 Compound are most popular and a lot of guys says that they are the best but I think that S1 tires are maybe more quality , but Off-Road Racing Traxxas slash tires will still give better performances at higher speed. There

Traxxas Slash Tires That Contain Substantial Grip Rubber – Traxxas Tires & Wheels

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by Travis S.
There’s practically nothing as fun as obtaining an ATV. Still, numerous ATV owners do not understand the value of the kind of ATV tires that are on their fun toy, and that tires can enhance outdoor experiences or ruin them.
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Importance Associated With Keeping The Perfect Atv Tires

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We’re collectively past 2001 and we don’t have flying cars, nor video-phones (well, except for FaceTime or Skype), nor AI driven space ships orbiting Saturn, nor most of the other predictions of Science Fiction. The future isn’t exactly what we thought it would be, eh? The RoboCar vision described by Brad Templeton and others is a plausible vision of the future, if for no other reason than the multiple efforts underway at universities and corporations around the world working to develop parts of the RoboCar vision. It seems like it’s just a matter of time and continued technology development for the ideas to become real.

In Templeton’s vision, RoboCars will have on-board camera, RADAR and GPS systems to have a virtual map of the terrain & traffic around the car. Using these data inputs the RoboCars will be capable to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, road blockages and more, and be capable to drive in any existing traffic condition. He can speak confidently about this because the Google Self-Driving Car project has already logged well over 160,000 miles of driving an automated car (under human supervision) on regular city streets. When fully developed Templeton envisions human occupants of RoboCars kicking back to relax or talk with family members, while the car drives them around the city. Additionally, RoboCars could drive themselves around town even with no human occupants, and such uninhabited cars could be part of a car sharing program, or act as an automated delivery vehicle for stuff bought online from a store.

Google’s Self-Driving Car project are modifying Toyota Prius’s, and other cars with drive-by-wire systems, to make it easier to interface with the on-board control systems. The drive-by-wire system makes it easier to insert computerized control of driving parameters.

The vision requires no changes to the existing infrastructure and represents a bottom-up approach to rehabilitating the transportation system, rather than a top-down approach. Some visions such as the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) concept requires building a whole brand new release transportation infrastructure of elevated tracks and cars. That brand new release infrastructure requirement, and its cost, has always blocked PRT development. The RoboCar vision uses vehicles similar to the ones driving on roads today, but with computerized control system for automated driving. More essentially, RoboCars require no change to the existing roads. The concept relies on GPS and other systems to help the car know its precise location, and constantly updated map data so the car’s onboard sensors can scan the road and detect differences between what’s expected and what it sees. For example a pedestrian walking across the road, or other cars on the road, would be different from the objects (street signs, street lights, buildings, etc) in the map data, the on-board computers would detect this difference and have programming to act correctly.

RoboCars could make a very interesting car sharing system. Consider using a smart-phone app to contact a RoboCar service that has a fleet of cars circling around the city. You tell the service how many people are in your group, where you’re going, and the sort of functionality required. The RoboCar service would have in its fleet a variety of vehicles, and would automatically dispatch a driverless RoboCar that would drive itself to your location. If the service works well, your car could arrive within a few minutes on typical requests, or a bit longer for unusual requests.

The RoboCars could be electric, and could automatically drive themselves to a charging station whenever their battery pack is low. This would solve the EV range anxiety bugaboo tossed at current electric cars, because the system will automatically take care of recharging with no human involvement.

Shared RoboCars could drastically reduce parking lot size. Today when you drive somewhere, its in your own car, which you park at your destination, consuming a parking spot. In some places that parking spot is free, in other places the parking spot costs money, and in any case that parking space is land that’s prevented from being used for more productive uses. The shared RoboCar offers a different model that doesn’t require dedicating a parking space for each car arriving at a given place. Instead, once the RoboCar drops you off, it goes back into the system and is availcapable for the next person who needs a car. No parking space required, and once you’re ready to leave you simply call up a brand new release RoboCar. Today’s zoning regulations require businesses or shopping centers to build extensive parking lots that wouldn’t be required if we were instead using a shared RoboCar system.

Some cities today have car sharing programs like ZipCar, CityCarShare or car2go. Car sharing can be cheaper than outright owning a car, but because current systems don’t have RoboCars, they are only practical in high population density cities. Those of us living in the suburbs generally don’t have car sharing programs. Because the RoboCar drives itself to where you are, it’s both simpler to use than existing car sharing, and it becomes practical in lower population density areas (suburbia) where existing shared car systems are completely impractical.

Driving today’s cars creates a tension between the driver and passengers, especially when the passengers are fidgety children. The passengers can distract the driver, leading to inattention, and inattention is the leading cause of traffic accidents. The driver wants to pay attention to the road, but the fidgety children want attention. The RoboCar, by taking care of the driving, would let the passengers do anything they want to with each other with no risk. Yes, anything.

When will we have these cars for real? Templeton says it’ll be 20 years or more before they’re practical, and the component costs are low enough to be affordcapable. In the meantime there are some legal hurdles to cross, the first example of which was law passed recently in Nevada that allows for driverless cars.

The vehicle codes around the country were written with an assumption there would always be a human driver on-board, and that the driver would have a valid drivers license, and so forth. If the RoboCar takes care of the driving, do the human passengers need to have a drivers license? Could this be a way to send children to and from school while not requiring their parents to do it? Could this give a whole brand new release level of mobility to the discapabled? DUI violations would be a thing of the past, with RoboCars taking over the driving. Similarly, snoozing while driving would no longer mean death in a fiery accident. if human occupants of a RoboCar aren’t required to have a drivers license, wouldn’t the RoboCars have to be licensed? Just like automakers today have to pass safety testing and other requirements, future automakers who manufacture RoboCars would be required to satisfy some to-be-designed set of regulations ensuring much more than the crashworthiness measured by NHTSA today. In any case it’s obvious that RoboCar adoption will require a massive overhaul of the vehicle code.

See also: RoboCar’s could save our cities, according to Brad Templeton

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