Nissan Helps Develop A Smart-Key Phone: Unlock and Start Your Car With A Call

I’m a bit of a futurist; I like to speculate about new technologies. And I’ve always though that eventually, all of your tech needs will be filled by one device, probably all merged into a phone. Already this has happened to the majority of eletro-fobs: your phone can also be your music player and your camera and your internet access. Eventually you’ll be able print full sized A4 paper from your phone via an extendable arm and you’ll be able to project high quality video onto a wall via a mini projector. Maybe eventually we’ll have credit card swipes or RFID readers in our phones that would help speed along business transactions.

Nissan’s developed a technology along those lines with Sharp and NTT DOCOMO that will allow you to lock and unlock your car via your phone. It seems pretty simple, just squeeze your key-fob into a phone. The phone apparently works on Nissan’s two-way communication Intelligent Key system and would allow you to not only lock and unlock the car door, but also start and stop the engine. Pretty cool. It should be available starting in 2009.
Check out the video:

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The Wedge Tech: A Locksmithing Tutorial

So you’ve locked your keys in your car and you need to get to work, but you don’t feel like paying a locksmith $100 dollars to do it and you don’t feel like smashing your window and having to pay for a new one later. What do you do?

If you owned a slim jim, you could use that, but slim jim’s are unreliable at best. Most of the time they just damage the mechanisms inside your door. Here’s the way professional locksmiths do it.

The parts you need

• One or two solid plastic wedges
• One 3-4 foot sturdy heavy gauge wire or coat hanger
• One rubber tip for the end of wire (a rubber band works fine)

You’ll need one or two solid plastic wedges (either one small wedge and one door stopper, or just the door stopper – wedges that are one solid piece of plastic are always better) and a long 3-4 foot sturdy heavy gauge wire or even a straightened coat hanger with a 90 degree angle about a half inch from the end and a bit of rubber on the tip. The rubber tip is important, don’t forget it; you can wrap a rubber band around the end and get the same effect. They sell kits with these things, but they’re generally massively overpriced.

How To Break Into Your Car In Less Than 1 Minute

How to do it

Just slide the small plastic wedge into the gap at the side or top of where the door meets the body, and pry it slightly so you have a place to put the larger door stopper wedge, or just start off with the larger wedge if you can. Either way, once you get the door stopper in there, you’ll have an opening big enough to slide in your tool. Yes, I said “slide in your tool”. This is a filthy locksmithing tutorial. Whatever.

So once you have the opening, its just a matter of getting the wire in there and reaching the unlock button. This is the point where you’ll realize the importance of that rubber tip; you won’t get any grip on the button unless there’s a rubber end on the wire, you’ll be there for hours just sliding off to the side every time you try to hit it. Again, I realize this sounds filthy.

Anyway, if you do have a rubber end on the wire, it shouldn’t take long at all, from the time you start to the unlocking of the door, 10 minutes tops. If you know what you’re doing, you can get your car open in less than a minute. Easy.

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Hydrogen Hybrid Super Car

Ok, this officially hits the best of all the world’s on Ridelust. It’s a Hybrid and its a SuperCar.

“What we are revealing today is an innovation in the automotive industry and demonstrates American ingenuity at a time of real need. We’re designing and building cars with performance components and unique styling with the objective of making the new environmentally friendly vehicle stand out with never before seen style and approximately 40 mpg plus efficiency.”

I’d just like to say it looks gorgeous but I’m skeptical. If you can’t build a decent website you probably can’t build a car.

Check out Gas2.0’s coverage for more insight and details.

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Volvo devises Driver Alert System to keep the weary and distracted on the road

Volvo has devised a road monitoring system designed to keep the tired and distracted on the road. Their motivation is a step toward prevention so that maybe all the safety features they fill there cars with will not be necessary. Volvo’s target is the 90% of accidents that are caused by an unalert driver (where the acquired that percentage is unclear). So starting here at the end of 2007 Volvo will begin to install their Driver Alert System in their V70, XC70, and S80 models.

The system begins with a camera resides between the rear-view mirror and the windshield. The entire system is activated at 40-mph and has two separate alert systems: Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and Driver Alert Control (DAC). (more…)

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