Faurecia, the sixth largest international automotive parts manufacturer in the world, has come up with a technology advanced car seat, designed to keep drivers relaxed on the road.

The seat named Active Wellness consists of a biometric sensing system that keeps track of a driver’s physical and mental status. It is designed to tell if the driver’s energy level has dropped or if the driver is stressed, according to Reuters. After assessing the condition, the system sends a message. It is done with the help of certain patterns of air-flow through the seat’s ventilation system.

The product senses the driver’s heart rhythm and breathing patterns in order to generate data, measuring their mental and physical state. Then, a message appears on the screen to provide treatment, if the drivers receive the recommendation they will receive a massage. Along with this, they will get warm and cool sensations that relax their mind.

The company started working on this product five years ago with the motive to help people feel better after being on the road. According to the company, it is the world’s first health-monitoring car seat. It focuses on each individual in real-time state instead of just the “average” person.
The development of the seat includes cooperation with the Spine Research Institute at Ohio State University, engineers from the NASA and Hoana Medical from the U.S.

“The Active Wellness seat is Faurecia’s vision on the next level of personalized comfort,” said Olaf Biedermann, director of innovation at Faurecia, who discussed about the product at this year’s Frankfurt Auto Show, where the seat was on display.

“I think the uniqueness in this context is that we use the sensor information and have developed- together with a partner algorithms to analyze heart rate, respiration, stress and energy information of this information.”

With an aim to make driving safe than ever, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government and part of the Department of Transportation, has secured a commitment from a diverse group of renowned automakers, like—General Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen, to manufacture all new vehicles integrated with automatic brakes as a standard feature. This initiative is aimed at making automatic emergency braking an industry wide standard.

The NHTSA and its private-sector counterpart, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), have reached an agreement to speed up the implementation of this promising technology without any hindrance.

The automatic emergency braking system includes sensors—radar, cameras or lasers, that could detect an imminent collision and apply the brakes automatically in no time. This crash-prevention technology could be a boon to the leading suppliers in that market, including Delphi, Magna, Bosch, Continental, ZF TRW and Mobileye.

The automakers in the pact “have committed to an important principle: AEB is a life-saving technology that should be available to every vehicle owner,” NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said in a statement Friday, Sept. 11, adding: “We encourage every other manufacturer to join this effort.”

“There’s always going to be a need for regulations to keep public safe,” Rosekind said Friday during a ceremony at the IIHS’ newly expanded research center here, and those regulatory efforts will continue. “The industry, in this case though, hasn’t waited for regulation.”

The technology is widely available on modern cars, but many automakers serve it as a part of option package that increases vehicle’s price by thousands of dollars.

The UK government has extended the £5000 grant for plug-in car buyers till February 2016. This decision is taken to encourage sales of eco-friendly plug-in cars in the UK. As per this scheme, the government offers £5000 off from the price of cars that fall in the category of being Ultra Low Emission Vehicles—commonly known as ULEV.

Initially, the grant was valid until 50,000 electric vehicles will get registered in the UK–a figure that is expected to be achieved by November 2015. Now, the government has decided to extend the scheme so that more car buyers head toward buying eco-friendly electrically run cars and vans.

As per the scheme, all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles having CO2 emissions of 75g/km or below are eligible for this grant.

This government-backed campaign covers a wide range of cars, including city cars and superminis—Volkswagen e-up; Renault Zoe; family cars—Audi A3 e-tron® and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV; and sports cars—Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid and BMW i8. The range is to encircle fuel cell electric vehicles—hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai among others—in future.

The main motive of driving this campaign is to position Britain as a world leader in the ultra-low emission technology. A minimum of £200 million is available for further grants; such whopping grant will prove to be an impetus for more and more people to opt for low emission motoring.

Transport minister Andrew Jones said: “The UK is now the fastest growing market for electric vehicles in Europe. We will continue to invest to help make this technology affordable to everyone and to secure the UK’s position as a global leader.” Now, citizens’ support to securing the Mother Nature is the last element that is required to make the project a remarkable success.

The nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, an American private nonprofit research organization, undertook a study stated—on a per-mile basis, gas-powered vehicles are far eco-friendlier than their electric-run counterparts.

The study concluded that on an average per mile, gas-powered vehicles were half a cent beneficial to the environment than electric ones. As a matter of fact, the study states the importance of surroundings that affect an environment. For instance, in Los Angeles, electric vehicles performed 3.3 cents better per mile than gas-fueled ones. On the contrary, gas-powered cars performed 3 cents better than their counterparts when tested in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

As per the Washington Examiner, an electric vehicle definitely lowers air pollution, but the power has to come to fuel its engines. And, in this case, the power comes from power plants that run on coal.

“Rather than simply accepting the assertion of environmental benefits from electric vehicle use, this paper conducts a rigorous comparison of the environmental consequences of gasoline and electric powered vehicles, specifically by quantifying the externalities (both greenhouse gases and local air pollution) generated by driving these vehicles,” the authors of the study wrote.

“Because electric vehicles, on an average, generate greater environmental externalities than gasoline vehicles, the current federal policy has greater deadweight loss than the no-subsidy policy,” authors mentioned in their study.

The authors of the study believe that the government should tax vehicles on a per-mile basis for curbing carbon emissions.

The authors also emphasize that this is an important distinction, especially when taking into account the federal government that pays a $7,500 subsidy for every electric car purchased.

The study was carried out by four business and economics professors, including Erin Mansur of Dartmouth College, Nicholas Muller of Middlebury College, Stephen Holland of the UNC Greensboro and Andrew Yates of UNC at Chapel Hill, according to the Washington Examiner.

Vehicles have always been a prime source of carbon emission. As per a study, automobiles account for nearly 15% of Europe’s total CO2 emissions. According to a report that was released by a Transport and Environment NGO, Germany and Poland have been listed as the countries having the highest CO2 emissions. Even the motor vehicle tax policies in these two countries are the weakest.

In order to check the raising level of CO2 in Germany, the country’s environment agency slammed the German automobile sector. The agency stated, “The German transport sector needs to step up efforts to combat climate change.” The agency blamed that the high rise in CO2 emission is because of a trend of owing more powerful and heavier cars and an increase in freight transport through road.

According to German’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the area’s transport sector—the only sector that has not managed to meet carbon emissions standards compared to 1990—accounts for almost a fifth of the country’s overall greenhouse emissions.

“Because more and more freight is being transported by road and the trend is going towards heavier cars with more horsepower, more economical engines have served little purpose for climate protection,” said UBA president Maria Krautzberger.

As the number of goods transportation by road has increased by a third between 2000 and 2013, the agency demanded more freight transport to be made through rail and ships. The agency is also planning to extend a road toll on Lorries and vehicles that are heavier than 3.5 tonnes.

And due to all these developments, the transport sector is obliged to cut CO2 emission by 10 million tonnes by 2020 under a climate action program that was laid by the German Government last December.

This time Honda chooses its high-tech research laboratory in Silicon Valley to unveil its technology-packed 2016 Honda Accord instead of traditional car debut venues, i.e., Los Angeles, New York and Detroit. The company is the first major automaker to introduce a high-volume model of a car in Silicon Valley.

The Japanese automobile manufacturer used the event to unveil the latest Accord model, marking the grand opening of its sprawling 35,000-square-foot research and development center in Mountain View. The lab has been built with an aim to proliferate research on Internet-connected cars, in-car apps and others.

As far as the new model of Accord is concerned, it will be the first Honda model and first high-volume car to feature Apple Car Play® and Android Auto™. The company will reveal about pricing and fuel economy later this year. It is also loaded with Honda Sensing™, which helps driver reduce workload and avoid the severity of a vehicle collision. This feature is a future to the highly automated cars.

With the grand launch of the Accord Model, the automaker has also announced to open a new innovation R&D initiative—Honda Accelerator—to provide resources for breakthrough technology innovators to enhance the automotive experience.

Further, the Honda’s Silicon Valley is focused on researching and prototyping game-changing innovations. It is now concentrating on the concepts of novel human-machine interfaces, connected mobility, and supporting-developing apps through Honda Developer Studio and computer science research for enhanced vehicle intelligence.

“As an industry, we are on the verge of some major transformational changes brought on by the convergence of what have been, to this point, largely disparate technology disciplines,” said Honda R&D Americas President, Frank Paluch. “Honda will embrace and help lead this convergence. Our operations in Silicon Valley are a testimony to our focus on this new direction in our product and technology development efforts”, he added further.
Skipping typical new car debut venues such as Detroit, Los Angeles and New York, Honda unveiled its latest Accord model Thursday at a high-tech research laboratory in Silicon Valley.

Although an unusual place to introduce Honda’s 2016 version of the mild-mannered family sedan, California’s best-selling car last year, the announcement symbolized the region’s growing importance for auto industry innovation.