The Toyota RV-2 prototype was unveiled at the 1972 Tokyo Motor Show. This bizarre 4-person camperwagon concept car was built around a Corona Mark II chassis and drivetrain. It seems that Toyota was attempting to capitalize on the popularity of the VW camper bus, but with a vehicle small enough to fit in a standard garage and practical enough to serve as everyday transport.

The rear clamshell roof pops open to reveal a tent-sized sleeping area, although I suspect the canvas roof top and side panels would have been like sleeping under a $20 fabric tent. Alas, there was little interest from distributors or the public and the quirky design faded into the mists of time.

Of course, the biggest problem with this thing is that there's no way any sane parent would lend one to their teenage offspring for the evening....

Featured in Popular Science, July 1973 [via Modern Mechanix]

By Evan Ackerman

With the Chevy Volt’s price going up just about as fast as its looks (and some specs) were toned down (okay, okay, for good reasons, but still…) here’s a bit of good news: In its infinite wisdom, the U.S. Congress has seen fit to include a tax credit of up to $7500 to future Chevy Volt owners along with the totally wicked awesome (or something) $700 billion bailout package. The sliding credit starts at just over $4100 for plug-in cars with 4 kWh batteries, but the top end $7500 is likely to only be seen by people who buy a Volt, with its 16 kWh battery. The Toyota Prius, with a measly 1.3 kWh battery pack, doesn’t come close.

Disappointingly, the Aptera Typ-1e, with its 10 kWh battery, is not technically an automobile (it’s only got 3 wheels, after all) and therefore does not get any tax breaks at all, which could put the $30,000ish space fighter on par with the $40,000ish - $7500 Volt. It’s gonna be an interesting next few years in the hybrid electric car market, that’s for sure… Maybe I’ll win the lottery and be able to get a piece of it myself.

[ DailyTech ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Long story short: Ms. Fiolek (above), completely deaf since birth, relies on her engine's vibrations to tell her when to shift.

Here's Matt Higgins's September 21, 2008 New York Times article about the winner of this year's professional Women's Motocross Association championship, who hopes one day to "... try and qualify in the men's pro race class."

Finding Her Rhythm by Engine’s Cadence

With pink streaks in her hair and mischief in mind, Ashley Fiolek appeared more like a 17-year-old on summer vacation than a crusader for gender equity in her sport.

She was both last month at the Steel City Motocross National, held on a rambling rural landscape outside Pittsburgh. Before practice, she hid a competitor’s helmet as a gag. Hours later, she clinched the professional Women’s Motocross Association championship, soaring six feet over the finish line with her left arm raised to the sky.

It was an unambiguous gesture. But afterward, as she outlined career goals, her father, Jim, interpreted.

“Hopefully, next year I can come back and win it again,” Fiolek said, using sign language. “And maybe one day race with boys and try and qualify in the men’s pro race class.”

In a sport where bumps, berms, jumps and ledges are the norm, Fiolek has proved adroit at overcoming obstacles. Born deaf, she has become the top women’s motocross racer, using a technique that relies on the rhythms of the engine to indicate when to shift gears.

Although she had won an amateur women’s championship in 2004 — and finished 11th against 41 boys in another amateur championship — Fiolek was a revelation as a rookie professional in 2008, winning four of six rounds.

“I kind of expected when she got to the pro class that she would do well,” said Miki Keller, who founded the W.M.A. in 2004. “But not that she would dominate the way she has.”

Yet it will require more than speed to race against men for the AMA Toyota Motocross Championship. At 5 feet 2 inches and 106 pounds, Fiolek will need to become stronger.

In the meantime, there are increasing opportunities for professional women’s racers. Fiolek competes in a women’s series in Europe. And the X Games added women’s motocross last month.

“It’s definitely a growing part of the industry,” said Jan Plessner, a spokeswoman for Kawasaki, which sponsors the W.M.A.

Still, women make up just 10 percent of motorcycle owners, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, an industry group.

And although there may be no glass ceiling in the sport, at the Steel City National there was a chain-link fence.

On one side: top factory-supported men’s riders, with six-figure salaries and support teams to care for their bikes. On the other, Fiolek and other women in a privateer’s paddock with a second tier of men’s riders who often pay their own way to races.

There, the professional Elizabeth Bash, 22, of Riverside, Calif., shared a motor home with her racer boyfriend, who is also her mechanic, and their dog.

“My mom goes into debt to try to get me to the races,” she said.

Fiolek’s parents could relate. Jim, a systems analyst for a health-care company near their home in St. Augustine, Fla., is Ashley’s coach. He drives a 1998 Nissan with 220,000 miles on the odometer.

“Our house needs work, of course, because we’ve been on the road for so long,” he said.

Her mother, Roni, keeps track of Ashley’s home-school lessons. Both parents attend races with 4-year-old brother Kicker and a mechanic in tow.

But with her wins, and a growing list of sponsors that includes Honda, Red Bull and T-Mobile, motocross has finally begun to pay off for Fiolek.

When she began racing at 7, there were other rewards.

“Being born deaf, it gave her confidence she never had before,” Roni said. “She just kind of became a different person. She wasn’t shy anymore.”

At first, her parents were unsure what was wrong with Ashley. By age 3, she had not begun talking. Doctors in Dearborn Heights, Mich., where they lived at the time, said she was mildly retarded.

Roni had other ideas. She noted how Ashley did not flinch when an armload of pots and pans crashed to the floor.

On a hunch, she brought her to the University of Michigan, where doctors confirmed she was deaf.

“It was more of a relief,” Roni said. “I finally knew what was wrong.”

In 1998, the Fioleks moved to St. Augustine so Ashley could attend the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind.

As she progressed in the amateur ranks, Fiolek needed to adjust for being deaf, especially while transitioning from an automatic transmission to a manual.

Most riders rely on the sound of a revving engine to know when to shift gears. After months of trial, error and frustration, Fiolek became tuned to her bike’s unique vibrations.

“I realized when it was revving because the engine would vibrate faster,” she said. “And then I knew it was time to shift.”

She said being deaf might be an advantage in races. Unaware of competitors approaching from behind, she maintains her composure, a trait that has clearly impressed veteran racers.

“What surprised me is how consistent she’s been in the pro races,” said Tarah Gieger, 22, who won gold at the X Games and finished fourth in the W.M.A. standings in 2008. “She’s got the main thing, which is the start. And she’s fast. In Colorado, I was behind her the whole race and she didn’t make one mistake.”

With the championship on the line at Steel City, Fiolek again demonstrated her poise. She and the defending champion, Jessica Patterson, swapped the lead four times in a thrilling race before Patterson fell on the final lap.

Afterward, Fiolek accepted congratulations on her win and joked with Bash, who has learned sign language.

Asked what they talk about most, Bash said that the men’s motocross ranks were a favored subject.

“Her dad would be mad,” Bash said. “But we always talk about boys. How cute they are. How fast.”

We're nuts about tiny electric cars, and this Nissan Nuvu concept car rolled out at the Paris Motor Show is the coolest one yet. The 9-foot minicar seats the driver up front, a passenger seat alongside, and room for a kid or groceries aft. Its green nature extends beyond its whisper-quiet electric motor; many of its raw materials are recycled or organic.

Nissan says the Nuvu is the company's vision of an electric car circa 2015, but can't we have something like this today? If Nuvu were to be built by the 2010 timeframe like the Chevy Volt, maybe Nissan would be brave enough not to dumb down its design like GM suits did with the Volt. Oh well, guess we'll just have to wait for that similar-looking Toyota iQ to go electric.

Toyota has come up with the first rear-window curtain shield airbag in the world, specially designed to protect the heads of back seat passengers should there be a rear-end collision. It will first make an appearance in the Toyota iQ ultra-compact four-seater which will be out next year, and these curtain-like airbags will deploy from the roof lining located right above the rear window, offering protection to the passenger by surrounding the headrests. Nothing still beats safe driving techniques though, but you can't tell when an accident will strike, can you?

Add a comment | From: Rear-window Curtain Shield Airbag From Toyota | Visit Ubergizmo | Good deals

Mike Davis is an astronomer. To practice his hobby away from the light-pollution of cities, he bought some land in a remote part of Arizona. But there was a problem: No electricity.... But he's a resourceful fellow. He built some homemade solar panels using inexpensive blemished and damaged solar cells from eBay! That might be even cooler, though less romantic, than the couple who got their solar panels via their wedding registry.

The Toyota iQ will be exposed at the RCA between September 19 and 23 to "provide the inspiration for the finest new design talent [...] to produce ideas and concepts that respond to the many and varied challenges of modern urban living." Read on for more photos and technical specs of the iQ.

The Zero X is basically an electric motorcycle powered by non-toxic lithium-ion batteries. The amazing thing about the battery is that it can store 2 kWh vs. 1.31 kWh for the Toyota Prius hybrid's battery (which is NiMH, not li-ion), giving the Zero X a 40 miles range (20 if you really push it).

Detecting pollutants is extremely important. You can't do much about what you don't know, and with limited resources, you have to target your actions to where it will do most good. A new clever way to detect pollution using living bacteria that have been modified to glow when they detect certain chemicals is very promising and could make testing for pollutants faster and cheaper (though it won't be more precise than standard chemical tests).

Treehugger's EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo (except this week, when we put it on Wednesday).

Boy, has it ever told us.

10b: Top 10 Annoying Things About iPhone [Wired News]

With a tip of the hat to Mr. Gadget's own list (see below), Wired's Brian Chen boils them down to the ten worst and adds a few considered suggestions of his own. Topping the list is "Terrible Battery Life," citing tests by Anandtech and offering recommendations to extend it, most of which involve turning important things off.

1. Poor Battery Life
2. Gimped BlueTooth
3. Gimped Outlook support
4. No Cut and Paste
5. Crap camera
6. Crap data plan in Australia
7. No voice dialing
8. No webcam
9. No handwriting recognition
10. Crap GPS

The bonus entries comprise the lack of landscape keyboard support in non-web apps, lack of multimedia text messaging, and buggy software. Chen's list is confident and succinct: if it wore a moustache, it would be perfectly groomed.

10a: 10 of the Most Annoying Things about the iPhone [Mr.Gadget]

Mr. Gadget's list goes on and on and on, stretching to a practical infinity in blogging terms: 1,400 words! His top 10 is the same as Wired's, but goes into exhaustive depth. Even Steve Jobs would be hard-pressed not to fling his glassy slab into a lake after this thorough denunciation of his product.

9. Top 10 Reasons the New iPhone 3G Still Sucks! [List after List]

A List after List poster plunges into it with a brusque, no-nonsense attitude. No time for hedge-sitting preliminaries here! Just a list of blunt complaints, including the intriguing, philosophically recursive "7. The list goes on." The intellectual challenge continues when this "top 10" list proceeds to 13 entries.

1. Too expensive.
2. Crap GPS
3. No tethering
4. No cut and paste.
5. Crap camera
6. Gimped Bluetooth.
7. "The list goes on."
8. No Flash
9. No MMS
10. No voice dialing
11. No TV
12. Can't replace battery
13. No flash card slot

8. Top 10 Did-Not-Make-The-Cut Apps Or Otherwise Sucky Things That Are iPhone Related or Maybe Stuff That’s Really Not That Sucky But Bring The List Up To Ten Anyway [Crazymokes]

Balanced unerringly between praise and dismay, Amy at Crazymokes ultimately takes a refreshingly software-focused angle in her report on the iPhone's myriad unpleasantnesses.

1. Check calculation application sucks
2. Calendar sucks
3. No Cut and Paste
4. Adding contacts is annoying
5. Gimped syncing
6. No webcam
7. Calender really sucks
8. YouTube app sucks
9. Clock sucks
10. Notes sucks
11. Stocks sucks

7. Top 10 reasons Why, to buy iPhone in India is Not a Win Win Situation and Seemingly bad idea [Dynamic Disruption]

It is in India, land of elephants and the scent of sandalwood ashes, that we find ourselves on our first international excursion. With resolve and tolerance, the unnamed author says he was prepared to accept the lack of Flash, user-replaceable batteries and other well-known flaws. But there are 10 more ills to contend with, each of greater import.

1. Local carriers suck
2. It will be too expensive for India
3. No 3G in India
4. No iTunes in India
5. No decent internet at all in India outside fancy cities
6. Locked to carrier
7. "No Widgets for us we're Indians."
8. No-one has WiFi

Issues 9 and 10 do not appear to be criticisms, and so have been removed. The conclusion, though, is laser-guided: "our Plan is to first build the Tire-Swing and then construct a park around it?"

6. Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhone [Wired]

Who wrote this brilliant, incisive list of critical flaws within a day of the device's original announcement back in January, 2007? Give that man a cigar. Really.

1. AT&T sucks
2. Not enough storage
3. Can't replace battery
4. No 3G. (Note: fixed bin the second coming of iPhone)
5. No hardware keyboard

5. Apple iPhone desperately needs Cut and Paste functionality [IntoMobile]

I see what you did there, Will of IntoMobile! The sneaky devil has no use for the rambling anathemata of his colleagues. His list offers but a single, all-important entry:

1. No Cut and Paste

And right you are, sir.

4. Mobile phone architect lists 10 iPhone problems [ZDNet]

Willie Lu, a 15-year veteran of the mobile phone business, offers up the most steeple-fingered entry in our roundup of Top 10 Top 10 iPhone flaw lists. His selections are not merely problems, he writes: they are documented problems.

1. Closed Wireless architecture sucks. iPhone should open it up, but won't.
2. Wireless transmission efficiency is very low. iPhones should include magic radios.
3. iPhone potentially susceptible to viruses and other complex data attacks based on frame-by-frame transmission standards and explotation of frame error rate bottlenecks.
4. AT&T sucks
5. Apple's exposure to lawsuits is humungous and no-one sees it yet
6. Carrier-locked
7. Too expensive.
8. Closed software ecosystem.
9. iClones will quickly be superior
10. Hype

3.
iPhone 3g Flaws [Dude Toyota Rocks]

Why write when you can make a blurry video of yourself playing around with an iPhone on YouTube? Correspondent DudeToyotaROCKS boils it down the three attributes most ripe for censure.

1. Battery life sucks
2. No flash on camera
3. No MMS

Chimes in top commenter Hoarp001: "Also you cant copy and paste..." Rival YouTubery comes courtesy of NewMacGeek. What is it with Europeans and MMS? I don't even know what that is.

2. Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G [APCmag]

A strong personal touch and a warning not to post angry comments introduces Dan Warne's systematic perusal of the iPhone 3G's shortcomings. A creative note creeps in early — the lack of a decent camera tops his roundup, followed by the lack of Flash — but the classics are out in force.

It is with his final entry, however, that Warne sashays into action: "Stunning hypocrisy," comes in at number 10, nailing Apple's failed BlackBerry clone, MobileMe, in a neat tweak of the corporate nipple.

1. Crap camera
2. No Flash
3. No Instant Messaging
4. Crap international data
5. Gimped BlueTooth
6. No Cut and Paste
7. Can't replace battery
8. No MMS
9. Crap GPS
10. "Stunning Hypocrisy"

1. 50 iPhone problems [PC Advisor]

Top spot in our Top 10 Top 10 lists goes to PC Advisor's epic, 50-entry execration of Apple's technological indulgences, ready to be nailed to Cupertino's door like the theses of Luther. Here are the first ten:

1. Crap touchscreen
2. Gimped web apps
3. No web cache
4. Cannot browse file system
5. No Flash or Java
6. Mail sucks.
7. Yahoo Mail sucks on it.
8. Proximity sensor sucks
9. RF leakage
10. Speakerphone sucks

Many of the rest are trivial ("Substantial delay for new voicemail notification") or demented ("Safari doesn't try to reformat web page for convenient viewing like Windows Mobile"), but all of them deliver.

Bonus Lists: Not had enough? But we've already gone past our quota! Try 6 Major Flaws in iPhone. Will Consumers Still Spend the Money?, from Smartmoney, or The iPhone: Lots to Love, but Flaws Too, from PC World.

Coming soon: Top 10 Top 10 rebuttals to top 10 iPhone flaw list list lists. If we're lucky, the universe will break at 255 levels of recursion, before they switch the Large Hadron Collider back on.

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