If there’s anything the French hate more than gas-guzzling Family Trucksters, it’s bad skin. It is therefore with much amusement but little surprise that we learned the interior Renault’s Zoe Z.E. electric car concept was designed with help from cosmetics manufacturer Biotherm.

Hinting at a production vehicle that officially debuts in 2012, we first saw the Zoe Z.E. at the Frankfurt auto show earlier this year. It’s hard to miss, since it’s a 13-foot-long bubble with 20-inch rims and gullwing doors. That exterior is coated in a thick polyurethane gel that protects it from minor scrapes and bruises — much like a good foundation masks crow’s feet and laugh lines.

Renault says the Zoe is ideal “for men and women who want to take care of the environment while taking care of themselves – even behind the wheel.” Since unsightly blemishes and wrinkles are as much an anathema to French sensibilities as Velveeta and Wonderbread, the automaker made the interior a spa-like experience.

According to Renault, the Zoe’s climate control system is worthy of installation in one of Paris’ finest spas. Air conditioning can really dry out skin, which is why Biotherm redesigned the Zoe’s AC to focus on keeping air cool and hydrated. If you get stuck behind a bus belching diesel fumes, the on-board toxicity sensor closes the car’s air vents before free radicals destroy your healthy complexion.

In addition to looking good, the Zoe can help you feel good. With an electric diffuser built into the climate control system, the car can emit “essential oils.” We had a Renault Medallion in the ’80s that emitted most of its essential oils from the rear main seal, but that’s a whole other story. The Zoe uses specially developed scent oils from Biotherm that, according to Renault, are “exclusive active substances adapted to the needs of the driver: dynamic in the morning, relaxing coming home from work, and awakening vigilance while driving at night.”

Spa features aside, the minicar can be charged in 4 to 8 hours from a conventional European outlet, 20 minutes at a “quick charge” station. If that doesn’t work, you can always swap the battery in less than 3 minutes. Additionally, solar cells that cover the roof provide a trickle charge on sunny days — the sort of days when any self-respecting Parisian would be wearing SPF 50 sunscreen.

Image: Renault

See Also:

• Better Place Promises 100000 EVs by 2016
• Attracting Stares and Scares on the Peugeot BB1 Grand Tour
• Plug-In Be Bop: It’s a Box. It’s French. It’s Got Batteries …
• Gym Car Pumps You Up

Ford has tapped the University of Michigan to help bring cloud computing and social networking to Sync, the company’s wildly successful in-car connectivity and communications-and-entertainment system. The goal is to figure out what’s next.

The project, dubbed American Journey 2.0, provides students with unfettered access to a developmental operating system. It invites them to develop and test programs Ford says will enhance the driving experience for everyone in the car. The company calls the program “a developmental shift for Ford” that brings a touch of Silicon Valley to Detroit while tapping the same audience that has made Sync a success.

“Already with Sync we have proven that we can access information in the cloud,” said Venkatesh Prasad, head of the company’s infotronics team in Research & Advanced Engineering. “This research gives us the opportunity to harness the power of student innovation to explore beyond those capabilities and develop what’s next. We want the students to get creative and develop ways to responsibly connect the car to communicate and share with the outside world.”

Sync, which Ford developed with Microsoft, is the leading in-car communications-and-entertainment system, and it makes sense for the automaker to invite students to build upon the system. Twenty-something buyers — the so-called Millennials — have propelled much of the system’s success and made it a big seller for Ford.

Microsoft’s “Millennials in Automotive Survey 2009” found 77 percent of respondents use social networking sites, 50 percent subscribe to more than one site, and 64 percent visit them daily. What’s more, millennials will make up 28 percent of the driving population next year, a nine-point increase from 2004. That’s one reason Ford has tapped the power of social networking to sell the Fiesta and the Fusion. Ford thinks those same twenty-somethings can improve Sync by bringing web data and social networks like Twitter and Facebook to your dashboard.

“What excites me about this project is that it gives our students the opportunity to unleash their creativity using cutting-edge technologies that connect the vehicle and the cloud,” said Dr. Jason Flinn, an associate professor at the University of Michigan.

The project is split into two phases. The first, which started earlier this month, is a six-week beta test of a prototype software platform. Computer and electrical engineering students are running a variety of applications in an attempt to break codes and crash the system.

“We are doing a complete shakedown of the development platform,” said Dr. Brian Noble, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UM. “It’s frustrating because the features and functions don’t work the way we think they’re supposed to, and it’s awesome because we are working on the bleeding edge.”

That group’s findings will shape the project’s second phase, the development of an in-vehicle connectivity platform that will be built during a second-semester course on embedded telematics. It will involve 25 to 30 students from multiple disciplines. They will work in small teams to develop the platform and build on its connectivity capabilities with new applications.

When they’re done, a panel of judges from Ford, the University of Michigan, Microsoft, Maker Faire and others will pick the winning application set. The winning team will install the programs in a Ford Fiesta for American Journey 2.0, a road trip to show off the car at next year’s Maker Faire, the world’s largest DIY convention.

Photo: Mark Fields, Ford executive VP and president of the Americas, demonstrates Sync at the Detroit auto show in 2007.
Courtesy Ford

See Also:

• Ford Tries Social Media for the Fusion, Too
• Ford Bets the Fiesta on Social Marketing
• Microsoft Wants Sync To Control Much More Than Gadgets

Anyone with a smart phone can, for better or worse, surf the internet from behind the wheel. But that isn’t keeping automakers from scrambling to bring wireless connectivity to cars, a development that could make our vehicles — and us — more efficient.

Consider the impact of just one feature — real-time traffic data — on traffic congestion. In 2006, the 15 million users of Japan’s Vehicle Information and Communication System saved 200 million gallons of gasoline and emitted 2 million tons less CO2 than they otherwise would have because they could avoid traffic jams (.pdf). That’s in addition to saving untold hours sitting in traffic

If there is this much benefit in a country the size of California, what could something like this mean to the United States as automakers like BMW, Chrysler and, most recently, Mercedes-Benz, bring us Wi-Fi on wheels?

The Japanese have had in-car connectivity since Toyota rolled out its Monet internet service in 1997. Monet was overhauled in 2002 when it was combined with Gazoo Media Services to form G-BOOK. In addition to a laundry list of vehicle targeted services, G-BOOK received a faster data link and Helpnet, Toyota’s emergency rescue service.

Honda and Nissan, not wanting to be left out, created InterNavi Club Premium and CARWINGS, while Subaru, Mazda, Daihatsu and Mitsubishi licensed G-BOOK from Toyota. The subsequent explosion of internet-enabled vehicles benefited from an advanced cellular network and a society enthralled with gadgetry.

Chrysler's Uconnect makes your car a mobile hotspot. Photo: Chrysler

As European and American automakers dip their toes into in-vehicle internet, the big question is what features they’ll offer and how they’ll handle getting data to the vehicle.

Mercedes recently announced it has successfully tested in-vehicle internet applications — including web browsing, vehicle software updates and VOIP — on a prototype 4G network. It follows BMW’s internet-connected iDrive system and Chrysler’s Uconnect Web in-vehicle mobile hotspot. Most of the automakers, along with Microsoft, are following them into the pool. There’s a push to introduce hardware standards.

We can take a hint from the Japanese to see what kind of apps we’ll see. The most obvious are web-surfing, e-mail and text messaging. Beyond those is the ability to download or stream music and talk radio, stream current satellite imagery and 3-D models to your navigation system and get up-to-the-minute gas prices. Other helpful apps will provide real-time traffic data, tell you where to find a parking spot and check out geo-blogs (blog postings tied to points of interest).

But the goal is about more than tweeting from the road or downloading the latest hits on iTunes. Connected cars are key to the Intelligent Transportation System. The long-promised and so far elusive idea is to have cars communicate with each other and with the road to increase safety, relieve congestion and manage traffic. Such a system would, among other things, allow cars to track everything around them and respond accordingly to avoid collisions.

As for the hardware we’ll need to make all this happen, take a look at OnStar, Uconnect and the Pro edition of Toyota’s Japan-only G-BOOK for clues. They use cellular modems with associated data accounts, and customers pay as much as $30 a month. Other systems like Ford’s Sync and Toyota’s entry-level G-BOOK use Bluetooth to share the user’s personal cellphone account. Audi’s MMI (multimedia interface) web-connected nav system takes another approach, using Bluetooth to “borrow” the SIM profile of the user’s cellphone. It doesn’t require a separate fee, but it does require the customer to have a data plan and a phone on a SIM chip.

The arrival of in-car Internet access and car-to-car connectivity is inevitable. It’s the application and potential scope that’s really compelling.

Photo: BMW

Fourteen years after first appearing in a car, OnStar is going abroad with a push into China that could bring vehicle telematics to millions of new subscribers — and millions of dollars to General Motors.

GM announced today that it will offer OnStar throughout mainland China beginning Dec. 6. It is the first time the service has been offered beyond North America, and China was a no-brainer. The country is the second-largest automotive market in the world — consumers bought just over 1 million cars in September alone — and sales are expected to hit 12.6 million this year. General Motors is one of China’s biggest brands, having sold 1.09 million cars there last year.

“If you were going to say, ‘What is the next big step for OnStar?’, you’d find a lot of good reasons why China is the next place to bring the technology,” OnStar President Walt Dorfstatter told Wired.com. “There are going to be a lot of vehicles sold over there. There are a range of safety-related issues that are unique to China because of the explosive growth in auto sales and the explosive growth in the number of drivers.”

More than 5.6 million people in North America subscribe to OnStar, and Dorfstatter said China will add “several million” more within five years.

There’s somewhere else OnStar might be headed.

The service will provide 14 features in Mandarin, from automatic crash notification and roadside assistance to vehicle diagnostics and turn-by-turn navigation. It will appear in Cadillac models first, then Buicks — one of China’s most popular marques — and finally in Chevrolet models. GM didn’t offer a specific timeline for the rollout, nor did it say how much consumers will pay once the complimentary one-year subscription expires

OnStar’s hardware is in its eighth generation, and Dorfstatter said the company has filed more than 500 patents on the system. But in an age when a smartphone puts the internet in your pocket, is OnStar even relevant? Dorfstatter is unequivocal in saying “Yes.”

More than 5.6 million North Americans subscribe to OnStar. Photo: GM

“We’ve actually become more relevant, because we’ve aggregated several useful features,” he said. “For example, it’s the only way to sense when you’ve been in an accident and get a digital crash signature to inform emergency personnel. It’s the only way you can track a stolen vehicle and slow it down or keep it from starting.”

OnStar is so proud of that last feature, called Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, it sent out a press release after it helped police in Visalia, California, catch a carjacker. It was the first time OnStar used SVS to stop a stolen car. But OnStar also does more than make it hard for someone to make off with your new Escalade Hybrid or unlock your doors when you’ve lost the key. Dorfstatter said it provides monthly diagnostic checks of subscribers’ vehicles and tells them when they might need service.

“We sent out 3.5 million remote vehicle-diagnostic e-mails last month,” he said. “We can even check the tire pressure and tell drivers when their tires are underinflated.”

All this gadgetry will, for the foreseeable future, remain embedded in GM’s car. Dorfstatter said OnStar engineers have “already demonstrated the platform is portable,” but there aren’t any immediate plans to put OnStar in your pocket.

“Will there be an intersection of OnStar functionality and portable devices? Absolutely,” he said. “We’ve played with some demonstrations, but we don’t have any timelines.”

Dorfstatter also offered a tantalizing clue to where OnStar might go next. He said the system could allow electric vehicles to communicate with the grid — so-called V2G communication — and provide owners with updates on the battery’s state of charge, the location of the nearest charging station and other info. What’s more, it could provide General Motors with data about when and how electric vehicles are used, when and how they’re charged, and how the batteries are behaving over time. Such information could help the company develop better batteries.

And where might this technology appear? The only thing Dorfstatter would say is it “could” be offered on a “range-extended electric vehicle.” He wouldn’t say anything more, but it’s worth noting that’s exactly how GM describes the Chevrolet Volt.

But that’s in the future. For the time being, OnStar is focused on making a big splash in China, where Dorfstatter expects the service to be popular.

“I believe it will spread much quicker than it did after the OnStar launch here in the U.S. in 1996,” he said.

Top photo: The OnStar command center in Detroit apparently doesn’t use headsets.
Courtesy General Motors

Volkswagen and Stanford University go way back, having collaborated on two cool autonomous cars for DARPA, and now they’ve gone in together on a laboratory where researchers and students will develop technology they say will lead to safer, greener cars.

The German automaker, through Volkswagen Group of America, is investing $5.75 million in the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory to spur the creation of new automotive tech. Along with VW’s Electronics Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, VAIL gives VW the largest Silicon Valley research presence of any automaker.

“This collaboration can draw on a long-standing relationship between the Volkswagen Group and Stanford, which continues to increase the exchange between industrial and academic talent,” Dr. Franz-Josef Paefgen, chairman and CEO of Bentley Motors, said in a statement. (VW owns Bentley.) “The goals are to accelerate automotive-related research on campus, increase opportunities for collaboration between the VW Group and Stanford and build a global community of academic and industrial partners committed to the future of automotive research.”

VW has been working with Stanford since at least 2005, when the two collaborated on Stanley, an autonomous Touareg that won the DARPA Grand Challenge that year. Stanley is now on display at the Smithsonian. It was followed in 2007 by Junior, a Passat that was runner up in the DARPA Urban Challenge. That’s Junior in the main pic, being driven sans hands.

Volkswagen, through Audi, also has developed an autonomous TT-S, pictured below, that will attempt to conquer Pike’s Peak sometime next year. That’s an audacious goal, given the 12.42-mile course to the 14,110-foot summit features 156 turns and is among the greatest challenges in motorsports.

Volkswagen’s investment at Stanford includes $2 million for building construction and $750,000 annually for five years to fund research and teaching activities.

“When the new building opens early next year, VAIL will provide a home on campus for faculty and students from around the university to work on advanced automotive research,” said Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford School of Engineering. “Transportation is a globally important area in which engineers play a vital role.”

The partners look at VAIL and ERL as an exclusive, combined learning laboratory where Stanford researchers and students as well as visiting scholars will work alongside automotive equipment manufacturers and Silicon Valley experts to foster innovation.

VW and Stanford hope to build on their DARPA partnership and want to leverage their success with Stanley and Junior in a variety of applications. Volkswagen also plans to work on further development of its Audi Clean Air Initiative. The company’s sees a future where linked, intelligent vehicles interact with each other to increase safety and ease the environmental impact of automobiles

“By partnering with a prestigious university such as Stanford, we’ve built a global community of academic and industry professionals that are committed to the future of automotive research,” said Dr. Burkhard Huhnke, executive director of the Electronics Research Laboratory. “Our event is intended to showcase the successful partnership between VW and Stanford that has helped drive automobile innovation into the future.”

Photos: Volkswagen

The Pike’s Peak Audi TT-S, an autonomous vehicle that VW hopes will scale the famous peak sometime next year.

Forget driving from dealership to dealership or threatening to walk out on a used car deal. A new website lets you use your smartphone to check whether your local used car dealer is trying to get you to pay too much.

While we programmed a similar app — a post-it note marked “YES” that you can stick on your screen whenever you have a similar question with such an obvious answer — the folks at Carsala actually used some data to back up their decision-making tool. Just enter the VIN and the price that your dealer is asking, and Carsala will instantly do the homework you should have done before you left the house.

“By using the Price Checker on your iPhone, you can actually evaluate the price of the individual used car you are considering, on the dealer’s lot,” Carsala CEO Tyler Elliston said. The site will tell you whether to hold ‘em, fold ‘em, walk away or run.

Or, if things get really tricky, Carsala will let you call in backup.

If your salesperson doesn’t budge even after you tell the manager that your phone says Tricky Ricky’s Used Oldsmobile Superstore has the same car for $800 less, you can opt into Carsala’s team of professional negotiators who will contact on average 20 additional local dealers to get a better price. For a fee, they’ll even arrange to have a mechanic inspect it for you.

While the website is free, the professional negotiators charge a commission equal to 15 percent of the difference between the price you pay and the Kelley Blue Book value. For those who would rather spend their time on more noble pursuits than trying to convince a salesperson you’d rather not take out a 72-month car loan, it seems like a good deal.

We tried out the site and found it to be pretty user friendly. While it didn’t have any recommendations on pricing for that ‘87 Renault Alliance we had our eyes on, it did let us know that a Prius on a local dealer’s lot had a price that merited four out of four stars — a great deal. Plus, were a dealer to pressure us to take it home today just in case we couldn’t find another, Carsala also told us to cool our jets — according to the site, Priuses are a dime a dozen on used car lots.

Photo: Flickr/Robert Couse-Baker. Carsala lets you know whether that used car you’ve got your eye on is a good deal, right from the dealership floor.