The parliament of The Netherlands has passed a motion which would require that all new cars sold by 2025 will have to be electrified in some way [...]

The Dutch government hasn't yet banned gas and diesel-powered cars, however, and the motion does allow for hybrid cars to be sold beyond 2025. [...]

Although localized governments have sought to ban public cars from urban streets in a number of European cities, the Dutch Labor Party's motion is by far the most aggressive campaign — motorauthority.com

Cars conquered the daily culture of American life back when top hats and child labor were in vogue, and well ahead of such other innovations as radio, plastic, refrigerators, the electrical grid, and women’s suffrage.

A big part of why they’ve stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience...Convenience (some might call it freedom) is not a selling point to be easily dismissed [...]

In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane. — theatlantic.com

[nuTonomy's] Level 4 autonomous vehicle "is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip;" all you have to do is provide a destination and (possibly) open and shut the doors.

Google's autonomous cars, in contrast, are currently at Level 3, with limited self-driving automation [...]

[nuTonomy] is building into [its] decision-making engine the ability for cars to actually violate the rules of the road when it's necessary to do so — spectrum.ieee.org

Civil rights lawyers say the new service being touted by local entrepreneurs, Chariot for Women, would probably conflict with Massachusetts’ antidiscrimination laws. [...]

safety of female passengers has dogged Uber and Lyft Inc. and regulators around the country are debating new requirements for ride-hailing services that include [a] background check [...]

SheTaxis, or SheRides, faced questions from regulators in 2014 when it launched an app that connects female passengers with women drivers. — bostonglobe.com

In a joint statement yesterday the Playa Vista, California-based Hyperloop Transport Technologies (HTT) and the Slovak Republic’s economy minister held out the future vision of the Hyperloop whisking passengers at 760 mph between Vienna in Austria, Budapest in Hungary and the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. A Bratislava-to-Vienna route would take just 8 minutes at full speed, while a Bratislava-to-Budapest route would take 10 minutes. — globalconstructionreview.com

In 1980, for instance, fewer than 12 percent of American workers commuted for 45 minutes or more one way, according to the Census.

The Census didn't even bother separating out 60- and 90-minute commuters in 1980, since it was relatively rare. But they began tracking these mega-commuters in 1990. That year, 1.6 percent of workers commuted 90 minutes or more one way. In 2014, 2.62 percent of workers were commuting this long, an increase of 64 percent over the prevalence in 1990. — Washington Post

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law [...]

"NHTSA will interpret 'driver' in the context of Google's described motor vehicle design as referring to the (self-driving system), and not to any of the vehicle occupants" [...]

Google told NHTSA that the real danger is having auto safety features that could tempt humans to try to take control. — reuters.com

[MIT's] team was awarded the top prize, and...Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands were the next runners-up. [...]

Musk took questions from the audience on everything from what inspired him to create the Hyperloop idea (being stuck in LA traffic), what advice he had for the winning teams (lots of dry runs), and what "crazy idea" he is working on next (electric jets — Musk says he thinks he's close to something, but said precious little about how they'd work). — theverge.com

SpaceX has selected Aecom ... to build its Hyperloop test track later this year [...]

The nearly one-mile-long test track will be built adjacent to SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters [...]

The test track's six-foot diameter steel tube will include a non-magnetic sub-track ... Cradled in place above ground, it will serve as a vacuum-sealed, high-speed proving ground for transport pod prototypes being developed as part of a SpaceX design competition. — theverge.com

[Hyperloop] has the swagger of Elon Musk rather than the stigma of a public bureaucracy. Second, it’s going to be, like, a billion times faster than HSR. [...]

And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. [...]

The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate HSR also complicate Hyperloop. — cp-dr.com

Since 2000, the world’s second-largest megacity, Jakarta, has seen its population swell by a staggering 34 percent. Though the city proper is home to just 10 million, the urban zone is home to 30 million [...]

“Jakarta is the largest urban metropolitan area in the world without a metro,” he [Deden Rukmana] says. “And a metro is the most crucial element of transportation for a megacity. There’s no way it can exist otherwise.” — Inverse

Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent [...]

Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking. — The Des Moines Register

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the government would remove hurdles to developing autonomous vehicles and set further guidelines for them within six months. [...]

The government’s new support includes a request in President Obama’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year for $4 billion, to be spent over 10 years, to finance research projects and infrastructure improvements tied to driverless cars. — nytimes.com

"Robots hate litter," reads a health and safety sign. "Please don't give them any more reasons to overthrow mankind." It's also fair to say that naming your robots makes the whole process of constructing cars vaguely ridiculous. "Wolverine and Iceman lift the cars to tramline two," our tour guide informs us with the zeal of a true believer, adding, as he did after virtually every sentence, that this is 'kind of amazing'. — wired.co.uk

The idea behind the Chinese-built 184 is that users will simply get in, power it up, select their destination using a 12-inch touchscreen tablet display, then press the 'take-off' button. The drone's automated flight systems will take over from there, managing tasks such as communication with air traffic control and other aircraft, obstacle avoidance, and of course navigation... — gizmag