This concept car uses its own reconnaissance drone to spot traffic jams

The idea of receiving traffic updates on your sat nav may suddenly seem tawdry next to this more futuristic alternative dreamed up by Renault: If you're driving along in its "KWID" concept car and you're worried about jams up ahead, you simply launch a quadrocopter drone from the car's roof, send it skyward using a control app on your tablet and then survey the road through its camera. Would it be distracting, trying to perceive two views at once without the multitasking skills of an Apache pilot? Whose insurer would pay out if your drone pranged someone else's? Fortunately, these questions need not concern us, as Renault readily admits that the KWID will probably never see the light of an assembly plant. And in any case, if the technology does come about one day, the parallel advent of semi-autonomous cars and mind-controlled drones would surely make it practical.

Your car's computer system can be hacked with off-the-shelf parts

You probably don't spend much time thinking about the computer in your car, but a pair of Spanish security researchers sure does. In preparation for next month's Black Hat Asia security conference in Singapore, Javier Vazquez-Vidal and Alberto Garcia Illera have assembled a small electronic device that can leave a vehicle's computer system open to attack. "It can take five minutes or less to hook up and then walk away," Vidal says. It can also be built from off-the-shelf components for less than $20.

What the gizmo can actually do depends on the car. The team says that they've wired the CAN Hacking Tool (named for the Controller Area Network bus it exploits) into four vehicles, and have used it to wirelessly manipulate lights, set off alarms, control power windows and even activate the vehicle's brakes. By the time the conference starts, they hope to outfit the prototype with a GSM radio, making it possible to control a vehicle's systems from virtually anywhere. Still, Vidal says they don't want to aid any nefarious activities, so the hacking tool's source code is going to remain private for now -- but they do hope their demonstration at Black Hat Asia will get the attention of automakers. "A car is a mini network," Illera said. "And right now there's no security implemented.

cars to 'talk' to each other

The government wants our cars to 'talk' to each other

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is throwing its weight behind vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication systems. After years of experimentation and a real-world trial in Ann Arbor, MI the government is (almost) ready to make peer-to-peer networking a required safety feature on all new cars. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it'll "begin taking the next steps" towards implementing V2V, though, what those steps are is still somewhat shrouded in mystery. One major detail left to be ironed out is when exactly these new safety standards will go into effect. The agency is currently finalizing its analysis of the data gathered during the Ann Arbor trial, which it will then use to build a regulatory proposal.

For those that don't know, V2V systems allow cars to share information about their position, speed and heading with each other and alert a driver when there is potential for danger. That could be a car speeding through an intersection ahead or a truck in your blind spot when trying to change lanes. While there is potential for integration with automated collision avoidance technology in the future, initially the DOT will be focused on passive systems. If you're concerned about the government having yet another avenue through which to track you, breathe easy. The data passed between vehicles includes no personally identifiable information. In fact, it doesn't even identify the car -- it only contains basic safety data. In addition to that, the NHTSA envisions multiple layers of security and privacy protection to ensure vehicles are sending and receiving reliable data