Technology Innovation Today

Most modern vehicles are much too specific: Cars stick to roads, boats are trapped on the water, submarines wander the ocean floor. So I came up with the Libelule: a spherical vehicle with two large wheels that allow it to travel almost anywhere. Feel like roaming the beach? Let it roll. Want to hit the water? The wheels scoop water like a paddle boat, propelling it faster than today’s amphibious crafts. When you feel like a dive, select your desired depth on the (thankfully waterproof) touch screen, let the water…

Aston Martin does two things exceptionally well: soaring success and crushing failure. While stunners like the DBR-1 finished first and second at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959, the company also seems to have declared bankruptcy nearly as many times as it has won races. These things happen when you’ve been in the business of building cars for 103 years. One thing you can always count on from Aston Martin, though, is style. Its cars have been, for the most part, gorgeous. But since the DB9 ushered in…

In 2012 President Obama instituted new, aggressive fuel economy standards for automakers selling cars in the United States. The executive branch—represented here by the Environmental Protection Agency, basically—mandated that every car manufacturer would have to have a fleetwide average gas mileage of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE to transit nerds) take the gas mileage of every car a company sells—from Yaris to Tundra, Verano to Enclave, Golf to whatever—and average it out. You want to build a gas-guzzling, smoke-pumping, V-18 for hauling…