Green Vehicle Disposal – Automotive News Blog

New-car buyers have a lot of reasons to care about used-car prices. For starters, there’s the value of your trade-in, assuming you have a trade-in and you’re not coming out of a lease.

According to the used-car auction firm ADESA Inc., Carmel, Ind., in April the average used-vehicle wholesale price was $10,096, down 4.5 percent from a year earlier. That number hit a recent peak in March 2012 at $10,625, so the current level still isn’t bad. Average used-car prices bottomed out at an average of $8,628 in October 2008, according to ADESA data.

In an uncertain world, one thing that’s completely predictable is how many 3-year-old used cars there will be, three years from now. The answer is, the number of new cars being built today.

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So far, the cell phone’s primary contribution to driving has been the emergence of the even more oblivious driver, distracted, eyes wandering, meandering in the lane sometimes like a drunk. But the phone — or more specifically, the smartphone, hand-held computer or other mobile computing device — is poised to give drivers the futuristic capabilities of the Batmobile’s remote control.

Recent concept cars such as the Rinspeed iChange and the Chrysler Global Electric Motorcars Peapod have embraced Apple’s popular iPhone as a device not only for making phone calls or playing music, but as the key to starting the car.

That might sound like an impractical futuristic application of smartphone technology, but in fact, that and many more innovative uses of hand-held computers are coming to market in the near future.

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While Detroit is still the hub of the U.S. auto industry, California’s Silicon Valley is quickly becoming the center for automotive technology innovation — and the site of research labs for car companies.

The latest example is Nissan’s new research center, which will focus on autonomous driving and connected cars.

Earlier this week, the Japanese automaker and its partner Renault opened the Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley to form “collaborative partnerships with companies and research institutions in this global technology hub.

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Popular Mechanics visited the Detroit Auto Show and has come up with a comprehensive list of the 10 best cars!

See them all here.

The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the United States in August rose for the first time in five months, University of Michigan researchers say.

Vehicles sold in August had an average fuel economy of 23.8 mpg, according to a report by the university’s Transportation Research Institute.

August marked the fourth best month on record and an 18 percent increase (3.7 mpg) from October 2007 when the institute began tracking monthly data.

The 0.2 mpg improvement from July to August most likely reflects the increased price of gasoline, researchers say.

The average national price for self-serve regular gasoline on July 1 was $3.43, which jumped 30 cents to nearly $3.73 on August 1, and other 10 cents by the end of August to $3.83 a gallon, according to AAA.