While other systems require the driver to focus away from the road—either by selecting letters from endless menus or on a touchscreen keyboard—the new Audi MMI touch allows for blind typing: The driver just writes naturally with a finger on the touchpad. The pad is strategically located next to the steering wheel and in front of the gear shift, so the writing can be done in a comfortable position, without having to focus on any screen.

The MMI system—which recognizes Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean characters—also has a rotary pushbutton for old school people, as well as voice control, but only the touch system allows the driver to enter commands while talking on the cellphone or playing music. You gotta love those Audi smartypants. [Autospies and Jalopnik]

Of course, it would have also proven whether or not your wife was using the golf club on your face before the incident. The point is that, unlike most vehicle accident cameras, the Car Cam Dually offers a more complete picture of how an accident went down, making it easier to prove who was at fault and what kind of injuries were sustained. To that end, the device also keeps track of your GPS location and the g-force of the impact. [Spy Gadgets via TRFJ via DVICE]

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

Scrolling LED Message Sign With Remote: There's so much to say to your fellow drivers on the road that the finger, two signal directions, high beams and horns don't cover. Can you really put a price on the ability to articulate "YOU DRIVE LIKE SHIT", "PLEASE SIGNAL", "DO NOT TAILGATE" and "PLEASE LEAVE THE FAST LANE IF YOU ARE DRIVING 50MPH". $40 [Thinkgeek]

Valentine One Radar Detector: It's still the best radar detector. With sensors forward and aft and an increasing frequency of beeps correlating to strength of signal, you can tell if smokey was passing you on the highway, is creeping up from behind or is sitting dead forward in a speed trap. $400 [ValentineOne]

MiFi Wi-Fi 3G Wireless Router: Car internet was but a dream. Then people started cludging together routers and 3G cards, and it was a little bit more of a nightmare. The little MiFi runs on Verizon's reliable 3G network, supports a few clients and has more than enough Wi-Fi range for your car (or a giant RV). Since it fits in the palm of your hand, stashing it under a seat or in a glovebox is easy. We don't recommend hard wiring these things, either, since they run off batteries for awhile, too. $100 with two year $60 contract [Mifi on Giz]

Duracell Powerpack 450 Talking Portable Power Unit: This portable battery has enough 110v power to run a laptop for 8 hours, jump start a car and inflate tires with its built in air compressor. It also has built in voice prompts to walk you through the process of jump starting, in case you or your loved ones don't remember if its black before red or the other way around. $120 Bonus: Black and Decker's 200-watt inverter turns your 12v cigarette adapter into a 110volt plug for $35. [Duracell Powerpack on Giz]

Wagan Ergo Comfort Rest Heated Massage Car Seat Cushion: The good doctor has made this 12v car seat cover that heats and massages. Knowing the power output a 12v plus is capable of, I'm doubtful this thing will do anything but get warm and vibrate a little bit. But if you need a car cover, a few degrees and some artificially induced butt modulation never made a long car ride any worse. And for $33, it's not such a big risk. [Amazon]

Wavebox Car Microwave/cooler: I don't think this is a good idea. I just think it's kind of cool to be able to make popcorn while you drive. I mean, with the proper in-dash DVD system, I'm halfway to feeling better that drive-in movie theaters are dead. Halfway. I wouldn't rank this a do not buy, but I wouldn't want you to ignore the 1.5 star Amazon rating, either. $300 [Wavebox on Giz, Amazon]

DON'T BUY My Pee Pee Bottle: A nalgene-style bottle for peeing in on road trips. Bad idea. Just pull over — you're not on the Cannonball Run nor are you some trucker late for his interstate Ikea drop off. Just pull over! [Jalopnik]

DON'T BUY Top of the Line Garmin GPS: The Nuvi 1690 is great. It has wireless search and traffic, lane suggestion and a Bluetooth speakerphone with dialing for your cellphone. It's also $500 and is a total waste of money. Smartphones are going to replace these sorts of connected GPS. One day. For now, a good touchscreen GPS should be bought from Garmin by checking prices to see what's on sale for a little over $100. Like this Nuvi 260W that is on sale for $117. For GPS apps, we recommend the free and built-in Google Maps Navigation program on Android, and Motion X GPS for the iPhone, which is a great value at $25 per year. (But not a very visceral good gift, as an app, especially since there are subscription fees after awhile.)

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite Car Gadget in comments-include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Neon (or more likely, fiber optic) framing aside, the Artikcar sounds like it'd actually pretty fun to ride. Powered (obviously) by pedal, the Artikcar is steered by passenger leaning, rather than any kind of hand-control mechanism.

Be the star of your very own rolling neon sign. It's what you've always wanted. [Deezen]

Of course, the car has yet to be built, let alone break that record. But the effort is quite serious, these people are not amateur, and they have serious sponsors. It will use one EJ200 jet like the one used by the Eurofighter—hopefully a real one, unlike the one I got into at Dubai two years ago—alonside a one 18" hybrid rocket, and a V12 piston engines. The 6500-kilogram Bloodhound—which is being built in Bristol—will have a 47,000lbs trust, with a top speed of 1050mph.

The driver will be former RAF Wing Comander Andy Green, who broke the landspeed record in 1997. [Bloodhound via Techradar]

If you're having trouble getting over the price tag long enough to daydream, just think of how much you're saving with the standard HD radio. Or think about a Tesla, which is dirt cheap in comparison. [Autocar via Dvice via Geekologie]

A project of Garnet Hertz of the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, this is a classic OutRun arcade cabinet that's been placed on an EVT America Electric Trike with electric motors that can go up to a whopping 20MPH.

Check out the below video to see a bit more about how this thing will work.

[ConceptLab via Jalopnik]

At least, that seems to be the safest route, if some amazing test results from a study into teen driving and accident prevention are any indication.

The test involved an in-vehicle data recorder (IVDR) system that monitors unsafe driving events, such as sharp turns, heavy acceleration and abrupt braking. Originally developed by GreenRoad, a San Francisco firm that specializes in trucker safety, the system takes this information and "grades" the driver. Red, yellow and green lights inform drivers how well they are driving at any given time.

The system sounds pretty simplistic, but the data suggests something remarkable. In those cars with the system, dangerous driving events were cut in half.

Impressive, but we imagine angsty teens will still find some way to complain about "the man" and mom and dad's snooping. Fortunately, there's an app for that. The system is accelerometer-based, and the software could easily make the jump over to smartphones, said Swedish engineer Per-Olof Svnesk in an article at New Scientist. You're already secretly looking at your kid's cellphone anyway, parents, so why not install a safety app in there while you're at it? They may even think it's cool, so no snooping necessary. [New Scientist]

Unfortunately, the maximum range on the G-Bound is only about 33 feet, so I wouldn't take it out to the lake unless you don't mind swimming after it. Not that it matters—it appears to be a Japan-only release for the moment. [G-Bound via Hobby Media via Coolest Gadgets]

The T.27 is designed to be driven in the city. Since it's ultra-light, Murray says it will be the most efficient car in its class, which probably sits somewhere between golf carts and failed European mini-cars from the 60s. The most innovative aspect is that it's made using a process called iStream: Instead of stamping metal sheets like in normal car factories, this manufacturing method welds metal sheets together.

That results in factories that are one-fifth the size of traditional ones, less energy consumption, and a car that looks like crap. And that, my friends, it's the problem with the T.27: If something looks like crap, people won't buy it, no matter how green and efficient it is.

Update: And yes, it looks like crap even with the fiber covers. People want real cars that feel solid. Not glorified golf carts painted in bright colors. [Daily Mail]

The module relays this information to your GPS unit via Bluetooth where you will be able to view a set of customizable gauges that provide details on things like fuel economy, RPMs, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, and emissions.

Awesome? Yeah, sure. Will it save Garmin from destruction at the hands of a possible Google navigation juggernaut? No, probably not. [Cnet via NaviGadget via Ubergizmo via DVICE]

The next-generation Ford Explorer will come with rear seatbelts that inflate in an accident, just like an airbag. But the intent isn't to absorb a body hurling through the car, softening the blow into a seat or steering wheel. Instead, the airbag simply multiplies the surface area of the belt against your body during an impact by five times.

It makes crashes more comfortable on the body, reducing "head, neck and chest injuries for rear seat passengers, often children and older passengers who can be more vulnerable to such injuries," according to Ford. I can't argue with that lest I sound like I hate humanity (which I do, but kids and old people are OK with me). However, I CAN argue with their second point:

Ford claims that, since these belts are naturally more comfortable in trials, they should have a positive impact on the low 61 percent rear belt usage rate in the US.

If all we need is a softer seatbelt to fix that stat, I have a feeling that can be accomplished for a lot less than America will spend on 60-millisecond-deploying seatbelt airbags. [Ford]

* Also of note, any child that's still smiling in panels 2 and 3 is too heavily medicated.

By "there" I mean that I would be driving snowboarders up and down Lake Tahoe's hills. And by "driving snowboarders up and down" I mean racing up to the mountain top and back to the mountain base. And with "mountain base" I really mean bar.

I guess I won't be driving the Trax—with its 400hp engine, cat tracks, and four-snowboarder sleigh—a lot, after all. [Autoblog via Techeblog]

The team that created it wants to see if they can really push performance in such a challenging environment. The modded Audi TTS—which is already the fastest autonomous car in the world, running at 130mph—will have to face gravel and paved dirty roads, with 7% grades that will take it from 4,721 ft to 9,390 ft high.

I'm glad I won't be inside, testing. Although after a near-crash experience in a car this Sunday, I think this will actually be kind of fun. Not as fun as getting trapped into the space shuttle cargo bay without no safety straps, but fun nonetheless. [BotJunkie]

The Tokai Challenger completed the journey in 29 hours and 49 minutes despite a flat tire—that's an average speed of about 63mph. That's actually not the best time in history. That Dutch team we mentioned above achieved the current record back in 2005—29 hours and 11 minutes. But obviously conditions like sunlight and wind can skew these numbers on a year to year comparison basis. [Global Green Challenge via Wired via Engadget]

UPDATE: Reader Stephen gives us another reason for the recently slower times:
"A major reason why the Nuna team from 2005 holds the time record is because there were no speed limits in the Northern Territory of Australia before January 2007. Now the speed limit in the Northern Territory is 130km/h (81mph). In the race there are time penalties for breaking the speed limit. I know this because I was a member of the University of Waterloo's solar car team that raced in Australia in 2007."

GM's offering in-car internet for $500 and +$29 a month. Great! This is a stupid thing to get—think about devices like the MiFi, and ask yourself who would buy this. Plus, do you really want to buy a GM? If you go American, go Ford. They have cool tech! [Engadget]
Apple stores are ditching those clunky handheld point of sale computers—which are Windows-run—for iPod touches that can do the same thing. There's no way to write this story up without making an easy Microsoft joke, which isn't fair because those point of sale units have been a big part of why Apple stores have been such easy places to drop loads of cash. [AppleInsider]
Virgin erases Helio and the Ocean 2. But not before we erased the love and care we had back in 2007 for the company. Remember how progressive they were? Were? [Mobile Crunch]
JVC's $200 Blu-ray player does not stream media and does not cost less than the LG bd370 which does. It doesn't even cost less than the PS3, which also, you know, plays games. Do not buy. [JVC]

Self-parking cars aren't really a new idea, but with the design the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory is working on, only minimal modifications are required a vehicle's stock options. The main sensor systems consist of a camera mounted on the rear view mirror, a front radar, and " couple little off the shelf LIDAR units mounted on the sides." They'll need to make a few more modification to take care of the system's inability to detect obstacles (be it people or terrain), but other than that tiny detail, this is the best autonomous parking prototype I've seen so far. [BotJunkie]

The car is being shown by the Japanese manufacturer at the Tokyo Auto Show 2009. [El Mundo—Thanks Eduardo González]

It doesn't look too shabby either. The Lexus LF-A Crystallised Wind was made of acrylic glass for the Milan Design Week exhibition, back in April at Milan's Museo della Permanente art gallery.[Daily Telegraph]

Which, I suppose, is one way to kill two birds with a single government-tossed stone: people won't be texting while driving because they can't get a decent signal anywhere, and cars will have a smaller carbon footprint since they won't get as hot. The whole GPS navigators sucking and not being able to accurately track parolees is a different problem for a different day, really.

The car manufacturers, for their part, would prefer a coating that absorbs energy, instead of reflects it, which they say would leave wireless signals unmangled, but I bet slightly warmer.

Update: California's Air Resources Board says your phone will be fine in this FAQ (PDF):

Specifically, ARB staff conducted a test program in Southern California involving three cars, one with reflective glass all-around, one with reflective glass only on the windshield, and one with no reflective glass at all. The study showed that cell phone performance was equivalent, regardless of how much reflective glass was used.

[Detroit News via TUAW]