Rob Wray from mp3Car talks with Robert from Optimoto about his "Battle Bot" inspired electric vehicle.Robert takes his experience from building fighting robots to make a very ruggedized electric car.

Rob Wray talks with Ron to explain how MPG is calculated with electric vehicles considering they do not have "gallons".Basically, you calculate how much mileage you get to get the same power that the equivalent number of gallons gives you.

It is sad to see, but now my XOHM hardware is in the trash. On October 5, 2008 mp3Car.com reported that XOHM service was online a week before the launch party. We also did a mobile drive test and used in other cities before their networks were officially active. Those blog posts were syndicated in news stories around the country. Our test equipment sat on the shelf until today when I decided I was fed up with terrible service from Comcast and Verizon. Out came the Xohm equipment again - but guess what? After a year and a few days, Xohm wimax has turned off ALL new accounts. What does this mean?

• 4 days ago they froze activation of new accounts on the xohm network to pave the way for a transition to Clearwire technology
• There is no hope to get your Xohm hardware activated
• We tried to reactive hardware on two old accounts
• We tried to active two pieces of hardware on one currently active account
• We tried to active online through the website and the Xohm network
• Phone reps refuse to activate devices
• Managers refuse to activate devices
• Phone reps suggested returning the device to the vendor if you can.
• Current customers with subscriptions active as of 4 days ago will get free upgrades to clear wire equipment at the beginning of the year.
• Current customers with inactive hardware appear to be screwed.

The return to your vendor advice is great advice except refunds are only available on the hardware if it was bought within the last 7 days. Furthermore, "Xohm equipment might be compatible with the new Clearwire network but probably not."We are waiting to get comments back from Xohm or Clearwire representatives. This certainly isn't a great way to treat early adopters or to build out confidence in a new network or new technology. Do you know more about this? We would love to hear from you in our mobile wimax forums.Previous posts on this topic include: In car / Computer based vehicle test in Baltimore, Vehicle testing Xohm in Boston Suburbs 10-9-2008, Bench Testing Xohm in Boston 10-10-2008

mp3Car forum members Greg Planthaber(profile), Tom Berry(profile), Will Meyer(profile)(blog), and Silvio Fiorito (profile) are highlighted by Peter Wayner in today's NY Times. The article is a follow up to Peter Wayner's visit to the mp3car AFKFest in Baltimore.

For an in-depth tour of Greg's car computer set-up take a look at the video shot at the AFKFest.

If you are new to car computing, watch some videos or read our faq on how to get started.
Will Meyer's video from AFKfest is also here:

Mitch Solomon gives us a tour of his lab car at AFKfest 2009. You can see Mitch's gadgets in the store.

Testing is one of the most important steps in putting a computer in your vehicle or car and is often skipped. We highly recommend testing your system on the bench for a day or two before you put the device in your car. We previously did a video on how to build your own car computer. This video will give you some insights into this next step.

The mp3car forums are about 10 years old. It is about time we recognized some of the innovators that have made this community great. Please take a minute to recognize the efforts which made car computing feasible and vote for your top 5 products or innovations which were generated by the community.

At the Embeded Systems Conference Boston in Fall of 2009, Mp3car gets a first hand tour of newly released windows 7 embedded. This demo shows of some exciting stuff:

• Multitouch
• accelerometer integration
• ambient light integration
• Integration with a mock up assembly line