2012 Mercedes-benz Glk-class Glk350 on 2040-cars

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Lewis Hamilton on pole in France, Sebastian Vettel only seventh

LE CASTELLET, France — Lewis Hamilton seized pole position for the French Grand Prix in track record time as Mercedes, chasing their 10th successive win, swept the front row of the grid in dominant fashion on Saturday. The Formula One world championship leader was 0.286 seconds quicker than team mate Valtteri Bottas. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc qualified third with team mate Sebastian Vettel a distant seventh on a distinctly off day for the German. The pole, in a time of one minute 28.319 seconds, was a record-extending 86th of Hamilton's career and his third of the season. "I'm happy that I got the potential out of the car, the team did a fantastic job," said five-times world champion Hamilton, last year's winner from pole at Le Castellet's Paul Ricard circuit. "We've just been chipping away at improving the set-up of the car," added the Briton, who is 29 points clear of Bottas after seven races — all won by the pair. Hamilton also triumphed in the last two of 2018. Bottas was fastest in the second phase of qualifying but could not match Hamilton's sizzling pace when it mattered in the final shoot-out. "The wind changed direction and there was a couple of corners my line didn't work and I had to work it out but Lewis had a better lap," said the Finn. Mercedes have looked to be in a class of their own all weekend, with Hamilton or Bottas fastest in every practice session with Leclerc, rather than Vettel, consistently the best of the rest. Vettel struggled, backing out of his first hot lap and then failing to string together all the sectors smoothly on his second attempt. "I don't know what happened, I lost so much momentum there was no point to finish that lap," said the German, who starts behind the Renault-powered McLarens of British rookie Lando Norris (fifth) and Spaniard Carlos Sainz (sixth). "Some laps it felt good and others it didn't. I didn't get the best out of the car but it was difficult for me, but some laps I didn't have he grip I had before." Vettel's time of 1:29.799 was eighth tenths of a second slower than Leclerc's best. Leclerc, who starts with Red Bull's Max Verstappen alongside, asked the team over the radio to get Vettel to speed up but the Monegasque said his lap had not been compromised. Australian Daniel Ricciardo starts eighth for Renault and Red Bull's Pierre Gasly lines up ninth for his home race with Italian Antonio Giovinazzi 10th for Alfa Romeo.

Major Alexa deal will bring Amazon services into more cars

Amazon and its personal assistance service Alexa are partnering with HERE Technologies to create a new connected mobility service powerhouse. Alexa will integrate with HERE's navigation and location services to offer what the two companies are calling a "true voice-first-navigation experience." Alexa will come pre-integrated with HERE navigation on-demand, which the automakers can then enable, which should help cut down on development time. One of the biggest features from this partnership is how directions could be offered and delivered using HERE's Open Location Platform (OLP). Currently, the OLP uses data from several car manufacturers to provide insights into real-time location and traffic. But on Alexa, this could be used to provide directional context. For example, Alexa could say, "Turn right after [such-and-such a building]" rather than just, "Turn right." Amazon has been testing the automotive waters throughout the past decade. Its home-based Alexa-enabled devices are already offered with connections to several manufacturers. To various degrees of integration, it can already pair with Ford, Genesis, Toyota, Lexus, Hyundai and BMW vehicles. At the end of 2018, Amazon took things a step further when it introduced the Echo Auto, a Bluetooth-connected Alexa assistant device that can be physically kept in a car. Currently only available by invitation (its production and distribution have been delayed), the $25 device is essentially a voice service that works together with smartphones and connects to a car's speakers. Users can command it to do a variety of things, including playing music, setting navigation, opening the garage door, finding local stores, making calls, setting reminders, and thousands of other "skills." According to The Verge, nearly 1 million people have already ordered the device. Some (well, probably few) may know HERE Technologies from its maps on Windows Phones. We all know how that turned out, though. Today, HERE has expanded into a multi-function suite that is available in multiple mediums, including many automotive applications. HERE Automotive's connected vehicle services include real-time traffic, parking, weather, fuel prices, hazard warnings, traffic sign integration, and even EV charging stations. These all incorporate and extend the use of HERE's location and tracking programming. HERE is already partnered with BMW, Audi, Daimler, Intel, Mobileye, NVIDIA, and has investments from Bosch, Continental and Pioneer.

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.