Electric-Hybrid Karma Revero Sparks Competition With Tesla

Tesla's Competitor Meet Karma Revero—an electric-hybrid car looking to steal some thunder from Tesla. Formerly launched as Fisker Karma, the car model is now known as Revero, according to Karma Automotive's web site. What's exciting here? A solar roof that promises to power the car—all by itself, and an owner's manual that's digitized into an infotainment system. Bloomberg says the car will be priced north of $115,000, and travel 50 miles on electric power. About 900 cars are expected to be made in the first year—2017.

VW Hack Why have keys at all if hackers can simply build an exploit that lets them into your car? VW owners may be asking this question after researchers from the University of Birmingham used a radio scanner and laptop to build a way to unlock about 100 million Volkswagen cars—basically every one built since 1995. Even better? The same exploit works on cars made by other manufacturers from Alfa Romeo to Nissan, Ford to Peugeot. No problem. Just stop leaving anything important in the car. Forever. (Via Wired)

Robotic Therapy Patients with spinal cord injuries may find some recovery after interacting with robots and brain-machine interfaces. So says new findings in Scientific Reports which followed patients with for 12 months and saw an increase in their feeling pain, and re-gaining some muscle control. The upshot? 50 percent of those patients were upgraded to a partial recovery. The key involves re-training the brain, and using the robotic devices.

Drone Near-Miss Another close call between a drone and a passenger jet is sending UK police scrambling to locate the drone and its operator. The flight was coming from London Stansted airport, on its way to Newquay Airport in Cornwall, about 250 miles southwest of London. The potential collision of a drone and a commercial airliner is worrying to aviation official worldwide, including the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. which is working with NASA to build an air-traffic control system that would include drones.

Amsterdam Virtually A leisurely float along Amsterdam's canals is a trip everyone should make once in their life. Can't get there anytime soon? How about a virtual visit? Our VR Guide to The Netherlands' crown jewel can give you a taste of Amsterdam's treasures without leaving home.