The House has passed a bill, the Advanced Vehicle Technology Act of 2009, that might just lead to future new cars being made out of plastic. It still has to go through the Senate, but are we contemplating a future where we’re all driving polycarbonate cares with panel gaps larger than the federal deficit? Possibly … the bill calls for nearly $550 million per year in research into fuel-efficient cars and trucks that reduce dependence on petroleum. One of the funded projects is to have the Department of Energy demonstrate the production of “cost-effective lightweight materials such as advanced metal alloys, polymeric composites, and carbon fiber;” that is, plastics. Is the government going to require that your next Ford be an oversized Power Wheels car? More after the jump.

If you ever wondered what the sadistic minds at the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety do to celebrate their birthday, stop. It’s horrible. IIHS has been smacking cars together now for 50 years, and so to celebrate, they decided to show the world how far vehicle safety has come. To do this, they procured a relatively intact, low-rust 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and proceeded to hurtle it against a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The results are conclusive: smacking an old car into another object destroys the old car. It’s the equivalent of a nursing home celebrating their anniversary by smacking around one of their elderly patients in order to prove something we already know. For your information, the hypothetical driver of the Malibu would have had a mild injury like a sprained ankle, and the driver of the Bel Air would have died instantly. Make the jump to satisfy your morbid curiosity with a video.

To all you Blue Oval fans who have looked across the Atlantic and drooled about all the sweet motors that European Ford buyers can option, take faith in the introduction of the Ecoboost 4-cylinder line. Almost certainly destined to power (among other things) a hot version of the Fiesta, it’s likely to fan the flames of hot-hatch lust. You’ve put up with the ancient Focus long enough, so this is ample reward for your trials and tribulations: Ford confirmed today that the 2.0L version, tuned for diesel-emulating torque characteristics, will come stateside in 2010. More info after the jump.

For all of you citrus-loving Prius owners out there, orange is the new green. Yokohama has developed a green, eco-friendly, gas-saving tire made out of oranges. Yup, those spherical objects that make your Orange Julius taste good and prevent scurvy are being recruited to help save the earth from performance driving. They’re called “db Super E-Specs” and they are most notable for replacing 80% of the synthetic, petroleum-based rubber in normal tire with a special compound made out of orange oil. If you really want to buff up on your green credentials, be sure to cover the back of your hybrid with pun-laden stickers that note that the Yokohamas are produced in a zero-emissions factory and have 10% less rolling resistance (we used to call rolling resistance “grip” before it became politically incorrect to have a car that could handle) than a conventional tire. What’s the catch? They cost a bit more, and they’re only made in three sizes that are compatible with several hybrid and compact cars. We assume they’ll stay in niche sizes, as we don’t know many hypermiling Nissan GTR owners.

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The Dodge Challenger beat the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro to market with ludicrously short 21 month development period – that’s a fact, sir. But how? Did they guzzle a lot of caffeine and stay up all night? Well, probably, but the key to the Challenger’s quick trip from the CAD rendering to whatever Dodge dealerships remain open after their bankruptcy was their Knowledge-Based Engineering System, which is one of those stupidly simple streamlining concepts that makes you stop and wonder, how come no one’s done that before? Basically, the team pumped as much of Chrysler’s development data on similar cars into their development program, changed parameters where necessary (for example, imputing a shorter wheelbase to adjust data from the slightly larger Charger), and running a huge battery of tests on the resulting computer model of the car.

The pantheon of faux inventions always has more than its fair share of perpetual motion machines, anti-gravity devices, and of course, water-powered internal combustion engines. Every so often, one of these water engine inventors manages to convince a local news station to air their tale of woe: oil companies, evil government agents, and the Stonecutters monkeys from the Simpsons are persecuting them for creating an invention to free us from the shackles of petroleum dependence! Today, we give you Paul Patone’s GEET (Global Environmental Energy Technology) System, a lawnmower engine that runs on a mixture of Mountain Dew, gasoline, and schizophrenia. Oh, don’t worry, there’s no explanation about why he choose Mountain Dew. Maybe a Pepsico rep came to him in a vision, bearing golden tablets written in Reformed Dew. Honestly, make up your own Scientology-sounding explanation – it will probably make more sense than the “truth” according to Patone.

We all could use a break from the daily grind of getting to and from the Amazonian village where we do our missionary work. All that arboreal congestion and humidity really makes the commute a drag. The iFly project wants to make your life a little easier by constructing you a Maverick flying car (more like a buggy, really) that will carry you far above the rat race and off to your tropical destination.

Nissan Mixim Concept

Look Ma, no cords! Though there is a preponderance of electric vehicles in the works and few on the road, Nissan is already hard at work on improving them. Using inductive charging methods recently perfected on smaller devices like cell phones, Nissan’s upcoming Zero Emission Vehicle will be able to charge wirelessly inside a special parking bay. Even better is their plan to help charge your car on the way to work.

Have traffic deaths increased drastically with higher speed limits? That’s what a new study would like you to believe with its incredible-sounding conclusions: 12,545 deaths are attributable to higher speed limits! Sounds like lowering speed limits would save lives, right? Wrong. The study looked at the years 1995-2005, and didn’t look at any recent data. So what does the recent data show? Contrary to what the first study would have you believe, traffic deaths are at their lowest levels since the early 1960s. Lower speeds would save more lives, but so would not driving at all. Click through for more analysis.

It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from the evil scientists at F.O.R.D. who plan to blackmail the United Nations using laser-equipped cars. Now, they’ve reemerged from their mountain lair, and they’ve stolen $320,000 from the Carbon Trust’s Applied Research grant program to support their dirty work. Read on for an overview of their sinister technology.