You may or may not have a place in your car to place a gadget charger conveniently. That’s where this charger, shaped like a coffee cup, comes in handy. Chances are you have a cup holder, so just plug it into your cigarette lighter and sit in your cup holder. It converts the DC power from your vehicle into two 120-volt AC outlets and a USB port.

You’ll always have a spot available to charge up. Fits in any standard cup holder. This great solution is only $29.99. Hopefully you have two cupholders so you can still have your coffee too.

Here’s a handy tool for those who need to escape from their own vehicle, whether you’ve driven into a lake and are about to drown or your doors have trapped you inside after an accident. Just carry this Houdini Automotive Escape Tool with you at all times. It features a safety whistle, LED light, spring loaded glass punch and even a seatbelt cutter.

It’s super compact, you will fit on your keyring. Not enough? The pro version has still more features and was designed for rescue workers, firefighters, and the like. You never know when you might get trapped in a car after all.

This is about a year old, but it’s cool. This guy turned his Prius into a Star Trek Shuttle, basically just using decals and adding blue lights under the car. Interesting how the Prius’ shape lends itself to a Star Fleet shuttle. Inside the car, he has it set up so he can add sound effects. This is a mod with minimum customization, that just about anybody can pull off. I wonder if his garage looks like the hanger deck and has one of these parked inside.

According to the description on this eBay auction, some nutty doctor in California took a 1973 GT Opel and converted it into a Batmobile to bring to the hospital for kids. The kid part is a noble idea. But a 1973 Opel? It’s unique, we have to give him that.

The auction ended at $9,000.00. Some of the specs include: a SONY Digital Navigation System #NVX-F160, SONY Pre-Amp XDP-U50D, SONY 10 Disk CD Changer CDX-U404, SONY Hi-8 VCR, Pioneer CD player DEH-85 in the dash….comes with the batman theme on cd!, Alpine Bat Phone #91530, Super Nintendo NES Game system with Batman Forever game, SONY Interface Equalizer #XE-744 and a whole lot more. Strange, but we dig it.

Helios was clearly inspired by the Jurassic era, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Helios is a concept design for an off-road electric solar-powered vehicle. When you take a break from your off-roading and stop the vehicle, the car will spread its “wings” which are made of photovolatic panels, in order to capture the sun’s rays and charge up the battery.

You’ve seen the concept in nature, where some animals have stretchable skin that absorb heat and light. A lizard might stop on a rock to take a breather and as he does, he opens up his extra skin and recharges. Same thing here. The Helios Concept won the Best Use of Technology at the Interior Motives Design Awards 2008. Pretty awesome.

You might know him from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. You might know him from his solo work. Hell, most of you own at least one CD with the man’s songs on it. Soon you’ll know him for electric cars.

Turns out he really has a heart of gold. Neil’s started a company called Linc Volt to develop electric car technologies, and he knows a little something about it since he already converted his own ‘59 Lincoln. The subject of an upcoming documentary. According to Young, he’s mostly focused on developing the technology. Linc Volt will provide instructions and it will also be performing the actual conversions. Pretty nice when famous people with some power set out to innovate.

Sure, we’ve heard it all when it comes to Ford jokes. Found On Road Dead, Fix Or Repair Daily, etc. Say what you like about Ford, you can’t deny the coolness of their SmartGauge LCD panels in their new 2010 hybrids.

Instead of the usual boring analog dials, Ford gives you a LCD screen cluster and even some animations. Notice the fuel gauge. Nice to look at, easy to find and functional. The best part about using an LCD display is that it’s fairly customizable. You can display battery charge, GPS and Satellite radio coverage, maybe even current mp3 track information. Of course there’s the usual boring MPH and RPM indicators. They just don’t look boring.

Yesterday we told you about Marty Mcfly’s jacket showing up on ebay. Well, remember Griff Tannen’s hover BMW from the second installment of the futuristic trilogy? Jeff Chabotte never forgot. He tracked down the original movie car, bought it and gave it a complete restoration. Sadly there wasn’t a thing he could do about it’s ability to fly. Chabotte spent a lot of time and money on the project, not to mention the usual blood, sweat and tears. Yep. He loves BTTF and it’s cars just that much. The end result should probably be in a Movie memorabilia museum somewhere. Click the link for a ton of pics.

When I came across this one, at first I thought it was an RC lawnmower. Nope. It’s just the lowest car ever. The Fiat 126 Flat Out is touted as the world’s lowest vehicle, at just under 22-inches tall. Even more surprising, it was built by Andy Saunders and his two man team in just THREE days. Those were 18-hour days. He built the car as part of the celebrations for the 40th Annual Autojumble at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire. Awesome as it is, it would be pretty sweet to see this thing mowing a huge stretch of lawn at super speeds.

Is there nothing that LEGO can not do? This is one of the coolest LEGO things yet. To promote and celebrate Lego World, which apparently started yesterday,this highly detailed LEGO Ferrari F1 was seen cruising the streets of Amsterdam. Jetix presenter, Leon Krijgsman rode in the Ferrari, made using 80,000 Lego bricks. Lego World will run till the 21st of this month in Zwolle, and will offer tons of Lego craziness. This awesome Ferrari celebrates the anniversary of the legendary brick. One has to wonder just how heavy that F1 is comapred to the real deal.

I don’t know about you, but I try to be respectful of other drivers. Even nice. A wave of the hand now and then is just a nice gesture. Then there are those times when flipping some idiot the bird is totally appropriate too. It might be nice to have a hand that will do all the talking for you, so you can concentrate on the driving.

“The Hand” sign for the back of your vehicle can be used to tell someone that “they rock” or flip them off, even give them a peace sign, plus a few others. I would say just use it liberally for both good and evil. Have fun. Just make sure you actually look first as a police officer won’t take kindly to your new toy. The 9″x6″ remote controlled sign will cost about $40.

Love cars? Love zipping your mouse around your desktop pretending it’s a Mustang? Then this might be your thing Speed Racer. These mice are modeled after a range of classics including the Ford Mustang GT, a Chevy Concept Camaro and a Dodge Charger SRT8. The Road Mice collection offers 800 dpi resolution and will work with both PC and Mac. As for ergonomics, not so much. But they’ll let you enjoy a scaled down version if you can’t have the real deal parked in your garage. They retail for $44.95.

This is one sweet looking single seat vehicle designed by Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar, who obviously channels the future like some crazy modern techno-shaman. I don’t know whether to drive it or just drool over it for an hour.

The idea is that the car works mainly through articulation meaning that this vehicle remains low at high speeds and it will also display helpful information during long trips through voice command by the driver. RD is convenient on busy roads as well as on long distance drives. Looks comfy too. It’s definitely a cool one to drive, but one problem. No room for a girl beside you. Check out a video below.

Nature is always the best model, whether you’re building robots or…other human made monstrosities. And with that in mind, Nissan has applied the idea to the Biomimetric Car Robot or BR23C. The robot car is modeled after Bee behavior in order to prevent car collisions and thereby eliminate accident casualties.

The BR23C adopts a bee’s eye view of the world. The insects rely on a 300-degree field of vision to identify obstacles and avoid them. Likewise the robot, using a Laser Range Finder (LRF) uses a 180-degree radius vision to detect obstacles two meters away. The image is transmitted to a microprocessor, which directs the robot to change direction or speed up in order to avoid a collision. In other words, avoiding collisions is all instinct.

Porsche is a name associated with two things, style and speed. The new P’9522 arguably has plenty of style (though I don’t see it), but it sports a Wi-Fi web connection instead of a 3G network.

With your powered down connection you’ll also get a 5 Megapixel camera, touch screen, and built in GPS. Apparently forged from a single block of brushed aluminum and a glass plate, this one is for the rich set. People who won’t care about speed as much as making impressions. It ships in November and looks like it will sell for aout $875.