Vauxhall Ampera police car: Chevy Volt’s European cousin goes blue

The Chevrolet Volt is donning a police uniform. As part of a trial Vauxhall, General Motors’ British division, gave the keys to an Ampera to Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) at a press event in Belfast.

The Ampera is a nearly identical twin of the Volt sold in the U.K. by Vauxhall and in Continental Europe by Opel. It uses the same 1.4-liter gasoline range extender, electric motor, and 16.5-kWh lithium-ion battery pack as its American cousin.

“We’re looking forward to putting the revolutionary Ampera through its paces responding to incidents while also reducing our emissions and providing significant savings on fuel costs,” said Marcus Belshaw, head of transport for PSNI.

Vauxhall says Northern Ireland is a good environment for the Ampera because of its well-developed charging infrastructure. It says drivers there are never more than 10 miles from a charging station.

PSNI said the Ampera would be used as an “incident response vehicle,” but didn’t say exactly what police work it would be used for. The Ampera definitely won’t intimidate criminals like the defunct Carbon Motors E7, and it probably won’t be much good in a high speed chase.

The New York Police Department uses a few Volts as traffic enforcement vehicles, really an ideal assignment considering that those units spend a lot of time driving at slow speeds or idling.

Portugal’s national police force, the PSP, operates eight Nissan Leafs. They’re primarily used to patrol school zones, another job that’s well suited to a zero-emission vehicle.

It’s too early to tell if the electric police car will catch on, but what car doesn’t look cooler with a set of flashing lights?

Stephen Edelstein graduated from Clark University in 2011 with an M.A. in American History. He was the Editor in Chief of Clark's student newspaper, The Scarlet. Stephen enjoys all things historical, science-fictional, and transportation-related.

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Sony’s handheld is blowing up in Japan, but it’s not because of the PS Vita price cut

Don’t call it a come back, the PS Vita may be here for years. Sony’s beleaguered handheld gaming machine spent its first birthday in February as a ball and chain around the company’s already sagging PlayStation division. By the end of the month, Sony showed that it was dead set on turning the device around. The company made simultaneous announcements that the PS Vita would be closely tied to the upcoming PlayStation 4 for remote play, and it would be receiving a price cut. The PS Vita price cut, however, was only for Japan. It’s worked, though: PS Vita sales have quadrupled in Sony’s homeland, leading the Japanese console sales charts for two weeks running.

According to Japanese sales tracker Media Create, the PS Vita was the best selling console from Feb. 25 through Mar. 10, selling more than 126,000 handhelds over that two span since the price drop.

Sony knew that the price of the handheld was too high, especially in Japan. “Based on our research, there are two broad reasons why people who may want to try the Vita aren’t purchasing it,” said SCEJ president Hiroshi Kawano in February, “One, they want to wait until there’s a game they want to play on it. Two, the price is a little out of reach for them.” Fluctuations in the yen forced Sony to keep the price higher in Japan than in the rest of the world. Now the Vita is approximately $214 in the country.

As with all gaming machines though, it’s the games themselves that lure in customers, and PS Vita’s surge in Japan simply may not be entirely replicable abroad. As much as the price drop has provided incentive for Japanese gamers to flock to the system, the PS Vita has also seen the release of three new games that are immensely popular in the country but may have little appeal outside its borders.

The biggest of these is Phantasy Star Online 2, the free-to-play Sega MMO and sequel to the Dreamcast pioneer developed by Sonic Team. Since releasing on PS Vita on Feb. 28 as a totally free digital download and as a limited edition retail game, Phantasy Star Online 2 has sold nearly 72,000 copies. Then there’s Tales of Hearts R, a remake of a crossover brawler based on Namco’s Tales RPGs. Always a hit in Japan, that game sold more than 55,000 copies in its first week on sale. Finally, there’s Soul Sacrifice, the Monster Hunter-style action RPG developed by Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man and Dead Rising. In just three days on sale, Soul Sacrifice sold more than 92,000 copies.

There is a direct correlation between the release of these games and PS Vita’s sales surge in Japan. The price cut was a start, but it wasn’t the sole driving force behind the bump. Even if Sony drops the price of PS Vita in the US and Europe—which it’s already tentatively doing—it won’t see the same revitalized market without actual games to drive the console. No such games have been announced.

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared in The AV Club, Salon, Edge, and many others. He is patiently waiting for Namco to finish Klonoa 3.

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Nintendo expands the Pokemon universe with NFC technology, and plenty of new toys for you to buy

For nearly twenty years, Nintendo has resisted making its home consoles the main hub for the Pokémon empire. Pokémon is for handhelds like the Game Boy and Nintendo DS, while the consoles receive Pokémon spin-offs like Pokémon Colisseum and Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo 64, Gamecube, and Wii. The billion-dollar franchise has done just fine in this regard, and with Pokémon X and Pokémon Y due out on Nintendo 3DS at the end of the year, it looks like Nintendo isn’t planning to break the pattern just yet. Pokémon Rumble U, the very first game in the series for Nintendo’s struggling Wii U, could flip the Pokémon business on its head though. It’s more than a Pokémon game; Pokémon Rumble U is Nintendo’s answer to Skylanders.

Japanese magazine CoroCoro (via Serebii) revealed details about the upcoming downloadable Wii U game. First announced in February, Pokémon Rumble U appeared to just be an HD sequel to the WiiWare game Pokémon Rumble released in 2009. This new report claims that it will be the first Nintendo Wii U game to let players buy little action figures of the characters to use in the game by scanning them in the Wii U GamePad, just like in Activision’s Skylanders and Disney’s upcoming Disney Infinity. The game itself will cost 1,800 yen, or just about $18, but the figurines will cost 200 yen, or about $2. It’s the sort of affordable pricing that made Pokémon trading cards one of the most successful toy lines of the late ‘90s.

Nintendo is only now starting to publicly discuss NFC technology’s role in the Wii U. Even as Skylanders’ popularity has risen over the past two years, Nintendo has roundly ignored the NFC functionality of its Wii U GamePad. The first sign that the Wii U pad would even include NFC tech was a leaked trailer for Rayman Legends that hit the web in April 2012 before the game was officially announced. After the game debuted properly at E3 2012 though, no NFC functionality was ever officially discussed by Ubisoft and no Nintendo games leveraged the tech. Nintendo now seems to be changing its tune on NFC.

On Mar. 5, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto spoke to Polygon about NFC’s role in the future of Wii U. “With NFC, that’s a feature that everyone that owns a Wii U can take advantage of,” said Miyamoto, “So that’s where we’re putting our priorities right now. We’re hoping that in the near future we’ll be able to show you something that will take advantage on Wii U and people will be able to enjoy that.” 

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared in The AV Club, Salon, Edge, and many others. He is patiently waiting for Namco to finish Klonoa 3.

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Google’s Andy Rubin steps aside to let Sundar Pichai take over Android

Google’s CEO Larry Page has announced a change in leadership in the Android team, where Andy Rubin – the current Senior Vice President of Mobile at the company – will take on a different and as yet undefined role in the company to let Sundar Pichai take over the position. The news came in an official blog post entitled simply, “Update from the CEO,” where Page talked about Google’s humble beginnings with Android, before noting it’s now supported by 60 manufacturers around the world and is used on more than 750 million devices.

Once the company trumpet had been sufficiently blown, Page writes that Android has, “Exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of,” and thanks to the strong team, Andy Rubin has, “Decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!” This is as far as Rubin’s new role is discussed.

As for Sundar Pichai, his existing role is Senior Vice President of Chrome, and it’s one he’ll continue while also taking on the Android leadership role. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is, and Page recognizes this; he continues, “Andy’s a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.”

Both Rubin and Pichai have been silent on the subject so far, with neither taking to Google+ or Twitter to talk about their new endeavors. With Google I/O coming up in May, we’d expect to hear more from Pinchai, who could get to introduce Android 5.0, plus more about Rubin’s new role in the company.

Andy's fascination with mobile tech began in the 90s, at a time when SMS messages were considered cutting edge, but it would be a decade before he would put finger-to-keyboard as a technology writer. In the interim he wrote about travel, formulated strong opinions about films and owned a series of audacious cars.

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