Blending the attributes of an ATV, a jet ski, a tank and a skateboard is no easy task, but that is just the diverse kind of capability that the BPG Werks DTV Shredder is offering to the powersports market.

The Shredder is powered by a 196cc, two-stroke gasoline engine, which is connected to a dual-CVT drive. A total of 13 horsepower offer riders a top speed of 30 mph (48 km/h), which probably seems plenty fast on an upright rig like this one. Riders stand on a pivoting, spiked deck that turns by way of leaning, just like a skateboard, while the upright handle offers throttle and brake, and a place to hang on. And, of course, ownership of the vehicle grants one admin status on all Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan boards.

We could go on, but the Translogic crew does a first-rate job of explaining what the Shredder is, as well as getting the low down about the project from BPG Werks CEO Ben Gulak. Watch it all, in the video below.

Lamborghini will give us a big clue as to the look and feel of the impending replacement for its Gallardo model at this September's Frankfurt Motor Show. According to a report by Autocar, the Italian supercar maker will have a concept car in Frankfurt that will preview a 2015 replacement for the current Gallardo (pictured above).

While nothing is set in stone, the word is that Lamborghini is still considering "Cabrera" as the Gallardo-successor's name. We didn't know the company had so many Tigers fans, but the Autoblog Detroit office is stoked.

The same report tells us that the new Lamborghini, currently going by the internal designation LP724, will be based on the same platform as the second-generation Audi R8, rather than on the more exotic Aventador underpinnings. That means a modular spaceframe, aluminum and carbon fibre construction and a reduction in curb weight as a result – the target is less than 1,495 kilograms (3,300 pounds). Even with the diet, the next Gallardo will be slightly longer than the current car, but about the same height and width.

The svelte Lamborghini will draw power from an updated version of the current 5.2-litre V10, which should be good for more than 600 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. Autocar also indicates that both a six-speed manual and a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission will be optional on the new Gallardo, replacing the existing six-speed E-gear automated manual. Standard cars will offer all-wheel drive, but rear-drive models will be available at some point as well. Bring on Frankfurt, we're ready to see this one in the metal.

If we were cynical marketers, we might suggest this as a tag line for the upcoming smartphone app called SpotSquad: "Rat out your friends and neighbours for a few lousy bucks!"

That's right, belying the stereotype of the unfailingly polite Canadian, Winnipeg-based SpotSquad is creating an app that will allow you to report parking violations to authorities, and get paid for it. The application asks that you take a photo of the violation in question, which is then forwarded to local parking enforcement authorities.

Though not a going concern yet, SpotSquad plans to demo the app in some private Winnipeg parking lots this summer, before loosing the hellish software on the rest of the innocent Canadian public. According to a report by CTV News, members of the public surveyed are split on whether or not SpotSquad is a clever idea, or a grim tattle-teller.

Scroll down below to have a brief look at a how the app works, and remember to do unto others as you'd have... never mind.

Historically, the intersection between electric vehicles and drag racing has been really small – or so we guess, at least. But the advent of Tesla in the auto marketplace, and the subsequent performance offered up to drivers by way of battery-powered cars, has caused even racy publications like DragTimes to get in on the action.

Having posted several YouTube videos featuring the Tesla Model S doing pulls at the local strip, DragTimes encountered questions about just how many races that car might be able to run before needing to re-juice its battery pack. The publication monitored the energy being used by the Tesla during full-throttle, quarter-mile runs, and determined that the net use (after energy from the regen braking was added back in) amounted to just 0.5 kWh per go. Considering that the full battery capacity is 85 kWh, DragTimes figured that the Model S is good for a remarkable 170 races before needing a recharge. By that math, and using electricity costs in DragTime's home state of Florida, each race would cost just a nickel and a penny's worth of electricity.

With respect, that theoretical number is probably way too high. For starters, the car would expend some energy getting to and from the starting line between races. Perhaps more critically, the system is designed to not allow for a completely full charge or deletion of charge. Still, 100 runs is in the realm of possibility. In the video below, the narrator makes mention of 150 runs, which is optimistic but more likely. Cheap thrills, in any case (once you've paid for the car).

After bringing you news of the new Ubisoft title The Crew on the first day of our E3 coverage, we're happy to report that we've had a chance to demo the title, too. The guys at Ivory Tower (a French studio under the auspices of Ubisoft) were kind enough to give us a brief walk-through with the game, followed by our running one "mission."

The whole United States will be playable when the game launches next year.

To start, the sheer scope of the open-world in The Crew is hugely impressive. We can now report that the whole of the United States will be playable when the game launches for both next-generation systems next year. You read that right. Guillaume Barry, a producer at Ivory Tower, told us that driving at full-tilt in a racecar from Los Angeles to New York would take roughly 45 minutes to an hour, depending, we suppose, on how good a driver you are. Now, we don't know exactly how densely mapped The Crew's version of the US will be, or how many cities and towns will be available to start, but the game world stacks up to be super impressive, nevertheless.

Game play feels a lot like a mix between a very well done arcade style racer, and a mission-based title like Grand Theft Auto. Cars and trucks are constructed for different styles of driving and terrain, and goals are presented as you progress. We built ourselves an off-road-ready Ford Focus ST in our demo mission, and were asked to "take down" some joker driving through Miami in a crazily tuned Hummer H2. The cityscape, roads and beaches around this virtual Miami were completely open to drive over and through, with jumps, flips and crashes resulting from too much speed and too little care on unstable bits. It's a riot, with car handling more subtle than GTA and less detailed than any of the big racing sims.

If the universe created by The Crew shows impressive use of Xbox One and PS4 hardware, the vehicle modeling is slightly less artful than some of the other new titles we sampled here in LA. Cars and environments looked slick in this pre-alpha version of the game, but not in the same league as arcade-style foe Need For Speed Rivals, for instance, and not quite as impressive as the game's launch trailer would have you believe.

One final note: The Crew is going to offer some really neat functionality for your tablet and/or smartphone when it launches. During our demo we were able to seamlessly make modifications to the car we were driving in-game, with the iPad app, using the same 'garage' menu and graphics that are found in the game. Full parameters for mobile interaction aren't fully baked yet, but we're told that social interactions, notifications out to your smartphone and a whole lot more are in the works. Scroll down below to watch the trailer.

Anyone that has searched for a wheel and pedal setup for use with their racing/driving games has undoubtedly stumbled on Playseat. Makers of gaming chairs that look and feel like the real deal, we dropped by the Playseat booth at the E3 show to see what the guys were up to for the coming year.

The company offers products that range in price from a few hundred bucks to over a grand, as stand alone seats to use with your existing wheels, pedals and shifters, or bundled with Logitech hardware. Currently, all of the wheel/pedal setups on sale are for the existing systems, though we're certain that both Xbox One and Playstation 4 will have supporting peripherals when they launch.

We were actually most intrigued by Playseat's entry-level Challenge model (seen above), which looks a bit like a racy camp chair with a wheel strapped to the front. The seat is sturdier than it looks, however, supporting gamers up to 270 pounds, and offering easy ingress/egress with a swing-arm design. Perhaps most appealing though, is the very high will-my-wife-let-me-buy-this factor; at US$250 for the seat and with the ability to fold up and stuff into a closet or under a sofa, you (we?) won't need to dedicate space just for a racing chair.

Of course, Playseat is working on new branded models to support both Forza Motorsport 5 and Gran Turismo 6, for the ultimate fanboys. Deep-pocketed gamers might also look at the top-end Grand Prix and F1 seats, which offer a racecar-correct deeply reclined driving position and tremendous stability for about US$1,200 and up.

The guys were also pretty proud of the futuristic looking prototype seen here. Not a racing chair, this concept model has built-in Logitech speakers as well as vibration from the back, bottom and sides. More of a general-purpose gaming chair, the model would offer an immersive gaming experience with less of a "video-game-y" design aesthetic. We're excited to see if it gets the go-ahead for production.

The gaming world is abuzz with early love for the Playstation 4, if the water-cooler talk around the 2013 E3 conference are anything to go by. Much of this has to do with the vast potential of the new Sony hardware, though the announced price of US$399 caught a lot of folks off guard in a nice way, and lots of potential Xbox One customers have been turned off by that system's always-on Internet connection and its lack of support for used games. If we look simply at the here and now of driving games, however, with no Gran Turismo 6 announced yet for PS3, the new system will rely heavily on DriveClub as it's opening salvo for racing gamers.

We sat down for a few quick laps of DriveClub, and came away mildly entertained, but without feeling as though we had a real grasp of what the title will deliver at launch.

As with all of the new-system games, DriveClub is lovely to look at, with flowing and detailed environments surrounding accurately architectured vehicles. After watching the initial teaser trailers for the game, we expected something closer to real-life fidelity in terms of style, however – our demo included games that were stickered up and wearing game-branded liveries. Questionable digital paint jobs aren't a deal-breaker, to be sure, but they did speak to a game that was slightly more arcade-racery than we'd expected.

The physics behind the Audi R8 that we selected to drive were convincing, even if they didn't live up to those we tasted in both GT6 and the newest Forza. Instead, DriveClub seems poised to make its way with expanded options for social and networked racing. Huge numbers of racers will be supported simultaneously, and the Playstation 4 camera will allow you to upload your own pictures with which to tag your cars. (In our demo, this meant a sort of digital Polaroid hanging off the rear bumper of competitor cars, but we're hoping for more advanced options, as well.)

All in, the gameplay was entertaining, but didn't blow our minds for a completely new title. We'll reserve our judgment for playing the full version, however, as DriveClub does seem poised to do it's best work in a sort of massively multi-player environment.

Need For Speed Rivals, the newest instantiation in a long-running franchise, has made plenty of news in and around this year's E3 show. We first heard about the game and its availability on both Xbox One and Playstation 4 some weeks ago, and the Hollywood media machine has pumped out plenty of news regarding the upcoming Need For Speed movie, as well. Hell, we even got a detailed look at the NFS version of the Shelby GT500 a few days ago. To the respective PR departments of Electronic Arts and Dreamworks Studios, we salute you!

Of course, as racing-gamers, we were most excited to sample Rivals for the first time here in Los Angeles. Electronic Arts was kind enough to give us a short walkthrough and backgrounder about the game, before turning us loose on the pre-alpha version of the software.

Need For Speed Rivals lives in the same basic universe as its forbearers – street racers, cops, loads of cars, and ultra fast-paced action – but for the first time ever offers two separate but related playing modes. Gamers can choose to drive as street racers, running from the police, or as the police themselves, hunting down the law-breaking racers. Both sides have "weapons" of a sort to aid in their capturing/running causes, including EMP-firing guns, spike strips, turbo boosts, and more. The guys from Ghost Games, the studio-within-a-studio inside of EA, told us that there will be lots more weapons to choose from and upgrade when the game is finished.

Of course, with street racers running metal as exotic as the franchise halo-car Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, "cop car" takes on a whole new meaning in Rivals. We piloted a Koenigsegg Agera R as we chased down the bad guys, complete with a black-and-white livery that's so wrong it feels right on the Swedish supercar.

Gameplay was every bit as raucous and frenetic as in past Need For Speed titles, but with a realistic enough physics engine powering the vehicles that we didn't feel completely hung out to dry in terms of dynamics. Mostly though, Rivals is a game that begs for the sort of trash-talking, one-upmanship that is perfected with online co-op play. The game's new Alldrive system, which effortlessly merges single-player and multi-player action, is certain to bring out the best in Rivals' party-style action.

And, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that, especially for an arcade-type of racing game, Need For Speed Rivals is downright lovely to look at. The car modeling might not be completely up to the standard newly set by Forza 5, but the lush, colourful and rapidly adapting environments are a pleasure to take part in. Check out the videos below for more.

While video games like The Crew and DriveClub certainly had us drooling over the possibilities of next-generation gaming systems, it wasn't until we got up close and personal with the upcoming Forza Motorsport 5 that we realized just what will be possible in a racing simulator. After a brief demo play of the new Forza, as well as a in-depth look at the title from some enthusiastic Turn 10 developers, we're more amped than ever to play the game for real.

To start with, the graphics in Forza 5 are nothing short of mind-blowing; the game-play presentation is far and away the best we've ever seen, and the power of the Xbox One is brought fully to bear in the "Forzavista" mode. Fans of the franchise will remember that Forzavista allows one to walk around and virtually sit in a vehicle; in previous instances, this lavish presentation was only available for a select group of vehicles, but in Forza 5 it'll be on tap for every car. ("Every car" will also include open-wheel racecars, we're told, for the first time in the history of the franchise.)

The expansion of Forzavista has happened, without much doubt, as a reflection of the pride of workmanship from the dev team. Said team has used a concept called "physically based materials" to render details of vehicles that we've never seen in video games to date. Slight orange peel in body paint, grooves on brake rotors, even realistic machined edges on the spokes of wheels all stand up to close inspection. These cars are art, complete with imperfections that end up bringing them closer to the physical world. Scroll down to keep reading and see what we mean.

While a lots of the driving games shown off at this year's Entertainment Electronics Expo (E3) leverage the vast power of the new Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles, Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 6 will attempt to squeeze one more round out of the venerable Playstation 3. After playing a short demo version of GT6 here in Los Angeles, we can see both upside and downside with that strategy.

On the positive side, though we don't know the official release date just yet, it's extremely likely that Gran Turismo 6 will be available to play before 2013 is out. That means more racing fun around this year's holiday season; most likely, we'll all be digging into the best ever rendition of GT, with new tracks, cars and a revised dynamic modeling. A list of some of the new cars is highlighted in the press release below, but the C7 Corvette is heavily featured (there was one on the stage next to GT's play area), and the Nissan DeltaWing might be the first car we have to save up for and buy.

As is the franchise's wont, the physics behind car and track are powerfully realistic in GT6. Developers worked with Yokohama on a new tire model, KW Automotive on a new suspension model and refined the aerodynamic model to boot. The result, at least in our ten minutes at the helm, is remarkably true to life; satisfying to get right, and sometimes quite frustrating during the hard bits.

The bad part of sticking with the PS3 hardware is that, of course, GT6 doesn't have the raw power of new titles on next-gen systems – most notably Forza Motorsport 5. The E3 crowds have been all but inundated with the rendering capability, speed and flawless online capabilities of the driving games for PS4 and Xbox One. We'll have to wait for the full version of the game to be sure (the pre-alpha GT6 we sampled is not fully baked), but it'll be a tough go in early 2014 when the newest software starts to hit. Scroll down below to see the Gran Turismo 6 video trailer and read the official press release.

While racing simulation heavyweights like Gran Turismo 6 and Forza Motorsports 5 were some of the plums of this year's Entertainment Electronics Expo (E3) – at least for gear heads – we couldn't help being charmed by the latest instantiation of Nintento's long-running racer, Mario Kart 8.

Fans of the franchise will have the option of using Wii U's motion-based controls or the conventional versions to join the better-than-ever on-track mayhem. Nintendo has returned motorcycles to the mix of vehicles in MK8, as well as offering players the opportunity to get above ground with hovering karts and an anti-gravity feature that occasionally flips tracks on their heads.

The head-to-head competition is still at the heart of why Mario Kart is such a crowd pleaser, and the multi-player features are strong, though streamlined for MK8. We played – and were trounced – in a two-way battle versus a random E3-goer, but the motion controls proved pretty flawless in the first go-round. Four-way play is available, as ever, for a single console, and online races support up to twelve racers at a time. Our gut tells us that the more live racers you have to battle with, the better MK8 gets.

Every other piece of the game is familiar but refined... in a good way. Game play is fast, weapons are hilarious to deploy and courses seem to get easier the more you have time to learn them. Friendly faces abound: Luigi, Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser, Yoshi and Mario (of course) are among the characters set to return to the franchise. Scroll down below for a video.

Based on the always-online reality of the newly minted Xbox One, it's no surprise really that there's a significant social component to most of the driving games we're seeing at Los Angeles' Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this year. Ubisoft's The Crew writes that message in large type, with racing action that attempts to seamlessly blur the line between single-player and multi-player fun.

Available early next year for both Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's Playstation 4, The Crew will present gamers with an expansive open-world version of the United States. Developer Ivory Tower is calling the game "unprecedented" in terms of scope; hinting that everything that you can see in and around the landscape is both reachable and drivable. We're not exactly sure if that means one could, for instance, drive from Los Angeles to New York without interruption, but it seems at least that loads of major cities will be extensively rendered.

This huge world is designed to be populated with other gamers rather than car-toting bots, whom you may choose to compete with, team with or ignore completely, as you prefer (your "Crew," as it were). The second video below, which shows some real game play, details how this works very well, at least in theory.

Of course, as with all of the next-gen games we've seen to date, The Crew looks positively jaw-dropping in its graphical presentation. Scroll down to have a look for yourself, and to read the official press release.

The Entertainment Electronics Expo – better known as E3 – has opened in Los Angeles with some great news for rat-rodding video-gamers everywhere (that's a thing, right?). Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has announced that it will be bringing a Mad Max title to Sony's Playstation 4 in 2014.

Mad Max certainly doesn't appear to be a straightforward driving game, based on the video preview and brief press release, but that's not a bad thing from where we're sitting. The open-world eco system will ask players to aid their survival chances by constructing customizable combat vehicles – scavenging for parts in the forlorn landscapes that the Mad Max movies have made famous.

This sandbox-style gaming, mixed with vehicle building and on-road battling seem as though they hold a lot of promise. And, if it all looks as good as the cut scene below in the video trailer below, all the better. Mad Max is due out sometime in 2014 as a launch title for the PS4, and will also be available on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

According to a report from Autoweek, Volkswagen has plans in place to retrofit a quarter of a million 2009-2012 model-year TDI-engined cars with a system that will prevent misfueling with gasoline instead of diesel. In a notice sent out to VW dealers, the company specified that affected models will include the 2009-2012 Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen TDI, as well as 2010-2012 Golf TDI models.

Volkswagen claims that the increased popularity of TDI diesel models has resulted in more incidents of damaging and potentially very costly misfueling mishaps. To address the issue, the company will front the cash for dealers to retrofit a fuel filler neck cap that can recognize the smaller nozzle of a gasoline pump and keep the fuel tank gate closed.

Autoweek also reports that the move might be slightly defensive in nature; VW has blamed misfueling on the wave of high-pressure fuel pump failures that has recently been the subject of an investigation by American-based National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.