The good oil: Padding out the car industry

The Apple iPad has become a must-have accessory for cars. At the Paris motor show, the new BMW X3 - due here next year - posed with dual iPads hooked on its front headrests. Mercedes-Benz had a headrest mount of its own for the iPad and ran a full version of its website on the device. Toyota set up Apple "soundshells" (pictured) for show-goers to sit and watch product broadcasts on 17-inch laptops. The top-end Hyundai Equus came with an iPad containing its owner's manual. A Ferrari executive was showing Italian TV how a limited-edition 599 works - on an iPad.

Bit of a plug for the petrol-electric

An Auckland cabbie reckons he's getting around 900km between fills out of his petrol-electric Toyota Prius. The Alert driver says the Prius is at its most frugal in stop-start traffic, where it spends more time on battery power alone. At motorway speeds, of course, it's running mostly on its petrol engine. It costs him around $75 to fill up the Prius - enough for roughly 400km in the taxi he used to drive.

Drivers getting caught in the rut

Mating season for deer in the US spells bad news for motorists. There are almost 2.5 million collisions with deer every year in the US, says State Farm Insurance. The state where fur flies the most at this time of year is Pennsylvania. But drivers in more sparsely populated West Virginia have a one in 39 chance of bowling Bambi. Motorists in Michigan are the next most likely, at one in 78. Michigan reported 61,486 vehicle-deer crashes in 2009, in which 10 people died.

20 per cent flee rate biting insurers

Almost one in five British motorists who hit a parked vehicle flee the scene of the accident without leaving their details, says a study by research company Accident Exchange. But they leave behind a $370 million bill from the estimated 700,000 dings a year. In 56 per cent of cases, the driver at fault contacted the owner directly. A further 20 per cent left a note on the windscreen with their details. But almost 20 per cent drove off. "Parked car prangs cost the insurance industry more than £1.2 billion ($2.5 billion) annually in repairs," said a company spokesman. "It's therefore appalling to think that £169 million of that figure has to be picked up by the innocent motorist's own insurance policy."

Is that a Chevy in your stocking?

The 2011 Chevrolet Camaro convertible isn't due to go on sale in the US until next year - but a special-edition run of 100 convertibles is being built for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, a high-end shopping list for the well-heeled. The book and the car, yours for a mere US$75,000, ($99,700) are on display in Neiman Marcus' flagship store in Dallas.

Lawyers put boot into BMW's flaw

California law firm Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff has filed a law suit against BMW, seeking to force the carmaker to replace technology in its twin-turbocharged engines. The class action claims that the fuel-injection system BMW said was "state of the art" is flawed and fails "sometimes within 1000 miles of vehicle ownership." The suit also claims the turbochargers have a design fault, which causes the vehicle to go into "limp" mode. It alleges that BMW knew of the problem but tried to hide it from owners with a software fix.

We are the world

A woman in Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit against a town council over injuries she suffered after tripping over an orange traffic cone. The lawsuit was dismissed - the judge ruled that the purpose of the bright orange traffic cone is to warn of imminent risk, ergo citizens should not need to be warned that they are approaching traffic cones.