Editor’s note: Jeremy Hart, an occasional contributor to Wired.com, is driving around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road.

The Wild West is still wild.

Matt Dieckmann believed the future is electric, and he died hoping to prove it.

Dieckmann, the 29-year-old founder of Electric Race Bikes, was killed Monday following a collision with a car in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California. He reportedly was testing a new electric motorcycle at the time.

We met Dieckmann, pictured above on the left, at Infineon Raceway during the first TTXGP electric motorcycle race of the season and found him incredibly passionate about the sport. He loved motorcycles and he loved racing, but he was troubled by the pollution. He felt there was a better way and thought he’d found it in electric motorcycles.

Looks like the Cygnet, which nothing more than a reworked Toyota iQ wearing an Aston Martin badge, is headed to the United States.

Aston Martin’s been hinting for awhile now that it would build the crazy mashup. It always made sense for the European market, where an upscale urban commuter that beats big-city congestion charges might sell well. But Automotive News, citing absolutely no one, says Aston Martin plans to bring the car to the states. When that’ll happen remains to be seen.

We’re waiting to hear back from Aston Martin.

California commuters will either celebrate or curse SB 535, a new law that extends hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles' usage of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the Golden State.

Introduced by Sen. Leland Yee and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new law expands the ability for hybrid, electric and natural-gas powered vehicles fitted with the ubiquitous yellow bumper stickers to drive solo in the carpool lanes during designated hours. Additionally, it increases the number of permits to 40,000 and widens the eligible vehicles to include the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and the Nissan Leaf EV.

With the Paris Motor Show a mere month away, automakers from around the globe are unleashing a barrage of teasers and rumors that hint to what will be on display. According to Auto Express, Jaguar is the latest company to let slip what it has planned. The murky report says the Leaping Cat will pull the covers off of an XK-sized sports car inspired by the Porsche 918. While that likely means the concept will boast a fantastical hybrid drivetrain with more torque than sense, it doesn't mean that Tata is going to fast-track this car for production.

Tanner Foust took the top spot in the first-ever Rallycross competition in the United States this past weekend, piloting an all-wheel-drive Rockstar Engergy/Etnies Ford Fiesta.

The world’s most widely used aviation map making company has released a special edition approach chart honoring pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles and the crew of flight 1547. The tongue-in-cheek map looks just like the charts many pilots normally use, but is filled with references to the successful ditching of the Airbus on the Hudson River in January 2009.

Hundreds of pieces of wreckage have been pulled from the Atlantic Ocean in the 15 months since Air France Flight 447 inexplicably fell from the sky, but so far the doomed airliner’s flight data and safety recorders remain somewhere on the ocean floor. That has many in the aviation industry wondering if it’s time to retire the industry-standard “black box” and adopt a satellite system that streams data in real time.