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" SAN DIEGO -- The annual Comic-Con geekfest here is as good a place as any to set the high-tech record straight on NBC&amp;#039;s new Knight Rider series. After all, fans of the original cult hit still needed to be sold on the concept after objecting to February&amp;#039;s two-hour movie, which upgraded KITT from a Pontiac Trans Am to a Mustang Shelby but overlooked many of the notoriously gadget-loaded car&amp;#039;s key features--most egregiously its trademark car-jumping device. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Turbo boost&amp;#039; just didn&amp;#039;t fit in the two-hour,&amp;quot; says executive producer Dave Bartis, &amp;quot;but Gary found a way to do it in the first act of the first episode back.&amp;quot; That would be Gary Scott Thompson, the Las Vegas creator that NBC brought on in April to build a full-blown weekly action series from the one-off TV movie.  Given the quarter-century since David Hasselhoff was behind the wheel, Thompson felt strongly that KITT needed to be rethought from the ground-up. &amp;quot;As my kid said when we were watching it, `Big deal, our car can talk,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Thompson explains. &amp;quot;Very soon, cars will have sensors that will drive themselves. So the whole idea was, `Yes, but can your car do this?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; To demonstrate a few of KITT&amp;#039;s new tricks, the Knight Rider team screened a sizzle reel here on Thursday for gathered fans. The clip began with the kind of fancy driving that audiences might expect, but earned a collective &amp;quot;oooh&amp;quot; as soon as lead actors Justin Bruening and Deanna Russo jumped into the back of a black pickup truck, only to have the vehicle transform back into a Shelby around them. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re trying to get that reaction on a weekly basis--multiple times during an episode,&amp;quot; says Thompson. The new shape-shifting trick not only vaults the show to near Transformers-level special effects but also demonstrates Thompson&amp;#039;s view that KITT ought to embody cutting-edge, real-world technology. That meant thinking of the car as a supercomputer and incorporating the latest in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, informed by field trips to Microsoft headquarters, where Thompson and his team were briefed on advances still a few years off. The result is more than just a talking car (voiced by Val Kilmer on-screen)--this Mustang is constantly learning and evolving from episode to episode. &amp;quot;Every week, we get the script and see what the car can do,&amp;quot; says Bruening, who assumes the role once inhabited by Hasselhoff (who, along with the original KITT Trans Am, could make an appearance on the show down the road). &amp;quot;You can upgrade it the way you can a normal computer.&amp;quot; That means Russo&amp;#039;s character can easily reprogram KITT to adapt to new physical challenges, such as driving on sand. However far-fetched a transforming car might sound, Thompson wanted to keep the concept grounded in reality. &amp;quot;If a car could actually transform itself into something else,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;you are still limited by the amount of mass that car has--unless it leaves part of it behind, like the Batmobile [in Dark Knight], where the motorcycle shoots out.&amp;quot; (Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at the Bat-Pod!) Thompson is hoping audiences will tune in each week to see what new forms KITT may take (a souped-up &amp;quot;attack mode,&amp;quot; set to be unveiled at Comic-Con today, was custom-built for the show by Smart Car designer Harald Belker). But the show&amp;#039;s production teams also sees the artificial intelligence angle as a way to develop a &amp;quot;personality&amp;quot; for the car over the course of a season. &amp;quot;In his way, KITT is learning from the people on this team. He starts out constantly asking questions,&amp;quot; says Thompson. And as KITT evolves, he will also become more dangerous. Just as HAL 9000 eventually takes over the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, KITT is capable of disobeying direct commands--or answering to shady orders from a higher source. The fact that no one quite knows where the funding for Knight Industries&amp;#039; R&amp;amp;amp;D department comes from suggests that the military or another secret division may have its own plans for the super-weapon. &amp;quot;When you&amp;#039;re dealing with a computer&amp;#039;s artificial intelligence, there&amp;#039;s always a chance something could happen,&amp;quot; Thompson confided backstage after the Comic-Con presentation. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s something you see in Episode Two. We set it up very early that there are possible things that could happen.&amp;quot; By mid-season, he promises, audiences will have a clear idea of the true dynamic between Michael Knight and his cutting-edge new set of wheels.    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a3484/4275094/>