By Jerry James Stone •
October 14, 2009
A fuel-cell-powered aircraft set a world record by staying aloft for a whopping 23 hours and 17 minutes on just a single load.
In fact, the unmanned aircraft broke the previous record by double. Of course, the plane was built by the Naval Research Laboratory and not by students from the University of Michigan. Still, those students kept their plane in air for over 10 hours–impressive!
Of course their plane was only $2,500. I am guessing the Navy-built one cost us a whole lot more.
By Jerry James Stone •
October 10, 2009
BMW’s Simple concept–which kinda looks like a Stealth Bomber with training wheels–is a hybrid trike that gets around 120 mpg.
The Simple (which stands for Sustainable and Innovative Mobility Product for Low Energy consumption) does 60 mph in just under ten seconds and has a top speed of 125 mph. The car weighs just over 900 lbs and has a super low drag coefficient of 0.18.
By Jerry James Stone •
October 6, 2009
At the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show, Honda will be unveiling a new electric car concept called the EV-N that comes with a segway-esque mobility unicycle device called the UX-3 — so you never have to walk again…ever!
Honda will showcase the model at its green-themed display called the HELLO! Zone which is devoted to electric cars.
The EV-N, which kinda looks like a Japanimation version of a Mini Cooper, shouldn’t be shrugged off as just some copycat car. Aside from the oddly-cool, and strangely intriguing, robotic unicycle, the EV-N also has swappable seat fabrics, a solar roof and some color-adjustable “communications system.”
By Jerry James Stone •
October 5, 2009
Students from West Philadelphia High School have built a diesel-hybrid race car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds. While the car currently gets 60+ mpg, they hope to soon break 100 mpg.
Why? They are competing for $10 million in the Automotive X-Prize .
Called the Hybrid Attack, the car was built by kids from West Philly’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. And if that alone doesn’t make them cool, they are the only high school team competing out of 90 different teams from the U.S. and overseas.
By Jerry James Stone •
September 27, 2009
One might be surprised that the EV dates all the way back to the 1800s. In fact, in its heyday, there were 4,192 cars made in the U.S. and 28-percent of them were electric! Here are some defining moments from New York City’s first fleet of electric taxis to setting the very first land speed record.
Carriage Built in 1830s Uses Non-Rechargeable Batteries
Robert Anderson built a crude electric carriage in the [...]
By Jerry James Stone •
September 14, 2009
Volkswagen will display an updated version of its 1-Liter concept this week at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. The diesel-hybrid car which only weighs around 800 lbs gets an jaw-dropping 170 MPG. So who wants one?
It was seven years ago when VW first announced the idea. Dr. Ferdinand Piëch–currently the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Volkswagen Group–drove a prototype of the car from Wolfsburg to Hamburg. It was the world’s first car to travel 100 kilometers on just a single liter of fuel. But the concept wasn’t ready for production as the body’s carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) was too costly for consideration.
By Jerry James Stone •
September 7, 2009
Using food as a resource in biofuel production is one of the biggest mistakes our country could make. And while we all shake our heads at the idea of corn ethanol…what about using turkey innards? Or Mountain Dew for that matter.
Shaq Wants Your Leftover Beer and Wine for Making Ethanol
First, who ever has leftover alcohol except maybe these guys? The Shaq-backed MicroFueler is a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, that converts it into pure ethanol. It also doubles as a fuel pump and the only waste product is distilled water.
By Jerry James Stone •
September 1, 2009
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst evolved a new strain of the Geobacter microbe that increases power output per cell by 800%.
The hairy mud-loving microbe uses its hairlike filaments–called pili–to produce an electric current from both mud and waste water. The pili are only 5 nanometers in diameter (20,000 times smaller than a human hair); they’re also a thousand times longer than they are wide. But they are strong!
By Jerry James Stone •
August 24, 2009
Hand-built, eco-modified, and wood-powered cars raced across the Bay State this weekend driving 100 miles on just a single gallon of fuel. Aptly named the One Gallon Challenge, the event was part of a four-day long festival in Boston that celebrated clean technologies. Welcome to GreenFest 2009!
Garage-Built Car Gets 105 MPG, Cost $2,500 To Build
Frustrated with the price of filling up his Toyota, Jory Squibb built the Moonbeam. It has [...]
By Jerry James Stone •
August 15, 2009
LiveFuels, Inc. hopes to make a renewable fuel using processed algae-fed fish.
The company–who develops renewable algae-based biofuels–has a test facility in Brownsville, TX. At the location they have 45 acres of open saltwater ponds which will be used for optimizing the algal production.
Most algae-to-biofuel companies are limited to monomcultures of algae, but LiveFuels plans to grow a mix of regional species in low-cost, open-water systems. The algae will be “harvested” with filter-feeding fish and other aquatic herbivores.
