Range anxiety may be an issue with some electric cars, but not this motorcycle! At a bit over $40k it’s not cheap, but it’ll go around 185 miles on a single charge. One nice feature is that, if you input your destination into its GPS, it can calculate the energy required and adjust operating parameters to help ensure you’ll reach your goal. Seems like a great commuter vehicle!
(via Smartplanet)
Building a new airport isn’t easy…but in Berlin, they’re facing a real mess. Rather than opening in 2011 as scheduled, their new airport STILL isn’t ready. What I found most interesting though, and what prompted me to share it here, was the fact that their fancy computer-controlled lighting system is so ineptly created that they don’t know how to turn the lights off. Yeah. Way to go. The list of problems just goes on from there. Escalators that are too short. Having to chop down hundreds of freshly planted trees. Fire and venting systems that may or may not work (they don’t know…). Just amazing…read more about it here.
The AC72 class boats being prepped for this year’s America’s Cup are truly impressive. Due to foils under the water, both hulls lift at speed and make it look like the boats are flying over the waves at incredible speeds…this is going to be quite a spectacle to watch! Check out this video from Oracle Team USA:
Phinergy has developed a battery that’s, well, a bit difficult to categorize. It’s powered by aluminum and air, but it’s not readily rechargeable. Every 200 miles it needs to be refilled with water, and after 1000 miles, the aluminum plates need to be replaced. So, what’s the point? Well, it has some potential as a range-extender used in conjunction with a conventional rechargeable battery. This Al battery could be a ‘reserve’, or for long road trips, actually replaced enroute (the cost of the raw material being replaced would be ~$50, so it might not cost much to do this). It’s an interesting idea…and ideas like this take creative marketing and some lucky business deals to work out. We’ll see.
(read more at extremetech)
I love autocross, and when I lived in the Bay Area, was an active participant in the Golden Gate Lotus Club‘s autocross series. They just kicked off their 2013 season, and one club member put together this great video of the event since his car wasn’t running (it IS a Lotus event after all), check it out!
The European company AgustaWestland has not only designed, built, and flown the world’s first electric-powered tilt-rotor aircraft, but they managed to create a design which looks freakin’ awesome. When the rotors are positioned vertically, they’re shrouded, but as far as I can tell (details are sparse), when the rotate 90 degrees for horizontal flight, they’re then unshrouded. Cool.
Even better, when parked on the tarmac, the rotors can be rotated to the horizontal position and used like wind turbines, charging the batteries from wind power! Neat. At this point, it’s only done some unmanned and tethered test flights, so don’t expect to see it in the skies over your city anytime soon.
(via Inhabitat)
Volkswagen unveiled the production version of its XL1 two-seater car at the Geneva Motor Show recently. It’s a diesel-electric plug in hybrid vehicle that gets about 261mpg and an electric-only range of around 30 miles! While those numbers may end up slightly lower once the car goes through the US tests (the European test cycle turns in higher numbers typically), it’s still incredibly impressive.
Powered by a .9 liter two cylinder diesel engine, it’s not especially fast, even with the electric motor assist….0-62mph takes 12.7 seconds, for example. There’s no official word on price, though since it’s a low volume, largely hand-built production car, you can expect the price to be pretty high, probably pushing six figures. Definitely an ‘early adopter toy’, but also a good example of the future of automobiles.
Read more at AutoBlog and NPR.
Video review below:
Supercars may be environmentally wasteful and pointless in a world with speed limits, but I’ll admit I have a weak spot in my heart for them and am thankful that car companies still make these magnificent machines. One of the newest, the Ferrari LaFerrari, can be viewed – and heard – in all its glory in the short video below. 950hp in a V12 hybrid powertrain, in a car that weighs about the same as Subaru BRZ. I haven’t seen mention of price, but then, for a car like this, you typically need to be invited by Ferrari to buy one, and chances are you don’t really care what it costs.
Read more over at Autoblog
By using a special type of plastic, designers at Designaffairs Studio made a bicycle with a transparent frame. It’s perfect for the cyclist who worries that they stand out too much in traffic and want to just be less visible. Yes, that’s a joke. I mean really, aren’t cyclists usually going out of their way to be MORE visible? Like the ‘light up like a Christmas tree’ bike light system I wrote about here previously.
The one way I could see this transparent frame being of any benefit whatsoever is if you pack it full of bright LEDs, so you have a glowing frame. It wouldn’t help much during the day, but at night, no one is going to miss you!
Now this is cool…a 100+mph electric powered speedboat! It features twelve electric motors (six per prop) and a 240kWh lithium-ion battery pack. That pack is wired to produce 400V, and can provide a mind blowing 6000A! But then, a boat like this is built for marketing purposes primarily, speed secondary, and range, well, range isn’t really a consideration for these vehicles yet. At full speed, you get about ten minutes run time. 🙁
(via gizmag)
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