The New York Times reports that a US team is gunning for the world land speed record for steam-powered cars. They're aiming to top the current record of 148 MPH set in 2009.
The US Land Steam Record Team (USLSR), led by Chuk Williams, is building its Streamliner vehicle around a stock external combustion engine, lightweight body (under 1,600 tons), and streamlined profile (sub 0.2 drag coefficient).Green supply chains from the factory to your shopping cart
Carbon footprints are a hot topic right now – especially the carbon footprint of the goods we buy, from fruit at the supermarket to our homes and cars. To measure a product’s carbon footprint, you need to consider its entire lifecycle – from the extraction of raw materials, to manufacturing, shipping, end-use, and disposal. The footprint of an iPhone, for example, not only depends on where the components come from and how it is shipped from China, but also on how much electricity you use to charge it and how you recycle it or throw it away. A single iPhone has 120 pounds of CO2 baked into it, with nearly half coming from the electricity used over its lifetime.
The coming wave of electric vehicles, in pictures
The future of electric vehicles was on display at the Plug-In 2010 Conference & Exposition, held in San Jose, California. The event, hosted by EPRI and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, included a show room of over a dozen plug-in, hybrid, and battery electric vehicles, running the gamut from established brands to experimental models. Concepts on display included Mitsubishi's MiEV, the Chevy Volt, the Ford Fusion EV, and Nissan Leaf. Also on display was Arcimoto's experimental Pulse three-wheeled EV.
The EV Revolution has been hyped for many years, but with several models in production and several manufacturers racing to be first to the showroom floor, it appears that the market is finally ready to take off. Can't wait to see the next generation at Plug-In 2011!
Vehicle energy harvesting - the new energy efficiency crop
In an article on new technology, the New York Times highlights a new way to save fuel in our cars and trucks: install unique shock absorbers that produce a spike in electricity over every pothole. This electricity would feed into an onboard battery pack, allowing a hybrid system to power the car further and save gas. A cool idea - turn potholes into fuel!
This type of technology is called energy harvesting, because it recaptures energy that would otherwise have been wasted and puts it to good use. It is different from other fuel efficiency technologies: while strategies like hybrid powertrains, lightweighting, and low-friction tires seek to increase vehicle efficiencies and reduce the amount of fuel used to move the vehicle, energy harvesting captures energy already consumed wasted. This approach may allow engineers to dramatically boost fuel efficiency.
Goodbye, Cap and Trade. Hello, Cap and Crunch!
The New York Times reports on the rise and fall of cap and trade as a way to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. While many climate and energy groups promote cap and trade as the best way to shrink our carbon footprint, right wing activists have seized the issue and made political hay, dubbing it Cap and Tax. However, while Cap and Trade is struggling to make it through Congress, there’s a new paradigm on the horizon: Cap and Crunch.
Freight goes green with hydraulic hybrid trucks
For those trying to clean up transportation and reduce pollution, the freight industry has been a tough nut to crack. While programs such as EPA's Smartway have succeeded in introducing efficient tires, fairings, and other parts into truck design, the market for alternative fuel trucks has not exploded like the market for hybrid passenger cars. Partly this is due to priorities of the trucking industry -- trucks are considered revenue-generating equipment, to do the job reliably and cheaply. Fuel costs (and savings from new technology) are were are only a small part of this equation. Carriers also consider reliability, maintenance, and driver training. And in an industry currently facing tough times, it's no surprise that companies would be conservative and rely on proven existing designs rather than take a chance with unproven technology.
This reticence is changing, however, as alternative-fuel trucks are reaching a threshold where they are road-tested and shown to be a mature technology. Last week, as reported in Transport Topics, powertrain manufacturer Eaton announced a new milestone: trucks with their hydraulic hybrid powertrains have collectively logged 30 million miles worldwide since the technology was introduced ten years ago. With 2,400 trucks on the road today, primarily in medium-heavy-duty delivery trucks and panel vans, the company's hybrid technology has been proven to be reliable. Most importantly, now that some companies have driven hybrid trucks for a decade, they have been able to quantify the vehicles' fuel savings, reliability, and maintenance costs -- taking much of the uncertainty out of purchasing these vehicles.
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Perpetual-motion Delorean falls short of expectations
Green tech is so hot right now, with VCs and government programs investing heavily in battery technology and electric vehicles. But it's important to remember that the alternative vehicle sector is not brand new, but rather has been around in one form or another for some time. Relying on a combination of proven technologies and cutting-edge innovations, entrepreneurs have always pushed the boundaries of new vehicle tech.
Case in point is Carl Tilly, who in 2001 began raising funding to capitalize his new project: a DMC Delorean, converted to electric power. While electric vehicles at the time had proven problematic at best, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding GM's release and recall of its EV1, Tilley's Delorean was equipped with a crucial proprietary technology that made the vehicle viable: a perpetual-motion device that recharged the batteries using power from the motor. Based on this invention, Tilley raised nearly four million dollars in start-up funding.
Aircraft TaxiBot: the future is now!
A fun article from the Society of Automotive Engineers discusses new ground support equipment at airports, designed to reduce fuel consumption and emissions assiciated with aircraft taxiing between the terminals and the runways. This new GSE would act as a tractor on the tarmac, similar to equipment currently used to push aircraft away from terminal gates. Currently, aircraft burn significant amounts of fuel taxiing using their main propulsion engines, but under this strategy would only need to operate their auxiliaries.
Ferrari's sexy new hybrid
The greatest handicap for hybrid and electric vehicles has been their image as small, wimpy city cars: imagine the GM EV1, Think! City and Toyota Prius. In the past couple years this has been changing, starting with the monster Tesla Roadster EV, which can beat most exotic cars in the quarter-mile. Now Ferrari is protyping a hybrid sports car, the GTB Fiorano, for the upcoming Geneva Auto Show.
True, the 599 GTB is no fuel-sipper: in it's current non-hybrid form, it sports a 612 HP V-12 engine and achieves 10 MPG city / 14 MPG highway (and this is on EPA's conservative city/highway drivecycles -- undoubtedly the fuel economy plummets when you're accelerating from 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds and zooming down the 280 at 150 MPH).
Where can you find the future of ethanol? Ask Google Maps.
The folks at earth2tech have been tracking developments in green technology for some time now, covering the gamut of vehicle tech, clean power, energy storage, policy, and smart grid development. Now, using the Google Maps plug-in and a database of energy programs and events, they are plotting nationwide trends in the growth of clean electricity and alternative fuels. When viewed on a nationwide scale, some interesting patterns jump out.
First is the rise and fall of ethanol and other biofuels. After a rush of investment into capacity starting in 2005, spurred on in part by the biofuel mandate in the Energy Independence and Security Act, many companies have fallen victim to larger industry forces, including over-production, constrained distribution networks, and limited retail outlets. As captured on earth2tech's (perhaps over-dramatically-labeled) Biofuel Deathwatch map, a wave of bankruptcies has rolled through the corn-belt from Nebraska, through Iowa, into Illinois and Indiana. Not surprising, considering the region’s concentration of corn biofuel facilities.
