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With fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling, more and more inventors are turning their creativity towards cars that work without the need for barrels of gasoline. True, there have been a number of vehicles released that run on electricity but now designers are turning to another precious resource – air.
It’s not a new concept, as early as the 1920s, car designers were dabbling with the idea of cars that could run off air alone – one involved cycling air through a propeller at the front of the car – but few came to fruition. Now, designers are again looking at how air can be used to power a car.
An ever-present point of concern for the planet’s future welfare, worries over damaging CO2 emissions could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a University of Calgary climate change scientist who’s developed a machine capable of removing CO2 from the air.
More pointedly, David Keith and a team of researchers working out of the University of Calgary have been diligently looking for a way to capture harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air by utilising “near-commercial” technology.
Traffic was piling up going from West Seattle to Interstate 5 — and that meant Rich Feldman had to drive a few feet and stop, over and over, all the way up the access ramp.
As they looked out at the line of cars ahead of their plug-in Toyota Prius, Feldman and the business executive sitting beside him, John Clark, couldn't have been happier.
Shai Agassi looks up and down the massive rectangular table in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom and begins to worry. He knows he's out of his league here. For the last day and a half, he's been listening to an elite corps of Israeli and US politicians, businesspeople, and intellectuals debate the state of the world. Agassi is just one of 60 sequestered in a Washington, DC, hotel for a conference run by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Among the participants: Bill Clinton, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, and two past directors of the CIA.
The challenge set by Ford Global Technologies is to design a Model-T for the 21st Century - an inexpensive, innovative and sustainable car. Deakin University is the only Australian university and one of only five worldwide invited to participate in the Challenge, part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the fabled Model T; the car that changed the 20th Century.
Deakin University's 'under wraps' design for the Ford Global Challenge left for Detroit on 29th August carried by Deakin's Tim de Souza (Chief Design Engineer) and Stuart Hanafin (Portfolio Coordinator). Deakin's project is code-named T2 ('TSquared').
Concurrent with the release of its annual financial report, Toyota has published Sustainability Report 2008: Towards a New Future for People, Society, and the Planet. The report, which is the third since Toyota switched from environmental to sustainability reports in 2006, is structured around three themes: sustainable mobility (products), sustainable plant initiatives (manufacturing), and contributing to the development of a sustainable society—also referred to as “nurturing society.”
If ever there was a car made for the times, this would seem to be it: a sporty subcompact that seats five, offers a navigation system, and gets a whopping 65 miles to the gallon. Oh yes, and the car is made by Ford Motor (F), known widely for lumbering gas hogs.
Hydrogen cars get no respect. A lot of people consider them the stuff of science fiction, a technology as vaporous as the stuff that drives them. But despite some hurdles even Liu Xiang couldn't clear -- creating a fueling infrastructure comes to mind -- Uncle Sam and the big automakers love hydrogen cars and are driving across the country in a fleet of them to prove they work.
Even if they're occasionally hauled on trucks.
The value consumers place on goods and services often is a matter of simple economics. When demand is high and supply low, relative worth heads north. This fundamental truth from our friend Adam Smith couldn’t be more relevant to the car business these days.
Visit any dealership and ask how many thousands of dollars in incentives are available on trucks and SUVs collecting dust on the lot. On the flip side, the Prius hybrid's massive worldwide appeal is not only a sign of our energy-afflicted times but proof of what happens when there are more shoppers than cars.
Is the double-nickel speed limit ready for a comeback?
Congress thus far has shown no movement toward resurrecting the 55-mph speed limit, but one of the Senate's senior members — Republican John Warner of Virginia — says it's time to start the conversation about an energy-saving national speed limit to help spare Americans from usurious fuel costs.
A fuel station producing enough hydrogen to run householders' homes and cars has been unveiled today.
The British invention, due to go on sale within two years, is roughly the size of a heating boiler and will cost under £2,000.
Its creators say it will revolutionise commuting, help homeowners slash energy bills, and give easy access to a fuel that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions, helping to combat climate change.
The jury is still out on whether hydrogen will ultimately be our environmental savior, replacing the fossil fuels responsible for global warming and various nagging forms of pollution. Two main hurdles stand in the way of mass production and widespread consumer adoption of hydrogen “fuel cell” vehicles: the still high cost of producing fuel cells, and the lack of a hydrogen refueling network.
With gas prices going through the roof and regulators requiring cars to be ever more miserly, Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term "fuel efficiency" with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets a stunning 282 235 mpg.
Volkswagen's had its super-thrifty One-Liter Car concept vehicle -- so named because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 kilometers -- stashed away for six years. The body's made of carbon fiber to minimize weight (the entire car weighs just 660 pounds) and company execs didn't expect the material to become cheap enough to produce the car until 2012.
It's Tuesday morning and the streets of Bangalore are, as always, jammed with traffic and saturated with smog. A young tech worker and his pregnant wife navigate the dusty roads on a tiny scooter, a 125-cc Hero Honda. Srinivasan Chandra's hands sweat onto the handlebars as he waits for the light to turn green. The journey from home to office is only 6 miles, but road conditions and rush hour have turned the four-lane highway into a cross between a parking lot and a demolition derby.
James Dyson is working on a solar-powered car to match the success of his bagless vacuum cleaner.
Engineers at the entrepreneur’s Wiltshire HQ are developing a lightweight electric motor that could power a family saloon for hundreds of miles.
If electric vehicles aren't your thing, then you may be pleased to hear that at least one company is working on giving that tried and true internal combustion engine a major boost. Artemis, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based company, has developed a hydraulic hybrid transmission that could potentially double the mileage of most vehicles -- by accident, as it happens. The firm's original goal had been to simply reduce CO2 emissions on the highway by 30% (a goal it also achieved).
VW has been talking for a long time about its L1 concept, so called because it uses a measly 1 liter of gasoline to go 100 km. For us Americans, that translates to about 230 miles per gallon.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday that pressure from the auto industry will not deter California from attempting to impose strict emission rules for vehicles sold in the state.
