CARazed

If you’re thinking about an electric car in your future you might want to read this article on Twilight Earth that addresses the concerns that much of our electricity comes from burning coal. It is important to remember that it’s our total carbon footprint that matters not just the output at the tailpipe.

Photo credit Wikipedia Commons.

Now this is most definitely appropriate for CARazed. It’s an electric powered shopping cart built by some brilliant genius  at MIT. Learn more about the inventor, Charles Guan. Read more on autobloggreen.

The inventor of the Segway has files a patent for this stirling engine powered scooter. This little number could run on anything that burns. Read more at gas2.0.

Now this gal is definitely CARazed and yes that IS a good thing. She runs a blog called A Minor Journey which is all about electric vehicles. The car below is Velma, a plug-in hybrid Prius she modified. Be sure to bookmark her website and RSS feed.

I first saw this on Make.

This is totally cool… it’s a 4-wheel bike with solar panels, batteries, GPS, and an iPod dock no less. It’s named the SOHH which is short for Solar Human Powered Hybrid Vehicle. It was built by 8th-grade student David Dixon and his dad David Sr. The base bike is no longer manufactured but is a Swiss-built ZEM (Zero Emission Machine) 4cycle. They picked it up for $3,900 and then added solar panels, batteries, electric motor, transmission, and a bunch of electronics.

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Dipped in gasoline die-hard car enthusiasts will want to turn their heads the other way for a moment because the following is a modification human powered machine (a.k.a. a bicycle). This is a simple kit for making virtually any old bike longer and more useful. With just a little effort you can install this kit to carry up to 200 pounds of gear or groceries on the back of your bike. This little gadget could make any bike a real car competitor for short errands around town. Visit Extracycle to start your everyday adventure…

It looks like Daimler’s new stake in Tesla is already paying off for both companies. They plan to put lithium ion power packs provided by Tesla into the all-electric Smart. These cars should be available on a wide scale beginning in the UK in 2012. This is great news for electric cars in general because it’s an example of yet another giant automaker jumping into the electric car arena. The more momentum we see toward electric cars the more automakers and auto-buyers will realize the value of electric cars.

Read more at AutoblogGreen

Plug-In America recently launched a new page on their website that tracks the progress of all upcoming plug-in hybrid cars. This is great because now you can go to one place to track all these future cars in one place.

I’m actually not going to pick on this little car at all… in fact I really admire the spartan low-cost approach of the Tata Nano for a lot for reasons. It has surprisingly low emissions ratings and if all the cars in the world were replaced with Nanos the world would be a better place. The problem is it will probably be an amazing success and simple add significantly to the number of cars in the world.

At the incredibly low price of a Nano, ($3,000 in India, $6,000 in Europe and America (estimate)), millions upon millions of people will be able afford to finance one. This is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s wonderful that more people will have more mobility and be able to access more opportunities but at the same time we’ll be adding millions of new cars to clog our over-taxed infrastructures and burn up more gas.

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It feels great to see news like this. It looks like Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have co-developed a nickel-hydrogen battery that recharges in less than 10 seconds (reports thetruthaboutcars.com and Nikkei).

The primary impediment to electric cars becoming real competition for petroleum powered cars is the lack of really good battery technology. While automakers and governments wasted their time with hydrogen fuel cells, battery technology took a back seat. Now that most have realized that hydrogen isn’t a viable near-term solution advancements in battery technology is beginning to get the R&D money it needs to move forward. Continue Reading »