technology

Electric Cars: You Want 'Em? We've Got 'Em!
Over the past 3 years, we've written about many electric cars here on
TreeHugger. We think it's time to look in the rearview mirror, so here's an overview. If you see anything you like, just follow the links to see the original articles.

Electric Roadster by Tesla Motors
The electric car that made a lot of people do a double-take (in a good way). Yes, it's expensive, and yes, it's only a two-seater, but it can make people want it like few other green cars, and someone has to pay the early-adopter 'tax'. Our first post abou...

Former Intel CEO Andry Grove recently wrote an interesting piece on energy. His angle is not totally green, but it's worth reading. Here's a good quote:

"New technology often shows up in this manner: it is not completely satisfactory in the beginning, but good enough to get going. The first personal computers, for example, were little more than toys. They fascinated cognoscenti and hobbyists, but compared to the mainframe computers that were the workhorses of that time, they were limited. PCs quickly grew in capability and eventually reached parity with mainframes and then surpassed them in efficiency and computing power. Such approaches, of starting low and moving up, have been nam...

Mitsubishi's i MiEV Electric Car is Ahead of Schedule
A couple months ago, we got our hands on Mitsubishi's roadmap for its i MiEV electric car. The plan was to lease a few units to fleet customers first in 2009 and then launch it in 2010 (with a focus on Japan, but also in North-America and Europe), but reality is turning out better than even the optimists thought.

Japanese Launch: Summer 2009
The new plan is to launch the retail version of the i MiEV electric car in Japan in the summer of 2009. The reasons are "...

Full Illustration of Article, complete with lame hockey rink analogy

A new Canadian study looks at the risks of engineered nanomaterials, and raises serious concerns. According to Martin Mittelstaedt in the Globe and Mail, the Council of Canadian Academies was asked by Health Canada to "study the state of knowledge about these novel substances and the regulatory changes needed to oversee their use. They concluded that "there are inadequate data to inform quantitative risk assessments on current and emerging nanomaterials." Their small size, the report says, may allow them "to usur...

Water-Powered Car Saga
Last month, we wrote about the Genepax 'Water Car' and were surprised by how many people were ready to believe that it truly worked with water as the only fuel without special explanation or evidence from those who make the claim. Right now the post has 124 comments, which is higher than average for TreeHugger, and a significant portion of those talk about rewriting the laws of physics and such.

A Q...

Copper Nanorods Reduce Energy Needed by an Order of Magnitude
After super-efficient solar panels that are "hairy" on the nanoscale, here come "hairy" pots & pans, as well as computer chip heatsinks and other heat-transferring devices. Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made the "unexpected" discovery: "by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude increase in efficiency is achieved in bringing water to boil. [...] The potential applications for this discovery are vast and exci...

Not so long ago, you didn’t even know the sex of your baby until the day of birth. Today, we’ll know just about everything there is to know -- especially now that expectant mums and dads can gaze upon their progeny with the help of Echographic images 4-D. Apparently, these are the best medical images available. Echographic imagery is not new, but it has not been widely used for this purpose.

Good Computer, Bad Computer
The Global eSustainability Initiative has released a report showing that while information and communications technologies (ICT) use a lot of energy and have an impact on global warming, that impact might not be negative. It is true that electronic equipment worldwide is about on par with aviation for CO2 emissions with 830 million tonnes (or 2% of total), but the other side of the coin is that these technology could help avoid 7.8 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020, or 500% more than what they caused.

How Computers Make us Greener
The most obvious way that electronic equipment c...

Wave Power Technology
Most wave power devices so far, like those from Ocean Power Delivery, are made of metal and contain many hydraulic rams, hinges and articulated joints. This makes them expensive, and the more things there are to break, the higher maintenance costs will be.

Introducing the Anaconda
Francis Farley, an experimental physicist, and Rod Rainey of Atkins Oil and Gas, have invented a new device that could help bring the cost of wave power down. They call it the 'Anaconda' after the species of aquatic boas (and a cheesy movie). It's bas...

Residential wind power is the too often forgotten little brother of the wind power industry that builds turbines on the scale of jumbo jets. But it's starting to grow up and come out of the shadow of its bigger sibling. "improved generator technology [lighter magnets in the generators, blades that adjust to wind conditions, and units that wirelessly report how much power they're making], more financial incentives, rising electric rates, and energy-security concerns have opened the way for small-wind power to bloom in unlikely places."

That's right, they aren't just for the farm anymore. You should see more and more small wind turbines in suburbs and urban s...

Evisol makes "integrated solutions" for electric and hybrid vehicles (including boats). Drivetrains, batteries, that kind of stuff. How better to demonstrate their skills than by making an electric car of their own? Meet the Thorr electric roadster, a proud relative of the classic Lotus Super 7 concept.

Simplicity is the name of the game here. Low complexity, low weight. A car stripped of all the bells and whistles, except for the state of the art electric drivetrain. No ABS, power assisted braking, gearbox, power assisted steering, any form of sound absorption, not even a roof and a windshield (okay, that might be a bit overkill, but they'll probably tweak it some mo...

Our post about harnessing truck traffic to generate electricity has itself generated quite a bit of electrical signals in our readers' brains, as well as many thoughtful comments.

Here are some further thoughts on Terry Kenney's project and your comments: It is indeed a good point that the estimates on how many houses this could power is overly generous, to say the least. One thing we don't know, though, is if the 'Dragon Power Station' is only a prototype/proo...

While the Japanese are trying to produce electricity from train station gates (!?), entrepreneur Terry Kenney is going after a bigger target: Trucks.

It took him eight years to get a working prototype, but now there's one working at the Port of Oakland which Kenney calls the "Dragon Power Station". Special plates are set on the road, and as big trucks drive over them (about 2,500 of them per day at the port), they compress a tank of hydraulic fluid under the road, which in turn creates a series of pumping actions that turns a generator to produce electricity....

Stop-start technology makes a lot of sense, and we're quite disappointed that it is taking so long to become widespread. It conserves fuel and reduces emissions in city driving by shutting down the engine when the car is stopped (red light, dense traffic, etc), and restarting it instantaneously when the drive takes his or her foot off the brake pedal. You get part of the benefits of a hybrid car at a much lower price tag.

So it is not surprising that a new survey shows that 3/4 of UK drivers would buy a car with a stop-start system. Problem is, there are only three carmakers that offer stop-start systems on non-hybrid models, Citroën (we wrote about the

As far back as 2004, we were writing about 'phantom power', all that energy used by your electronics to make sure that they catch the 'power on' signal from the remote and come back to life fast enough, and how to combat it.

A new computer monitor by Fujitsu Siemens Computers breaks with its brethren and uses no power at all in idle mode. It works with a clever switch that shuts down the monitor when there's no signal from the computer, and turns it back on when there is one. ...

Our friends at MoJo are giving you a chance to ask a question to about nuclear power. So whether you are pro, anti, or in between, we encourage you to join the dialogue by leaving a comment over there for one of the experts on their panel (Stewart Brand, Judith Lewis, Jonas Siegel, and Harvey Wasserman). The starting point for the dialogue is: "What is nuclear energy's place in the future mix of energy sources?"

You can also leave comments over here on TreeHugger or on the TH forums to discuss the issue with fe...

Back in 2007, our post on a 9W LED replacement for a 70W incandescent generated a huge amount of interest and debate. While some were excited to see the dawn of a new lighting technology, others felt it was overpriced and under-powered, in terms of lumen output. We wonder, then, what our readership will make of the new EvoLux 13W LED bulb, which the manufacturers claim will replace a 100W incandescent, or a 13W CFL, and can apparently last as long as 50,000 hours (for comparison purposes, thi...

BYD, China's biggest battery maker, isn't wasting any time carving its niche in the new world of electric cars and plug-in hybrids. It all started with the F6DM plug-in hybrid sedan, followed by the smaller and less expensive F3DM plug-in hybrid compact car.

Now BYD has introduced its E6 electric car at the Beijing International Auto Show. It takes the shape of a crossover, or MPV, and will be built on on the F6's platform (same as the

Jem Stansfield is not exactly the average tinkerer. He has a degree in aeronautics and is an inventor and special effects technician. But still, his DIY air-powered motorcycle, the first of its kind according to him, is quite cool.

How Does an Air-Powered Motorcycle Work?
Unlike the hilarious single-piston air-powered bicycle that he previously made, this air-powered bike can actually be used in real-world situations.

He took carbon-fiber air tanks that are usually used by firefighters as part of their breathing equipment and connected them to two rotar...

A Genius who could see into the future. A real loss for Mankind.

Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of prediction are as follows:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

WORD (as we like to say around these parts)