Gas 2.0 |
- Nissan EV Chief Talks About Quietness Versus Safety of Electric Cars
- Prius Sales Could Soon Outpace Camry, Says President of Toyota U.S.A.
- CarGo: an Adaptable Transformer Design for a Crosstown Messenger Service
- Mimic The Movements Of Cheetahs With Pardo
- CO2, Methane Ousted as Worst Global Climate Change Chemicals
| Nissan EV Chief Talks About Quietness Versus Safety of Electric Cars Posted: 19 Nov 2009 11:28 AM PST
Editor's Note: This is part three of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan's Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week's U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part one is devoted to battery swapping, part two to battery leasing, and part four will be devoted to the different zero emissions directions of Renault and Nissan within their alliance. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made it a point to highlight how quiet the upcoming Nissan LEAF electric car will be during an event in Los Angeles last week to mark the car’s U.S. debut. “LEAF has no engine, no tailpipe, no fuel tanks,” he remarked. “As a result LEAF has zero carbon emissions, zero particle [emissions] and zero noise. It’s quiet and clean.” The gathering crowd of electric car makers has been drumming this “quiet mantra” since day one, and, indeed, it is certainly a great selling point. But recently the quietness of EVs has come under scrutiny as a potential safety hazard to the blind, the elderly, and children; if you can’t hear the car, it’s one less warning you have of an impending accident. |
| Prius Sales Could Soon Outpace Camry, Says President of Toyota U.S.A. Posted: 19 Nov 2009 09:14 AM PST
Just how popular is the Prius? If you ask Jim Lentz, President of Toyota’s U.S. arm, it is so popular that it could soon sell even more units than Toyota’s perennial best seller, the Camry. Are hybrid cars really that popular? To date, Toyota has sold two Camrys for every one Prius, but with over a million of the peppy little hybrids sold, and sales growing stronger every year, the Prius may soon join the Camry on the podium of top sellers. |
| CarGo: an Adaptable Transformer Design for a Crosstown Messenger Service Posted: 19 Nov 2009 08:50 AM PST
Here’s a transformer idea for city messenger services from design student Adam Schacter. This tiny EV would carry small cargo loads efficiently in its upright mode. In that configuration, the vehicle would be able to fit three to a parking space. But for days when you had a larger load, you’d simply flip down the back and pull it out wider to become a little pickup truck. Even flipped down into a truck, it would fit two to a parking space. |
| Mimic The Movements Of Cheetahs With Pardo Posted: 19 Nov 2009 08:38 AM PST
As the fastest land animal on Earth, the cheetah is a beast often referred to in metaphors, and studied for its movements. Humans, as you may have noticed, have something of an obsession with speed. Many of us won’t give up that obsession, no matter how much climate change may endanger our future. Did I mention humans are stubborn as well? Thus the quest for a fossil fuel free future brings about a lot of interesting, outlandish, and outright weird ideas. This one is one of the weirdest, and yet it may actually have a future of sorts. Its a tricycle designed to mimic the movement of a cheetah… and, apparently, it works. |
| CO2, Methane Ousted as Worst Global Climate Change Chemicals Posted: 19 Nov 2009 08:27 AM PST
Move over CO2—you’ve been ousted, along with methane, as the biggest offenders of global climate change. According to a new a study by Purdue University and NASA, the major chemicals most frequently cited as leading to climate change, namely carbon dioxide and methane, are actually outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention. The majority of “greenhouse gases” are created by humans. The results were discovered when researchers studied more than a dozen chemicals, or greenhouse gases as classified by their warming properties defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, the team developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appeared in the November 12, 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry, just in time for the convergence of world leaders in Copenhagen. |
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