Gas 2.0

Braille Batteries Enter American Le Mans Racing Series
GM Exec Admits Volt is Stepping Stone to All-Electric Cars
Reading Tea Leaves: Future Biofuels in the Bottom of a Cup?
Aurica Motors Plans To Keep California NUMMI Plant Open With Electric Cars
Would You Like A Coffee To Go? “Scirocco-ccino” Storms Europe

Braille Batteries Enter American Le Mans Racing Series

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 02:44 PM PST

If you really want to see the future of everyday transportation, you have to look no farther than the racing series happening right around the corner. As much for entertainment and competition as it is a testbed for new technology, the highly competitive nature of racing forces engineers and manufacturers to put their best foot forward if they hope to stand out (and beat!) the rest of the crowd.

The American Le Mans Series is one of my favorite racing series and the season starts up in just a few days. Just in time to compete for the 2010 season, Braille Batteries has announced a partnership with Primetime Race Group to tackle the newly-formed Le Mans Prototype Challange.

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GM Exec Admits Volt is Stepping Stone to All-Electric Cars

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 01:08 PM PST

As we’ve talked about on these pages before, the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation of car purchasers is starting. By the end of the year many major auto manufacturers will have some kind of electric vehicle for sale on the mass market and by 2014, nearly all major manufacturers have plans to introduce at least one electric car.

In these early stages, carmakers have chosen several different paths, some opting to go for the cars powered solely by batteries (Battery Electric Vehicles or BEVs) such as the Nissan LEAF, some for the plug-in hybrids (PHEVs; like a Prius with a bigger battery), and some for the extended range electric vehicles (EREVs with small generators on board to charge the batteries) such as the Chevy Volt.

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Reading Tea Leaves: Future Biofuels in the Bottom of a Cup?

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 12:21 PM PST

Here in the US, tea is essentially a niche product, falling way behind coffee in terms of popularity. But in places like the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, tea far surpasses coffee as a national past time. In 2008 alone, the world production of black tea was more than 3.8 million tons.

Typically, all those spent tea leaves and remaining liquid are tossed out with the trash, but now two Pakistani researchers have decided to tackle what they perceived as a waste of resources, and have figured out how to completely recycle the leftover tea and tea leaves into biodiesel, ethanol, methane, propane, fertilizer and even chemical spill absorbent.

Pretty ingenious if you ask me.

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Aurica Motors Plans To Keep California NUMMI Plant Open With Electric Cars

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 10:45 AM PST

In 1984, General Motors and Toyota joined forces to produce cars together at a single plant in Fremont, California. Called the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., the joint venture gave Toyota its first manufacturing base in the U.S., and GM a chance to learn from its rival Toyota on quality and lean manufacturing techniques. Over the years the plant gave us the Geo Prizm, the Toyota Hilux, and Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix, among many other items.

One could argue that one company benefited more than the other from the partnership. But when GM announced it was shuttering the Pontiac brand, it also pulled out of the NUMMI plant, leaving Toyota holding the reigns. Toyota announced it too would pull out of the plant, and it looked like another manufacturing center and hundreds of jobs would be lost. Enter Aurica Motors, maker of electric cars. They have a plan to save the plant, and many of the jobs, by retooling the plant to build electric cars.

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Would You Like A Coffee To Go? “Scirocco-ccino” Storms Europe

Posted: 11 Mar 2010 09:12 AM PST

Much hilarity and cracking of bad puns has greeted the arrival of a coffee powered car over in the UK. “The Car-puccino” which runs on “expressos” and needs its own “filter lane.” Groan.

The car used was a Volkswagen Scirocco, apparently because of its resemblance to the DeLoren in Back To The Future. This prompted one truly awful copyrighter (who should be taken out and shot) to come up with “Scirocco-ccino”.

The thing is though, this is a working road-legal car powered by left over coffee grinds.

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