Thursday, May 13, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Navistar Officially Begins Production of Its All-Electric Commercial 2-Ton Truck

Posted: 13 May 2010 01:43 PM PDT

Following only 7 months after receiving a $39 million federal stimulus grant to build it, and only 2 months after announcing a partnership with FedEx to provide all-electric parcel delivery trucks, Navistar is showing that it’s ready to commence full scale production of its groundbreaking commercial delivery truck — which now has a name — the eStar.

Navistar claims that they will be able to produce 4,000 of the trucks this year, and that roughly 200 organizations have already expressed interest in placing the vehicles in their fleets. Amazing, considering the initial offering price of the eStars is a gargantuan $150,000. That’s about $100,000 more than a similarly-equipped commercial diesel truck.

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On The Fence About EVs? Hertz Will Rent Nissan LEAFs Starting in 2011

Posted: 13 May 2010 12:47 PM PDT

I’ve always thought a great initial market for EVs would be in rental car fleets. Although a large number of early adopters will take up the EV reigns next year, the rest of the planet is set to kind of just sit back and watch. Yet there are always the watchers that really want to try a new thing out, but don’t want to fork over the cash until all the kinks are worked out.

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Toyota May Offer $50,000 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car By 2015

Posted: 13 May 2010 12:04 PM PDT

The way I see it, hydrogen fuel is the real fuel of the future. It sounds almost too good to be true; clean, abundant, and the only emissions is a little H20. Of course, most hydrogen is made from natural gas right now, but that could change in the future. Also, the whole lack of infrastructure and high cost of hydrogen cars has made automakers focus on other technologies that can come to market sooner.

Toyota, however, has never given up on hydrogen. They have managed to cut the costs of hydrogen fuel technology by hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the point where they plan to offer a hydrogen fuel cell powered sedan in five years for around $50,000.

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Tiny 0.7 Liter Engine Produces An Amazing 134 Horsepower Per Liter

Posted: 13 May 2010 09:27 AM PDT

Believe me, I’m no engineer. But this very powerful 0.7 liter engine that reportedly produces 134 horsepower per liter has my full attention. I recall the days of the 6.6 liter Trans Am and 5.7 liter Mustang. If you mentioned an engine less than one liter in size, I would have laughed and only believed you were talking about a lawn mower. The five horsepower Briggs and Stratton motor on my go kart was probably larger than 0.7 liters.

Yet, it looks like the German company FEV, based in Aachen, Germany, is the one that could be laughing now. We heard about FEV yesterday with their plug-in hybrid Fiat 500 conversion. Not only are they hard at work on plug-in powertrains, they have also developed what they’re calling an extremely downsized engine (EDE) that uses three cylinders, is turbocharged and could be an excellent replacement for the current crop of small, low displacement engines on the market.

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Hybrid Sailboat Propulsion Proposed by Researchers

Posted: 13 May 2010 09:11 AM PDT

Researchers in Portugal are working on an electric assist propulsion system for sailboats that harnesses the wind energy gathered in a ships sails to subsequently power an electric motor when the vessel is mooring and unmooring, instead of using standard gasoline or diesel engines.

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