Today only, over at Woot.com, you can get the Neuton CE 6 battery-powered lawnmower for $350. It’s refurbished but carries a two-year warranty. The price of a new model direct from Neuton is $499. → Read More
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1243511167 Students at MIT are building an electric car capable of being recharged in about ten minutes. Granted, the kind of power that’s necessary to do that would be enough “to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once,” according to project team member and MIT student Radu Gogoana. → Read More
This battery-powered lawn mower almost makes me wish I still had a lawn to mow. Almost. Vermont-based Neuton has apparently been selling the $399 CE 5 and $499 CE 6 models for a year or so now but this is the first I’ve heard of them. Anyone out there have one of these? → Read More
It’s oddly wonderful to see a Jetski darting about in the water accompanied only by sporadic splashing sounds instead of the constant whine of a gasoline motor. The “Eco Watercraft” is an all-electric Jetski that can apparently go up to 50 miles per hour on a battery that lasts three hours in between charges. → Read More
Instead of relying on superhuman strength via a panic-induced rush of adrenaline to be able to lift your car off the ground, why not just buy a car that only weighs 300 pounds to begin with? The “Spira4u” is such a car, made mostly (90%) of six-inch foam and with a top speed of 70 miles per hour. Oh, and it gets 100 miles to the gallon. → Read More
Although CES is generously provided with outlets for our charging needs, I decided that the power that comes out of them, like everything else in Vegas, is dirty. So Doug and I headed over to the SkyCharger, a big solar- and wind-powered charging facility housed in a tent outside the central hall. → Read More
Let’s say that Congress refuses to give some of that bailout money to Detroit—does that effectively kill off electric cars like the Chevy Volt? That depends on who you’re talking to. → Read More
Asura just opened the first-of-its-kind thermal energy plant in California, which should generate enough electricity to power some 3,500 homes. The best part is that this plant, which is named Kimberlina, is merely a proof of concept of sorts— the real plant, to be constructed by 2010, will generate enough electricity to power, like, 120,000 homes. The idea is dead simple: you’ve got… → Read More
China’s 001 Group, based in Zhejiang province, has produced a solar-powered car that costs some $5,500—more than reasonable for any car, let alone one that’s partially fueld by our own local star. The company has actually made more than 10 of them, which shows the difficulty (or expense) of producing them; if they were cheap to make, why wouldn’t they be rolling off the… → Read More
So you could bid on this converted-to-electric Delorean like everyone else or you could use the Buy-It-Now option, which will get you – wait for it – a free Flux Capacitor. The current bidding is at around $16,000 and the Buy-It-Now price is set at $100,000. Keep in mind, though, that the Flux Capacitor allows you to time travel. The car itself is powered by 13 batteries running at 12-volts… → Read More
Sick of batteries and the burden that batteries carry? Me too, man. Me too. Here’s a hand-cranked MP3 player called the Eco Media Player Revolution. It’s the successor to the original hand-cranked Eco Media Player. This new one handles music and movie files in AAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, MP4, and WMV formats and features 4GB of storage. There’s also an FM radio, photo album, ebook reader, and an… → Read More
Biodiesel is about to make the move from weirdo hobby to mainstream normality. Go Green Home Stores is working on bringing biodiesel brewers to its stores, making it so that folks don’t have to create their own ad-hoc device. You’d still have to supply the bio—mainly old vegetable oil—but you wouldn’t have to figure out, for example, how to turn an old water heater… → Read More
Professor Michikazu Hara, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has created an inexpensive substance, which can boost the efficiency of ethanol production. Reportedly, the costs of producing bio-ethanol from rice straw and other nonfood crops can be cut by more than 30%. Hara says the special catalyst he created is able to break down plant-based material and produce sugar (one… → Read More
Everybody’s favorite gigantic furniture store filled with flat-packed boxes is getting into solar panels. Cheap ones, too. Ikea is apparently getting ready to pump $75 million into "as many as ten companies in five different areas: solar technology, energy conservation, water saving products, alternative lighting, and new product materials,” according to TreeHugger. The goal of Ikea’s… → Read More
Hey, this deal is only good until 1:00 PM Eastern today, so hop on it if you’re interested. It’s the Sunforce 5004 60 Watt Solar Charging Kit, sold by Amazon. The kit includes a PVC mounting frame, 7 Amp charge controller, 175-watt inverter, and wiring/connection cables. And with the built-in blocking diode technology, this charger kit is designed to protect against battery discharge at night. → Read More
Working off of the post from earlier today concerning Lotus adding artificial engine noise to hybrid cars in the name of safety, we thought we might see how a few alternatives might work instead of the boring artificial car engine sound. → Read More
We’ve all heard the whispers and murmurs regarding adding artificial noise to hybrid cars so that pedestrians don’t get hit and it appears that we’re heading in that direction for real. Lotus is working on artificial engine noise and there’s apparently even a $300 module you can add to your Toyota Prius to give it that throaty vroom-vroom sound it’s been missing. This all begs the… → Read More
Here’s a panel I attended at the recent Pacific Crest Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado. There were two experts on the panel: Steven Kalland, Director of the North Carolina Solar Center and Gregg Rothschild, Chief Counsel and Deputy Chief of Staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I found this presentation to be very interesting and informative – kind of a behind the… → Read More
Here are a few more strange and wonderful inventions from the Far East – this time from the Panasonic Center in Osaka, Japan. First up is a dead-ass silent washer/dryer combo, which I thought was pretty amazing. It’s a washer and dryer in the same unit, so you can pile all of your unmentionables inside, then set it and forget it. When it’s all done, your clothes will have been washed and… → Read More
The German government today announced plans to build 30 wind farms in the North and Baltic Sea north of Germany. Each facility will cost $1.57 billion. The first farm will become reality this year. By 2030, a total of 25,000 megawatts are supposed to be produced when the grid of interconnected wind farms is finalized. With the record investment, the German government said it wants to increase the… → Read More
I’ve never really had a problem with my Rebel’s battery life — in fact, it’s excellent. I guess that’s no reason to stop trying to improve it, however, and Canon is working on doing just that. Of course, they’re not an energy research company. But MTI Micro is, and they just happened to announce a deal with a “global Japanese developer of digital… → Read More
Anybody feeling pinched by high gas prices? You should. Expensive gas not only hits us squarely in the pocketbook when we fill our gas tanks, but it makes everything else more expensive as well; air travel, shipping packages, groceries, you name it. Aside from being expensive, gasoline is hard on the environment too. Here are a few viable alternatives (that are available now) if you decide that… → Read More
Convenient, but possibly less efficient than a system that follows the sun. This is probably a good idea for those with good exposure who want to integrate solar power from the beginning. The good news is that it looks and installs just like regular tile-y roof (but bluer), the bad news is it’s almost certainly extremely expensive. SRS Energy [via Treehugger] → Read More
This all looks very nice on paper and I’d be one of the first wide-eyed optimists to use one of these things but I just can’t help but think that we’re probably not going to see these on the road in the next three to four years (as MIT hopes). The full-size version of this “City Car” being developed by the brave men and women at the Massachusetts Institute of… → Read More
This is the kind of power I can see being used on Arrakis — Dune — the desert planet. This huge array of mirrors automatically adjusts to face the sun, and concentrates its rays onto a pipeline filled with the spice melange — I mean oil, which heats up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil is then used to vaporize water for steam power, or the heat is transferred (to… → Read More
[photopress:vacoconut.jpg,full,center] A Virgin Atlantic airplane fueled by a coconut and babassu nut biofuel mixture flew from London to Amsterdam at the weekend. It was the first commercial airline to fly on a biofuel mixture, something that Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson said would forever change the way the airline industry operates. Before you run around, telling your friends that the… → Read More
Here’s a great idea for a wearable convergence device. It’s a knee brace that generates enough electricity to power smaller gadgets like cell phones, MP3 players, portable GPS systems, and even “a motorized prosthetic joint or an implanted neurotransmitter,” according to the PhysOrg.com web site. The brace was developed by the University of Michigan and “works much… → Read More
Sweet. I like that some of the alternative-energy cars coming out have three wheels. This commuter car is called the Trev, for two-seater renewable energy vehicle. It’s designed by people at the University of South Australia and runs for almost 100 miles per lithium ion polymer battery charge. It can go from 0 to 60 in around ten seconds. It uses about 1/5th of the energy that a normal car… → Read More
If you haven’t heard of Aptera yet, you’ll probably be hearing a whole lot about the company in the coming months. It’s got two models of automobiles coming out next year. One is just about ready — named the Aptera Typ-1 e — which is all-electric and gets 120 miles per charge. The Typ-1 h is a gasoline/electric hybrid that’ll be available in 2009 and is… → Read More
Bolt four sticks onto a giant solar panel and what do you get? That’s right, a $3600 table that charges in 3 hours and can power your laptop and other crud using a built-in 150-watt power inverter hooked up to a NiMH battery. I’m going to buy this as soon as summer rolls around. And by "buy" I mean "not buy" because I won’t have that kind of money in my… → Read More
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