A Ford Motor Company engineer has built a 3-wheel motorbike capable of getting 125 mpg.
The fuel economy expert crafted the vehicle at his home shop in Belleville, MI. It’s a street legal, two-passenger, 3-wheel motorbike that is made from aircraft materials. Oh, and it is capable of a top speed of over 100 mph. Read the rest of this entry »
As we’ve reported over the last few weeks, sometimes electric-powered drag racing can break boundaries in exciting new ways. The electric motorbike that rockets from 0-60mph in under a second, and a 1972 Datsun that just happens to be the world’s (second) fastest elecric car spring to mind.
Sometimes though, EV face-offs on the drag track are just well…daft. Check out this hilarious footage of the recent Alternative Fuel Race 2009 in the UK featuring electric skateboards and battery-powered dune buggies.
While we wait to see if General Motors will go banko come June 1, Raser Technologies is hoping to change our minds about one of GM’s most iconic offerings: the Humvee.
During the upcoming 2009 SAE World Congress (Detroit, April 20 - 24) the company plans to unveil a Hummer H3 Range-Extended Electric Vehicle (ReEV) prototype. The vehicle is designed, first and foremost, as a purely electric vehicle with a drive train similar to the Voltec system in the Chevrolet Volt.
“We are resurrecting the Hummer,” David West, vice president of marketing for Raser Technologies said, adding that “It’s like a Volt on steroids.”
There are quite a few three-wheelers these days: Aptera, Myers Motors and ZAP! Motors. And while those companies seem to be blocked from government funding, it isn’t stopping designers like 22-year-old Alex Hodge from New Zealand from churning out kickass mods like the Hawk.
The Hawk concept is part fighter jet, part sports car, and looks like it’s balls-out fun! The concept is built around the 999cc Honda RC51 V-twin engine has 10,000 rpm, 120 hp and a top speed of 144 mph. Read the rest of this entry »
Out on the dragstrip, one hardly expects the car kicking ass and taking names to be an old ‘72 Datsun 1200. Especially when the losers are driving BMWs, Corvettes and Ferraris. But those guys didn’t get pwned by any ol’ Datsun…this one’s electric!
It seems a bit like a paradox. Drag racing is flame-dipped muscle cars with bikini-clad hood ornaments spread over the hood. Electric cars, not so much. Read the rest of this entry »
Students at San Jose State University have created a new type of hybrid—or perhaps tribrid?—that makes use of human pedal-power, solar panels, and a strong battery. They’ve dubbed the car the ZEM, or Zero EMissions Vehicle, and say it could be mass-produced for a mere $4,000.
Researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia have developed an improved fuel-injection system that is simple and affordable enough to use in existing cars. Through a strong electric charge to fuel on its way to the engine’s cylinders, scientists were able to increase the fuel efficiency of a Mercedes-Benz 300D from 32 to 38 mpg. If all the autos the United States installed the apparatus, over 300 million barrels of gasoline and about 150 million barrels of diesel could be saved.
Although the concept of a hybrid/biofuel combo has been around for a while, it has (at least in our minds) mostly been in the form of diesel hybrids running on biodiesel (which isn’t going to happen). But what if we could take America’s most fuel efficient car and convert it to run on another domestically-produced renewable fuel: cellulosic ethanol? Read the rest of this entry »
The Illinois Institute of Technology’s masters program has spun-off a start-up with big plans for our aging fleet of big trucks. The company, called Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technology (HEVT), has built a bolt-on module that will convert a standard F-150 into a 41 MPG plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).
HEVT demo’d their first prototype at the Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose earlier in the month. The suddenly attractive F-150 PHEV (which is not the 1994 model depicted above) gets 15 miles of emissions-free driving on electricity before it switches over to gas/electric hybrid mode, where it will continue to get an impressive 41 MPG for a typical day’s worth of driving.
A 45 year old mechanic from Dorset, England, always wanted a Hummer, but not the cost of maintenance and keeping it filled with gas.
So, Andy Saunders took a 1998 Suzuki Wagon, which he called an “old people carrier”, added custom steel panels and other parts to get that special Hummer look.
Now he drives a pint-sized version of the army’s Humvee personal troop transporter at a savings. Instead of 12mpg, he says the “credit crunch Hummer” gets 60mpg. Read the rest of this entry »
Gas 2.0
Gas 2.0 digs into the viscous world of biofuels and the fast-paced transit arena, exploring the technologies and substances that are the future of transportation.
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