Published on September 30th, 2009
Much has been written about the launch of the Hyundai i10 concept, the company’s first foray into the electric car market. It’s an impressive car and the underlying technology trumps many other competitors.
For example, there’s the Li-Poly battery which Hyundai claim will charge almost twice as fast as the Li-Ion battery championed by Renault and other manufacturers. Of course, this assumes you have an industrial outlet with enough amps to provide the power fast enough.
However, the Hyundai i10 is more than a standalone electric car. It is part of a range which the company has obviously thought about long and hard before bringing it to market.
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Published on September 8th, 2009
New findings from the Cassini mission to Titan — Saturn’s largest moon — show that its atmosphere contains about 29 billion gallons of propane.
Given that the average new car fuel economy in the US is currently about 20 miles per gallon, and that propane-converted cars get about the same mileage as regular gas cars, there’s enough propane on Titan to take one average car more than 23 million times around the Earth’s equator.
Wow! So what you say? Even though that may sound staggering, you still aren’t convinced that it really means anything to you? What if I told you this: that’s only enough propane to satisfy the propane needs of the US for 18 months.
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Published on August 20th, 2009
After several set backs last week, yesterday the British Steam Car Team unofficially broke the 103 year-old world steam-powered land speed record. The speed record has been held for more than a century by American Fred Marriott, who in 1906, drove a “Stanley Steamer” car 127 miles per hour (mph). The teams own calibrated equipment measured the two way average of 137.14 mph and a 48 min, 52 second turn-around.
At the wheel will be tri-national Charles Burnett III, a multimillionaire born in England to a Canadian mother and American father. The car, which looks like an over sized rocket on wheels, is nicknamed the “fastest kettle in the world”. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on August 18th, 2009
A few weeks ago I met Todd Mouw with Roush Manufacturing (many of you may know the company from its work in motorsports) who was displaying a Ford F250 converted to run on propane. I talked him into letting me take it for a spin through Ft. Worth, Texas.
From there, I convinced him to let me take a liquid propane injection (LPJ) F150, model year 2007, across the country (I’m technically on vacation). I know that propane is not a new technology -it’s been used as a fuel since the 1930s- but in America, it is rarely used in vehicles outside of fleets, but is gaining momentum and can now be used in applications such as lawn mowers.
Now here are the selling points from companies such as Roush that are producing LPJ vehicles:
- 97 percent of propane is produced in North America
- Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 18 percent
- No loss of horsepower, torque or towing capacity
- Up to $5,000 federal tax credit available
- Tax credit of 50 cents per gallon (not always passed to the consumer)
- Significantly reduces operating costs
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Published on October 31st, 2008
A London manager for an energy saving company has found himself the recipient of some incredible luck after walking away from his converted Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Peugeot that had, moments before, exploded. The incident occurred while he was driving at 30 miles per hour after lighting a cigarette.
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Tags:
alternative energy,
alternative fuel,
automobiles,
Cars,
energy industry,
England,
Environment,
Liquefied petroleum gas,
London,
LPG,
Peugeot
