Published on June 27th, 2008
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Now that you know when it is and what it’s called, I’ll tell you a bit about what it is. Firstly, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Hybrid Fest isn’t really all about hybrids. I know this because my website is a sponsor this year, and we’re definitely not all about hybrids.
So what is HF really? It’s a get together with tons of green car enthusiasts, including hybrid owners, biodiesel producers, ecomodders, and everyone else. The show will be kicked off early on Friday with a fuel economy competition and then get down and dirty on Saturday and Sunday with speeches, discussions, hybrid test drives, and a whole host of other goodies you can find out about on the website. HF will also be a time for companies to show off new green tech, including some of the big guns like GM and Toyota, but also many smaller companies working on things like plug-in hybrid conversions. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on June 8th, 2008
And maybe hybrid technology is the key?
Today, twenty of the fastest cars on Earth will line up at the start of round 7 of the Formula 1 World Championship at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, to do battle for the biggest prize in world motor sport.
Capable of accelerating to 200 mph, and coming back to a complete standstill 12 seconds flat, a modern F1 car represents the pinnacle of automotive technology, precisely the reason that big name Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda have entered the sport as constructors in recent years.
Formula 1 has never been cheap - even the smallest teams have annual budgets in excess of $100 million to field two cars - but considering the resources available to the new Japanese teams, who are rumoured to have spent almost $2 billion between them on F1 in the past four years, one might expect a good chance of the Japanese national anthem being played when the constructors trophy is handed out this afternoon.
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Published on June 2nd, 2008
Here’s an interesting idea: instead of putting the airbag in the car, put the car in the airbag.
Sure it sounds silly, but XP vehicles, a start-up in California, is doing just that with their upcoming electric car, the Whisper™. Apparently, XP has taken the same sort of airbag technology developed to safely land recent NASA missions on Mars and used it to create an inflatable polymer car frame in which they pack all the essentials for it to actually be considered an automobile.
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Published on May 14th, 2008
Photo Credits: deborah sherman photography
The Cafe Racer Truck Runs on 100% Recycled Coffee Grounds
A commenter on Ben’s wood-powered truck post pointed us to a similar car hack. The truck above is also powered by a wood gas generator, except this one runs on coffee grounds. The Cafe Racer is a 1975 GMC pickup that essentially burns up used coffee to create a combustible gas. The gas is filtered on its way to the engine and, Viola, a caffeine-powered truck. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on May 13th, 2008
I’ve heard of making fuel from wood before, but rarely does using wood as fuel come up. However, just today I was pointed to this site, hosted by a local radio station, with a real-life example of someone burning wood as a fuel in his truck.
I can’t say for sure how the system works, whether it’s dual fuel or the wood-burning supplies all the fuel the engine needs, but it doesn’t appear to be a hoax and is certainly interesting. Evidently, during WWII, there was some experimenting with alternative fuels (due to shortages caused by the war), and one of the results was the wood burning automobile. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on May 3rd, 2008
Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.
Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year.
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Tags:
anaerobic,
Biofuels,
Ethanol,
ethanol production,
fuel,
gasification,
GM,
non-food,
plasma,
Syngas,
Westinghouse
Published on May 2nd, 2008
As has happened before, with gas prices continuing to climb, the demand for improved fuel economy will increase as well, and all manner of improvements and upgrades that promise to help get better mileage will be touted. Some offer real benefits; others are pure snake oil.
An improvement that offers both improved mileage and increased horsepower seems counterintuitive at first. After all, the tradeoff that hybrids and other economy vehicles offer seem to be one of reduced horsepower and acceleration in exchange for improved fuel economy. So how can you have both? Read the rest of this entry »
Published on April 25th, 2008
I happened across this video on algae biofuel today: a company I’ve never heard of, Valcent Products, claims they can grow algae to produce oil yields of 100,000 gallons per acre. That’s the upper range of estimates I’ve seen for algae production—an absolutely phenomenal amount of oil—which Valcent attributes to their ‘high density vertical bioreactor’ system. Check it out (more video after the jump):
Published on April 15th, 2008
Scania (part of Volkswagen) builds modified, heavy-duty diesel engines designed to run on almost pure ethanol (E95, or 95% ethanol, with a 5% ignition improver).
If that sounds weird, that’s because it is. US auto manufacturers make a big deal out of converting cars and trucks to run on ethanol/gasoline blends of up to 85% ethanol. Scania has done better than that for 15 years, and guess what, their engines can run on 100% biodiesel too, without any modification. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on April 10th, 2008
GM’s plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, will have its lithium-ion batteries road-tested by end of the month. Engineers have already been testing the Volt’s electrical hybrid system, the so-called E-Flex architecture, but only with nickel-metal hydride hybrid batteries in place. The newer, more advanced lithium-ion batteries are seen as the key to to the vehicle, since they store energy more efficiently than other batteries of the same size.
Last week, GM engineers worked to replace the nickel-metal hydride batteries with lithium-ion batteries in three different test-vehicle “mules”. These trial vehicles have allowed engineers to fine tune and improve components of the vehicle system, before putting it all together into something that more closely resembles the final Volt production model. GM hopes to complete road-testing for the Volt by November 2010.
