Eideard

Here’s a fun bit of trivia: Jay Leno has driven his Chevrolet Volt nearly 11,000 miles and doesn’t have a single gas station receipt to show for it. According to The New York Times Wheels blog, Leno has had his plug-in for 11 months and, as he told them, “I’ve never had to put gas in it yet… They gave it to me with a full tank of gas. I’ve used less than half of that.”

Given that Leno has an entire fleet of gas-swilling rides in his garage, he can just take the Volt out whenever he knows he can get to Point B and back without refueling. You have to be kind of careful to put 11,000 miles on a Volt without ever going more than 40 miles (plus or minus) at a stretch. Luckily, Leno said his commute is less than 35 miles a day, and so he uses the Volt as his daily driver.

Which matches the stats from the DOT which says the average American commute is 40 miles or less. Which is also why we’re considering an electric car for our next family vehicle – if and when my wife’s ancient Volvo ever kicks the bucket.

And we can find an electric car we can afford.

 
Two years ago, aircraft designers were invited to build an electric airplane that could fly at least 200 miles in under two hours, using less than one gallon (3.8 liters) of fuel per occupant – or the electrical equivalent. Whichever plane performed best would win its makers a prize of $1.35 million. That was the idea behind the Green Flight Challenge, a NASA competition that was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation, and funded by Google.

Well, the challenge wrapped up last week, with the winners being announced this Monday. Pennsylvania’s Pipistrel-USA team took first place, for its Taurus G4.

The twin-fuselage aircraft has seating for four people, and a 145-kilowatt brushless electric motor that turns a two-bladed propeller, which is mounted between the fuselages. Its wingspan is approximately 75 feet.

Out of 14 aircraft originally entered in the competition, it was one of three to make it through to the finals… Of those finalists, both the Taurus and the second-prize-winning eGenius doubled the required fuel efficiency, in that they each used the equivalent of just over half a gallon of fuel per occupant.

The Taurus specifically managed an equivalent fuel efficiency of 403 passenger miles per gallon at a speed of 107 miles per hour – according to Pipistrel team leader Jack Langelaan, that is twice as fast and efficient as a fully-occupied Toyota Prius.

“Two years ago the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 mph in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction,” he stated. “Now, we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.”

Bravo! The senior pilot in my extended family [I'm the only one who never piloted a plane] will be here this weekend. Though he’ll probably see this first, here in my blog, I’m looking forward to interesting discussions about the achievement.

A wave of “panda-monium” has swept through a northern Arizona city thanks to a mischievous street sign hacker who warned motorists of a “ROGUE PANDA ON RAMPAGE.”

State transportation officials said Tuesday that a person was able to post the hoax warning by hacking into an electronic message board in Flagstaff, Arizona, over the weekend.

Rest easy, though. Authorities said the city is safe from pandas, if not from jokesters.

Officials said the message board alerting drivers to street improvements near a busy city intersection was probably altered late on Sunday or early on Monday. It was fixed by 11 a.m. local time on Monday.

“Someone had to know what they were doing to go in and change the message,” said Mackenzie Kirby, an Arizona Department of Transportation spokeswoman. “It’s not easy.”

Kirby joked that there had been no sightings of any rogue pandas in the community, but she has been sent several photoshopped images via email of the cuddly creatures tooled up for trouble.

You can never too careful, eh? Obviously Arizona’s governor must call for increasing border security with Sichuan.

Commissioned by BAA (Heathrow Airport’s operator), the ULTra PRT transportation system, which utilizes autonomous electric podcars, has been launched at Heathrow Airport. The point-to-point vehicles connect Heathrow’s Terminal 5 with two business parking lots, carrying approximately 800 passengers each weekday.

Replacing two diesel-powered buses in June, the personal shuttle system at Heathrow Airport is available 24/7. Designed by UK-based company ULTra PRT, the system consists of 22 podcars, operating on 2.4 miles of track. This track “consists of two lanes running in opposite directions separated by a central kerb,” ULTra’s website explains. The silent, electric vehicles hold up to four passengers and luggage [comfortably], running at top speed of about 25 mph. Passengers are carried point-to-point, to a requested destination.

Since the launch, the podcars have not had any accidents and their technical reliability has reached 95 percent, The New York Times reports. As the vehicles are used on demand only, the system is reportedly more energy efficient than the previous one, which was based on buses running in endless loops.

Differentiation between large vehicles and smallish vehicles [in greater numbers, obviously, for high demand periods] in basic 24/7 transportation cycles seems to work out well. Though the concept ain’t new – this latest version seems to be practical and attractive. And no one at Heathrow has figured out how to screw it up [yet].

Yes, it’s been quite a while since last I cast my eyes upon Heathrow infrastructure. Anyone think their understanding of logistics has improved? Aside from these neat little critters.

Ignoring the red-and-white danger sign, Sri Mulyati walks slowly to the train tracks outside Indonesia’s bustling capital, lies down and stretches her body across the rails.

Like the nearly dozen others lined up along the track, the 50-year-old diabetes patient has all but given up on doctors and can’t afford the expensive medicines they prescribe. In her mind, she has only one option left: electric therapy.

“I’ll keep doing this until I’m completely cured,” said Mulyati, twitching visibly as an oncoming passenger train sends an extra rush of current racing through her body.

She leaps from tracks as it approaches and then, after the last carriage rattles slowly by, climbs back into position.

Pseudo-medical treatments are wildly popular in many parts of Asia — where rumors about those miraculously cured after touching a magic stone or eating dung from sacred cows can attract hundreds, sometimes thousands…

Medical experts say there is no evidence lying on the rails does any good…

She turned to train track therapy last year after hearing a rumor about an ethnic Chinese man who was partially paralyzed by a stroke going to the tracks to kill himself, but instead finding himself cured.

It’s a story that’s been told and retold in Indonesia.

Until recently, more than 50 people would show up at the Rawa Buaya tracks every day. But the numbers have dropped since police and the state-run railroad company erected a warning sign and threatened penalties of up to three months in prison or fines of $1,800.

No one has been arrested yet, and none of the participants in train track therapy has died.

Well, not yet.

Ford Fusion Hybrid

The General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees two-thirds of the 600,000-plus vehicles in the U.S. government’s fleet, is looking to save millions of dollars per year at the pump by bolstering its use of fuel-efficient vehicles. The 35,000 vehicles ordered by the GSA so far in 2011 consume 21 percent less fuel than the vehicles they replaced, according to the agency. The average miles-per-gallon rating of the U.S. government’s fleet of vehicles now stands at 23.4, up from 19.1 in 2010.

The Detroit Three are expected to reap most of the benefits of the government’s purchases. GSA administrator, Martha Johnson, says that, “We will be depending on innovative technologies and products coming out of Detroit to help us achieve these goals, and I am confident that American automakers will continue to rise to the challenge…”

This year, approximately 22,000 of the 35,000 vehicles ordered by GSA were advanced technology vehicles (i.e., electric vehicles, hybrids, flex-fuel capable automobiles and plug-in hybrids). Over the past two years, the government has more than doubled the number of hybrids in its 600,000-plus vehicle fleet.

Of course, we could elect a Republican government and move the fleet back to Hummers and Buicks.

The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, made by General Motors, and the all-electric Nissan Leaf save on fuel , but the size and weight of their battery packs add significant crash protection as well.

“The Leaf and Volt’s extra mass gives them a safety advantage over other small cars,” Joe Nolan, chief administrative officer of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said on Tuesday.

The closely watched group, underwritten by insurance companies, crash tested the two first generation 2011 plug-ins that were introduced late last year as the ultimate for consumers in fuel economy.

Both earned top safety ratings, an early validation for experts who say automakers do not have to sacrifice safety for better fuel economy, that advanced technologies can achieve both…

“What powers the wheels is different, but the level of safety for the Volt and Leaf is as high as any of our other top crash test performers,” Nolan said…

The Volt and the Leaf are classified as small cars but their battery packs raise their weight closer to mid-size and larger ones…

The findings also contrasted with a lackluster Volt endorsement earlier this year from Consumer Reports on efficiency. I don’t know any experienced, savvy auto geeks who consider Consumer Reports to be anything other than incompetent, opportunist.

GM said the review was hasty. I’d say sleazy – with CR’s mind made up in advance.

This article doesn’t take the time to note special consideration made for first-responders in the very different designs of these two cars. Fire and police departments around the world have taken the time to add a bit of extra training to be certain they are prepared to deal with the much larger batteries in these critters. The manufacturers have added incident power cutoffs to aid in safety.

 
The Superbus concept, which could give business commuters and tourists a new luxury high-speed link between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, moves a step closer to fruition in the UAE next week when it will be showcased outside Europe for the first time.

The first prototype version of the Superbus makes its Middle East debut when it goes on show at the five-day UITP Mobility and City Transport Expo getting under way on Sunday at Dubai National Exhibition and Convention Centre…

Carrying 23 passengers at 250 kmh on a dedicated “speed track”, the Superbus will cut the commute time between Abu Dhabi and Dubai to 30 minutes, and is seen by its European designers as the shape of things to come in sustainable transport.

The Superbus is the brainchild of a design team at TU Delft University of Technology in Holland who have brought the prototype to the UAE after an exploratory initial visit coinciding with last month’s Commercial Vehicles Middle East exhibition and conference in Dubai…It has been dubbed the “Dutch solution” to the three ills of public transportation: congestion, pollution, and safety…

“Superbus will have an intelligent routing system rather than a fixed schedule. Commuters will book online or with their mobile phone, and the bus picks them up and drops them at their desired location.”

Offering the convenience of a car, the Superbus is 15 meters long and has eight doors on each side. It would run on a dedicated two-lane highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and leave the “speed track” in urban areas to drop off passengers at agreed locations…

Produced as a result of feasibility studies by the Dutch government for a route in northern Holland, the UAE is confident it makes sense for interconnections both for business and tourism.

And it rocks!

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama proclaimed that there would be one million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015. Toyota recently celebrated the building of the company’s three millionth hybrid worldwide. More and more automakers are turning to the battery pack and electric motors to improve fuel economy or remove petrol from the equation altogether, but do Americans know what any of this means? Not really, at least according to a recent study.

MediaPost reports that marketing firm Synovate recently polled 1,898 would-be car buyers to gauge their knowledge of hybrids and electric cars, and the results are not encouraging. Only two-thirds are aware that hybrids use both petrol and battery power for propulsion, and a large portion didn’t know hybrids even had batteries onboard. And while regular readers might know that some hybrids can run for short distances on electricity alone, only a third of those polled were aware of that little tidbit.

The results of this poll are likely disheartening to advertisers who have tried tirelessly over the years to explain how hybrids work. And with plug-ins and electric cars starting to hit the market, the education of the car-buying public has just begun. Case in point? Less than half of the nearly 2,000 car-buyers polled knew that plug-in hybrids can run on electric power alone. So… just what is that plug for, then?

Ignorance really ain’t bliss, you know.

Late last year, Nissan unveiled its “Approaching Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians” (VSP), a technical name for the noise-adding system found on the automaker’s Leaf electric vehicle. Introduction of a pedestrian warning system on near-silent vehicles like the Leaf has been the subject of much debate, but with the U.S. House and Senate passing a measure that requires hybrids and plug-in vehicles to emit an audible sound to warn pedestrians, these noise-making setups will soon become standard on all electric-drive autos sold in the U.S.

However, over in the UK, the Nissan Leaf’s pedestrian warning system has reportedly been deemed illegal, forcing the automaker to either remove or disable it.

A Nissan spokeswoman told The Northern Echo that…an intermittent beeping noise is fitted as standard to commercial vehicles such as buses and lorries, but UK law states that the sound must be capable of being disabled between 11:00 pm and 6:00 am. The audible system on the Leaf did not allow for that to be done, so the beeping sound is being removed entirely before the cars can be driven on roads in the UK.

How many things are wrong with this silly-ass situation?

And consider our friends at Nissan who can’t figure out how to put in an inline switch which turns the stupid noisemaker on or off at the driver’s whim. I suppose that is yet another rule from Congress. To stop us independent drivers from exercising our own minds and choosing between horns and beepers.