Category Archives: Transport
We all love those little toy trains, and we just couldn’t help smiling after watching this one go buy. Ken Keiffer, a former marketing executive gave up his perfect job for something a lot more enjoyable, conducting the Rawhide Express. This little train is green too, and uses batteries and energy from the sun to chug around. The train travels to festivals, fairs and other events and is currently at the village of Bridgeport, having arrived there a day after Thanksgiving. The train uses six car-like batteries, each with an 8-volt capacity and a 72-volt solar panel system that helps pull it through sunny weather. All this energy helps Keiffer’s little train pull two 3,500 pounds each passenger cars around.
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In India fuel prices are hiking and people are very concerned about the severe imbalance between income and expenditure. If policy makers stood still in their money-minting-citizen-wrecking projects, and give the Colorado-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory a bit of their attention, maybe they could get convinced to cut their fellow countrymen some slack. The lab’s Department of Energy is leasing out 12 hydrogen-powered shuttle buses for visitors to tour the premises. Engineers say that the shuttle can run up to 250 miles and is up to 25% more energy-efficient than conventional gasoline-powered engines.
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While Paris is busy flaunting its shiny new bike sharing program, the city will now play home to an electric-car self-service hire scheme too! Bollore has won the contract and will now provide the little four-seater electric cars for this program. Designed by Italian partner Pininfarina, the bubble shaped Bluecars have a range of 250 km (155 miles) and takes around four hours to charge. The bike sharing program launched in the city, Velib, has grown, after facing a bunch of problems, and the new car hire program, the Autolib, seeks to have at least 3,000 electric vehicles on Paris streets, ready to be hired from any one of the 1,000 stations in and around Paris and its suburbs.
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We’ve seen adult tricycles before. And most of these usually end up looking like awkward contraptions from the Rickshaw family. The P.I.E.T. did change our perception of the tricycle though. We don’t consider a tricycle to be a child’s mode of transport anymore. German designer, Lorenz Nasdal came up with the Plug-in Electric Tricycle. This little vehicle is green, and is a scaled down version of an eco-friendly electric car, which means, it leaves no clouds of Co2 behind. This one works just great in mild-weathered countries, taken that it sports an open cockpit with its battery tucked beneath the driver’s seat.
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Here’s a new way to get around town. Now you really don’t need to hop into your luxury sedan or that humongous SUV every time you need a ride around your neighborhood. Instead, just shell out some $4900 and you’re promised a contraption, complete with wheels, that’ll sure make heads spin as your ride by. The YikeBike is powered by a 1.2kW electric motor. It is made from carbon fiber and is foldable also. It can unfold in 15 seconds as well. The main aim behind this bike is the solution to the problem of urban mobility. The YikeBike comes in a dimension of 6 x 23.6 x 23.6 inches and weighs only 22 pounds which means you can easily carry it around.
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Remember those baseball cards we’d stick on to the front wheels of our bicycles in our childhood, trying to make them sound like a pip-squeak version of a Harley Davidson? Well, designer Fandi Meng sure kept that
little innovation in mind while coming up with the I-Green. Now, the I-Green makes none of those flatulence-type sounds. What it does do is create some renewable energy to use! All you need to do is hook it up to your front wheel, like a baseball card, entwine the little fan-wing like things with your bicycle spokes, and Voila! The little fan spins as you ride, generating energy!
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We’ve had bimini tops before, covering up our yachts suitably, to keep the sun out and save us from burning in the mid-ocean blistering heat. Here’s a bimini top that not only keeps the sun away and provides some cool shade, but also generates electricity! By technical textile manufacturer Dickson, the Sunbrella Suprême integrates photovoltaics, helping it soak in the energy from the sun and produce some renewable
energy. This one keeps out the harshest of weather conditions, and is also available in six different colors to suit your taste buds. The Sunbrella Plus fabric holds the strength of a good two photovoltaic panels. This one aesthetically beats adding some huge solar panels to soak in the sun on that beautiful yacht of yours.
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When a machine used to clean up goes green, there’s just nothing like it! Behold the Allianz 4000. This one cleans up, and keeps its act clean too, using a hybrid soul to power up. Currently doing the sweeps in the city of New York, the vehicle reaches speeds of 60 miles an hour and nestles a 6.7-liter Cummings diesel engine and two 12-volt lithium-ion batteries with an electric-traction drive system in its belly. And compared to the other sweepers around, this one’s a whole lot efficient, with 40%-45% more savings. With a reduced carbon footprint than the rest, and such heavy fuel savings, the Allianz 4000 sure is the best way to have the streets swept clean.
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What do you do with billions in your pocket and you own just about everything you wished for? Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov decided to spend his bucks on building a $10,000 hybrid sports car. Spending $198.4 million, he got to task, combining a gasoline engine and an electric motor, using a large car that somewhat resembles a toy and using parts all made in either Russia itself or in the Soviet Union. The car’s name is a bit confusing though, the ë-mobile, using a Cyrillic letter that just cant be translated to English. So, this one might just remain in Russia! Prokhorov is Russia’s second richest man, and hopes that the car should have around 12,000 replicas made and sold in Russia by 2010.
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We’ve had quite a buzz going on about the Leaf, right from its conception till today, as San Francisco Bay Area resident Olivier Chalouhi received the first Nissan Leaf. The proud owner of the lovely new electric is all smiles and sure seems happy to own the car, and that too the first one on roads! The 31-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur was the first person in the U.S. to place a Leaf order and got his black electric at a presentation on Saturday at North Bay Nissan of Petaluma in California. Before this, the entrepreneur would travel home 10-mile (16 km) each way commute to work on a homemade electric bicycle. This time, he can drop his two kids to school too!
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