Bubble-Infused Plastic Could Help Make Ford's Cars 750 Pounds Lighter. Image Credit CC Woodley WonderworksFrom our friends at Fast Company, "bridging the fuzzy border between design and business. " Here's one thing that often gets lost in the shuffle when debating the sexier points of green transportation: the simplest way to make a car, plane, whathaveyou more eco-friendly is just to make the whole damn thing lighter. All well and good, but how do you make sure that those industrial-grade plastic parts maintain their strength once you lighten them up? A technology developed at MIT called MuCell, and now being explored by automakers like Ford and Cadillac, has an answer.
And that answer is: just add bubbles. No, seriously: adding tiny bubbles of nitrogen or carbon gas into the normal injection-molding manufacturing process results in plastic that's just as rough-and-tumble, but up to 10% lighter (according to estimates from Ford Motors, who's very keen on using the technology). Ford hopes to use MuCell plastic in all its vehicles by 2020. Will $4-a-gallon gas ignite an electric-vehicle frenzy? Scientists Can Now Take Over Your Car. An unexpected result has come out of the investigation into the apparent accidental acceleration of Toyota cars. The National Academies created the Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration.
According to a report by Technology Review, the scientists in the group proved they could take control of cars using "GM's OnStar and Ford's Sync, as well as through the Bluetooth connections intended for making hands-free phone calls. " The scientists, including Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington, and UC San Diego's Stefan Savage discovered they could use the cellular system many cars have to upload code delivered by audio to take over the car's function. In essence, they could take control of the car from the driver and stop it, drive it away and more. What are the implications of this? Model-T photo by Dave Seven | amphibious car photo by Susan Williams. The next big thing in cleantech.
What’s next for cleantech? Sunil Paul, founding director of Spring Ventures, thinks it will be the “CleanWeb,” or technologies that leverage the capabilities of the Internet, social media and mobile technologies to address resource constraints. He’ll explain this idea in a morning talk at Green:Net 2011. Paul, who made his first cleantech investment back in 2002 and was an early investor in Nanosolar and Solazyme (which just filed its S1), will discuss the next-generation of opportunities that he thinks the CleanWeb will unveil.
At Green:Net 2011, several sessions will elaborate on the next stage of development for cleantech and the opportunities that exist to leverage technology to save resources: Take a look at the speaker line-up here. Memo to the government: Nissan will not sell 25,000 Leafs this year. For such a hotly anticipated car, the Nissan Leaf has seen deliveries creep slowly off the assembly line — but don’t tell the Department of Energy. The DOE, carrying through on President Obama’s State of the Union speech in which he called for one million electric vehicles to be on U.S. roads by 2015, released a status report this week showing that by “conservative” estimates, 1.2 million electric cars will be available in the U.S. by 2015.
As we pointed out yesterday, at least one number in the report is decidedly unconservative, which is that 25,000 Nissan Leafs will be made available this year (see chart below). The company has 20,000 reservations for the Leaf and has delivered just over 100 cars in the U.S. since its December launch. Nissan executive Brian Carolin told The Detroit News that the company would have a hard time hitting 20,000 Leafs this year, but predicted “a few hundred” of the cars would be sold this month: “I think 20,000 will be too high. “We’re on track. Anti sleep pilot keeps you awake at the wheel. ASP Technology just launched its Anti Sleep Pilot iPhone and iPad application to help prevent fatigue-related driving accidents. The app calculates a your fatigue level in real-time, maintains your alertness via reaction tests, and alerts your when it is time to take a rest break. Founder Troels Palshof fell asleep at the wheel in 2007 (soon after the arrival of his first child) and narrowly avoided a crash.
Not being able to find a product that could prevent a similar accident, he decided to create his own. Swedish research shows that 20 percent of all traffic accidents and 40 percent of all accidents involving a single vehicle are fatigue-related. The company spent three years working with leading sleep researchers to develop algorithms able to identify driver fatigue.
The app provides much the same functionality as the hardware device. Users take an initial test to define their risk profile based on factors like age and health data. On the Road: A Tricked-Out Ford Escape for Blind Drivers. In 2006, Virginia Tech began the daunting task of building a car for blind drivers. The Blind Driver Challenge team at Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory started out in 2009 using a buggy retrofitted with a voice command interface on a closed course. Now the team has moved into the real world, bringing a modified Ford Escape hybrid to the Daytona International Speedway in January during a pre-event for the Rolex 24 endurance race. According to the Collegiate Times, the vehicle has been tricked out for blind drivers with a nonvisual user interface that can "see" road obstacles, a glove with small vibrating motors on each of the knuckles to transmit directional information, a seat featuring four vibrating motors that transmit vibrations up or down the driver's leg depending on whether they need to accelerate or decelerate, and a tablet covered with holes that shoot compressed air.
When the driver puts a hand over the tablet, they can visualize road obstacles. Chairman Of Build Your Dreams, A Major Clean Tech Manufacturer, Wins “China’s Peace Prize” The chairman of Build Your Dreams (BYD) one of the world’s largest clean tech and electric vehicle manufacturers, Chuanfu Wang, won China’s Canton Provincial Award for Individual Contribution the company announced today. The Canton Government awarded the CPAIC, a.k.a. “China’s Peace Prize,” to Wang for leading a business that has consistently developed and commercialized solar power, battery, LED and electrified transportation technologies.
Use of BYD products in Canton, the government there claims, significantly reduced air pollution in the province. Also known as Guangdong, the Canton region drew scrutiny over air quality issues leading up to the Asian Games which it hosted in November 2010. The local government put restrictions on cars, factories and power plants leading up to the event, and even shut them down during the games to appease air pollution related health concerns. China’s Peace Prize (CPAIC) is given out every two years to two individuals or teams. One Million Plug-in Cars by 2015? Since 2008, Barack Obama has consistently promoted the goal of having 1 million advanced technology vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. The number refers to plug-in vehicles that use grid power, stored in lithium-ion battery packs, to operate their electric traction motors.
Regular hybrids like the Toyota Prius don't do that. The all-electric Nissan Leaf, the series hybrid Chevy Volt, and an upcoming plug-in hybrid version of the Prius do. But recent analyses by experts and industry analysts differ sharply on whether that number is achievable. Many say that high cost, limited range, a nascent supply chain, and consumer hesitancy will make 1 million vehicles in five years impossible.
Advocacy groups, other analysts, and the U.S. In January, a panel of industry experts, convened by Indiana University, issued a 78-page report, Plug-In Electric Vehicles: A Practical Plan for Progress, that called the 1 million goal undoable. Several points should be kept in mind about Obama's goal. When lockup expires Monday, could Tesla’s stock drop? Short sellers think so. Updated Tesla’s IPO has been one a few super-successful cleantech public offerings this year, if not the most successful. But will the good news continue after the 180-day post-IPO lockup period expires Monday and new shares flood the market?
Maybe not. There’s tremendous short interest in the electric car company’s stock — that means there’s a lot of buyers looking to bet that shares will fall. On Nov. 30, the ratio of short interest to available shares that day was 6 to 1, and at the end of October that ratio reached 22 to 1, ahead of Tesla’s most recent earnings report. It fell to 4.5 to 1 after the earnings came out, but current short interest in advance of the lockout’s end signals belief that the shares will fall after the lockout ends. In essence, the market is now anticipating a drop in the stock price. [Update: Capstone Investments analyst Carter Driscoll has just downgraded Tesla shares to a "sell" with a price target of $22, which suggests that investors should sell now. Will charging infrastructure be the electric car’s speed bump? This year — and next — will be a busy one for arrival of electric cars.
The Ford Focus Electric and Coda’s sedan are slated for launch by 2011. The Nissan Leaf is slowly making its way to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, the Wheego Whip and LiFe are on sale in New York, and the partially electric Chevrolet Volt is on dealer lots now. Yet Tesla Motors, the one company that’s been ahead of the pack in actually selling electric vehicles, saw its stock price drop 16 percent today. The Silicon Valley-based maker of the all-electric sports car Roadster saw its stock drop today in part due to today’s expiry of the 180-day lockup period that kept insiders from selling their shares. But it also fell 8 percent Thursday after being downgraded to a “sell” by analyst Carter Driscoll of Capstone Investments. One of the reasons for his new rating was the lack of publicly available charging infrastructure, which he predicts will push green car buyers more towards hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
On the GreenBeat: ECOtality raises $10 million from ABB, Viridity raises second round. Car-Sharing Service Zipcar Adds $21 Million To Its Coffers. Car-sharing service company Zipcar this morning announced that it has raised $21 million in Series G funding. Meritech Capital Partners led the round with a $20 million investment, while Pinnacle Ventures contributed the additional $1 million.
Zipcar didn’t detail what it plans to do with the fresh capital, other than to say it intends to use the proceeds to fund working capital needs and finance fleet growth, and to continue its geographic expansion. In a separate release, Zipcar has revealed that Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of AOL, and John Mahoney, vice chairman and CFO of Staples, have joined its board of directors.
Miraval CEO Philippe Bourguignon has stepped down from the company’s board to make room for Case. Zipcar boasts more than 500,000 members and 8,000 vehicles in urban areas and college campuses throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom (they acquired U.K. car sharing company Streetcar for $50 million earlier this year). Porsche's Head of Design: The 918 RSR Hybrid Is Made for Performance [Video] When Porsche announced last Spring that it plans to built a production version of the 918 plug-in hybrid Spyder supercar, green car buffs rejoiced.
At this week's Detroit Auto Show, the luxury auto company upped the hybrid supercar ante with the 918 RSR racecar, a modified version of the Spyder hybrid. Fast Company sat down with Michael Mauer, Porsche's head of design, at the Detroit Auto Show and talk about the new vehicle. The 918 RSR features a a V-8 engine, an ultra-impressive 767 horsepower, and a 36,000 rpm electric flywheel power generator that gathers kinetic energy from the vehicle's wheels and converts it to electricity.
Once sufficient electricity is gathered, drivers can press a button to release it for acceleration. While the 918 Spyder is focused on both performance and fuel economy, the RSR is "purely performance," explains Mauer. It is, he says, the coupe version of the Spyder. Porsche hasn't revealed when the RSR will be released. Green car makers uses social media to hawk new models.
Volvo's Vehicle Trains Let Drivers Sleep at the Wheel [VIDEO] We love autonomous cars here at Fast Company--we've written about them extensively and even taken the occasional spin. Now, Volvo's autonomous vehicle platooning technology is finally ready to emerge from the lab and into the streets. This week, Volvo and SARTRE (the EU-financed Safe Road Trains for the Environment program) demonstrated vehicle platooning, which consists of a convoy of "slave" vehicles led by a professional driver in a lead vehicle, at the Volvo Proving Ground near Gothenberg, Sweden.
Each slave vehicle in the convoy keeps track of distance, speed and direction and adjusts to stay close--but not too close--to the car directly ahead. The vehicles can leave the platoon at will, but they are completely automated while part of the group. According to Volvo, the platoons are smooth enough that drivers could drink coffee and read the morning paper without worrying about interruption.
Besides freeing up time for drivers, what's the point?