Electric cars are getting sexy

This is a beautiful automobile. This is the Dodge ZEO concept car introduced at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

This car is all electric, ZEO stands for Zero Emissions Operation, made from lightweight aluminum and has a driving range of 400 kilometers (approximately 250 miles). Electricity is provided by multiple batteries under the floor, it rear wheel driven by a 200-kilowatt electric motor.

It is being billed as Americas next generation muscle car, but you won’t be able to hear the pipes roar on this baby. I long for the days when Americas true muscle cars roared from the starting block and this is one aspect that will be sorely missed. But the style of this car go along way towards making up for it.

Battery technology, of course, cannot match the distance of a conventional gas-powered car, but it will by the end of the next decade. But with the average commute less than 25 miles to and from work everyday, this car should be introduced a lot sooner.

For more eye candy goodies click here.

Future cityscapes?

Is this a sign of things to come?



It is a scary thought, but since this has already happened in Naples Italy, can the U.S. be far behind?

This, by the way, is not the result of striking garbage truck drivers, but simply, the result of the landfills being too full to accept any more. An estimated 5,000 tons has been building up since the closure on Dec 21, 2007, in Naples alone. The surrounding areas are filling up too.

We need to seriously curtail out wastefulness, and soon. Recycling has been talked about for several generations now and we are still far behind in our ability and willingness to actually participate.

According to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States recycled 32 percent of its waste in 2005 (I don’t know why stats seem to never be less than two years old).

Including composting, Americans recycled 79 million tons of waste in 2005, a 2 percent increase over 2004 and a big jump from the 16 percent of waste Americans recycled in 1990 and the 10 percent of waste Americans recycled in 1980.

About 42 million tons of paper were recycled—a 50 percent recycling rate. That means 50 percent goes to the landfill.

The number of U.S. landfills have been decreasing steadily—from 8,000 in 1988 to 1,654 in 2005—but the capacity has remained relatively constant because new landfills are much larger.

Container and packaging recycling increased to 40 percent. That means 60 percent goes to the landfill.

America is making headway in both creating more recyclable products and actually recycling those products, but there is still room for improvement.

I see recyclable products thrown in trash cans on a daily basis. Just walk down any public street with trash cans and you will find plastic and other recyclable products in with the other trash. Unfortunately, you can also see this trash on the side of the road. I have never understood the mentality of someone who turns our environment into their own personal trash can by throwing their trash out the window.

Walk into any shopping mall, office building, airport, etc and you will find recyclable objects thrown in with the trash. Sometimes there is even a recycling container nearby.

In my own neighborhood, where we have blue recycling bins assigned to every household, I see, on trash day, too many homes where that blue recycling bin sits up at the side of the house obviously empty while the recycling truck drives past.

We just are not fully committed to recycling in the U.S. yet. Is it going to take the visual sights and olfactory smells of rotting garbage in our streets before non-participants finally realize they should have done their part?

Solar power advertising signs

Personally, I think lighting up advertising signs is a colossal waste of electricity. The amount of power these signs collectively use is astounding. We need to solarize these power hogs to get them off of our power grid.

The costs to power these signs, of course, gets passed onto the consumer, so it would be nice not to have this expense come out of our pockets. Plus, the savings in pollution generated in created the extra power to run these signs would be astounding as well.

Electricity should be generated for our safety and personal use, i.e., traffic lights, street lights, home lighting, etc.

I have always thought advertising to be an eyesore and distraction on our roadways and with the amount of advertising we get on television, radio, all manner of public areas, and in the mail, why do we have to be subjected to this onslaught on our roadways too?

I briefly mentioned in a previous post the rolling blackouts this country is subjected to, if the power companies did not have to provide electricity for this type of superfluous advertising activity, we could stand a better chance of having those blackouts become a thing of the past. Plus, if these signs are on solar power then they would provide some light during those blackouts.

With the art of attracting people to shopping malls and individual businesses using solar power we could all benefit from the savings in more ways than one.

A company based in Spain called Grayhatch, has come up with an innovative and eco friendly creation that takes on the power hungry advertising market. Their inventors have devised a low-energy “bio-luminescent material” that is powered by solar panels. These panels allow for the replacement of wasteful light-bulbs in the advertising panels above the bench, which also gives customers a pretty comfy spot to sit. The benches are made of recycled plastic bags that, Grayhatch claims, leaves a zero carbon footprint and could each save 200 tons of pollution from entering into the atmosphere every year.


As a side note, in the future, these benches could provide a recharging kiosk for personal electronic devices such as cell phones, iPods, etc. Just an idea.

Currently, there is an order for 3,000 of these benches to be installed in the UK and other countries.

Utility company wants to come into our homes without permission.

California Energy Commission has proposed procedures under which they could actually reach into our homes and control the thermostat settings during times of energy stress. Their idea is to prevent the rolling blackouts that plague the countryside during periods of electricity shortages, such as during heat waves when people turn their air conditioners up even higher putting a larger load on the utility company’s already taxed electricity generating equipment.

The concept, at first glance, is allowing big brother into our homes without our permission. And this freaks out a lot of civil libertarians. The really ‘out-there’ types would be convinced there is a listening device or camera in the thermostat that authorities could use to spy on us.

In fact, radio talk shows have been flooded with indignant callers claims of violating the ‘man’s home is his castle’ dictum.

Disregarding the paranoia that this scenario brings about, the California Energy Commission, which for more than three decades has set state energy efficiency standards for home appliances, like water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators, proposed that utilities can adjust customers’ preset temperatures though the use of radio-controlled thermostats when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities’ suggested temperatures, but in emergencies, the utilities could override customers’ wishes.

They are attempting to control electrical demand at the source. This is something I can see as necessary because there is no way customers will cut back voluntarily. It just has never happened and we all pay for it by doing without power for however long it takes to get the power back on. So, on the one hand, it is a very worthwhile endeavor aimed at keeping power flowing for all of us all of the time. On the other hand, we are giving up some control over our comfort zone.

Personally, I think this is a small price to pay to ensure traffic lights remain working, hospitals maintain constant power, and 911 systems are not interrupted.

These people who are thinking only of their own paranoiac fears need to lighten up and think about the big picture and realize that this could just save themselves trouble and inconvenience.

Body heat to charge cell phones?

Now this is something I can get into. How many of us carry our cell phones in our pockets instead of those pretentious little ‘holsters’?

Berkeley Labs is researching the ability to convert our body heat into electricity, via silicon nanowire-based converters. The new found electricity could power personal electronics, such as your cell phone or iPod.

The research has been published in Nature magazine.

While the research has not been perfected, scientists believe the potential application of this technology include Department of Energy’s hydrogen fuel cell-powered “Freedom CAR,” and personal power-jackets that could use body heat to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices.

This process could be used to siphon electrical power from just about any situation in which heat is being given off. Thermoelectric generators have already been used to convert body heat to power wrist watches.

Conversion modules could be used to convert the heat from automotive exhaust into supplemental power to recharge its battery system or its radio, air conditioner and power windows.

Researchers also believe that thermoelectric modules could eventually be used in co-generating power with gas or steam turbines.