The French designers Lazareth has brought out the Wazuma, a quad that is powered by a 500BHP BMW V-12 supercharged engine. If you are trying to guess that this is a hybrid, no! You are absolutely wrong. There is not an inch of a lithium ion battery in this monster. So it runs on gas! Well not exactly but yes it does run on E85 bio-ethanol. Well that is good way of going green isn’t it? Coming to the price, it will only cost you around $284,000 which you can park it next to you Aston Martin. What say! A good collectible?
Obama’s administration wanted to get out the dirtiest cars off the roads in America and came up with this idea of “cash for clunkers” scheme where off the 316,189 vehicles that were traded in for the scheme 83% were SUVs and pick-up trucks. This two week old scheme which is being used to revive the auto industry has got cars worth $1,326 million as of today. Six of the top 10 trade-ins were SUVs with two mini-vans and two pick-up trucks. Amazingly there were no sedan cars yet on the list. Well this scheme is not to make America greener but to revive the auto sales. So there is basically nothing environmentally great about this scheme. It will all depend if the people who traded-in will pick another gas guzzler or an eco-friendly car.
The Cardozo family, comprising of Gilo Cardozo, 30, his brothers Cosmo, 26, and Damian, 39, along with Damian’s daughter Tilly, 17, and five other pilots set a new record with a solar powered flight. They traveled 1,242 miles from Monte Carlo to Morocco in an electric paramotor powered by the sun. The journey lasted for 15 days and took them through France and Spain and even over the shark-infested waters of the Straits of Gibraltar. The plane used electric paramotors powered by lithium polymer batteries, which were charged in rotation using 12 solar panels on top of a support vehicle.
I told you! Bikes are coming back to the present to stay and more and more ideas are sprouting every single day. For instance, here’s a new bike that will feature a computer of sorts to show how many calories you have lost, play music as well as use a solar-powered motor when you get tired! This idea is by Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman who said that the bike will be unveiled in 20 years only due to financial drawbacks. This eco-friendly concept will feature an unbreakable lock on your computer and will have spoke-less wheels to make the bike more aerodynamic.
Who ever said that electric cars will never make it big, think again. The electric car makers Tesla Motors zoomed to profits for the first time this July. These proud manufacturers of the Roadster, the electric sports car that is faster than a Porsche and boasts a range of 244 miles between charges, said that it delivered profits of $1m (£600,000) on sales of $20m last month. This is the result of the 109 Roadsters being shipped in July. The company also indicated that the profits were recorded independently of the $465m in low-interest loans that Tesla was recently awarded by the US government and has been earmarked for the development of the Model S – an electric Sedan that the firm is positioning as an affordable mainstream alternative to the Roadster.
This September, you will see another cute looking car on your streets. This cutie is from Polaris and is named as the Breeze NEV. It is an all-electric vehicle which can be used on the streets as well as the golf course. It has the capability of transporting up to 4 passengers and also light cargo. It is designed to be fun, economical and also very responsible to the environment. It has very low emissions and is well suited if you are the resident of any master planned towns.
[Travelizmo]
By the looks of it, I can surely say that electric cars are in vogue now and they are here to stay for a very long time. The futuristic vehicle Bio Top utilizes wireless electricity technology. It is not the normal electric car that is being produced by different companies. Obviously that is why it is futuristic. The car has two wheels in the front and one at the back and this one is the sphere which charges the electric car battery as it goes by. It transmits the energy from the battery to the car through that wireless electricity.
Lamborghini has finally announced that their hybrid Gallardo will enter markets by 2015. Its electric motor will be used for driving in slow, congested city traffic like how the Toyota Prius is used for. The car maker recently had cut tailpipe emissions by 18 percent through conventional refinements in the existing V10 power plant. Also the company will spend $50.3 million between now and 2015, to reduce emissions in both its vehicles and its production facilities. They had also got 17,000 solar panel arrays for their factory to reduce carbon emission by 35% by 2015.
[Treehugger]
It’s such a shame that the Middle East has such horribly extreme climates. The summers are a terror to live in and so there is no chance on earth that you could possibly ride in bicycles. But, to people living in better environments like Leonardo DiCaprio does, Dominic Hargreaves’ idea will be perfect to save fuel money and save the environment. It is a bicycle that can fold inside its own wheels and apparently is ‘perfect for commuters’. The 24-year old graduate from the Royal College of Art came up with the Contortionist – which folds smaller than its own wheels. He wanted to ‘create a folding bike where all the parts fit in between the circumference of its 26-inch wheels when it is folded up. Once folded the bike cannot fold back on itself while riding’. The bike can be taken for a walk literally by dragging it by one handlebar in a way that makes it easy to use on buses and the Tube. Also, the wheels rotate when folded up so the folded package can be wheeled along rather having to be carried.
Another student of Coventry University, studying Transport Design has presented a remarkable sports car concept. This students name is Sam Johnson and with the GT Crossover concept car, he has taken the Sport Utility Vehicle segment into a new territory. Johnson understood that most SUV’s today rarely leave the concretized roads of the city and drive on the rough terrain they are originally made for and the GT is made with this in mind. The GT Crossover is powered by electricity and each charge will cost as little as $5 per week. Even the design is unique with a tandem formation two seater on the right side of the car and the left side converted to storage, large enough to fit a pair of surfboards. This electric car uses a 190 horsepower motor. It’s a powerful electric car with a drop dead gorgeous design. Hope they start making these is bulk soon.
