Hasta La Gadget!

Want to show that electric cars can be practical in day-to-day living? Take one on an impossibly long trip and show the world. That’s the plan for the Racing Green Endurance team, centered at Imperial College London, which will be taking its SRZero electric car along 26,000km (16,000 miles) of the Pan-American Highway, starting in northern Alaska and driving all the way down to Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America. Their car is a repurposed Radical SR8, once a back-breakingly quick two-seat prototype with a curb weight of just 1,433lbs and a rollicking 363 V8 in the back. That lump has been displaced by a pair of Axial Flux electric motors, producing a combined peak of 386hp, though their batteries conspire to nearly double the car’s initial weight to 2,600lbs. Still, a 248 mile range is predicted on the EPA cycle, and since you can eke out 300 in a Tesla Roadster (224 mile EPA-rated range), 350 might just be possible here. We’ll find out in July, when the trip begins. Early video after the break, filmed by Claudio von Planta of Long Way Round fame, and we threw in footage of the SR8 setting the Nurburgring production car record just for kicks.

Continue reading Racing Green Endurance SRZero electric car to make 16,000 mile trip, 250 at a time

Racing Green Endurance SRZero electric car to make 16,000 mile trip, 250 at a time originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS didn’t make much of a fuss over it, but its ASUS-branded App Store for netbooks did launch today. Not much to get excited about unless you’re already pumped by Intel’s AppUp store at the heart of ASUS’ offering. The best part might be the announced MeeGo support, whenever the Intel / Nokia OS mashup is ready. Just what the world needs: an EeeMee, right Mr. Anderson?

ASUS launches netbook App Store eying a MeeGo future originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Speaking of revolution in Taiwan is always risky, but Nvidia
CEO Jen-Hsun
Huang didn’t mince words: “This is the beginning of the 3D revolution.”

Huang spoke at its 3D Experience Center, a few blocks away from
the Computex Taiwan World Trade Center Hall, where he had gathered a few
hundred tech reporters and graphics groupies. Indeed, although, Huang spoke for
a bit about Nvidia’s Optimus and DX11 support, most of his enthusiasm was
reserved for Nvidia’s 3D Vision.

“There is no reason to buy another PC unless it has 3D in
it,” explained Huang. To make it easier to tell if a PC is 3D capable, Nvidia
offers a simple formula, which, of course, puts Nvidia front and center. The
company calls a 3D PC any desktop or notebook that:

• Includes a pair of active shutter glasses
• Has a 120Hz 3D capable display
• Includes a discrete graphics processor that can render high
  definition 3D imagery.

Take a look at our ever-growing slideshow
of Computex 2010 at PCMag.com.

Chinese website Zol — which is owned by CBS Interactive — is reporting that Apple may be moving toward a model of paying Foxconn employees direct subsidies, in the form of small percentages of the profits from whatever product line they work on. It’s also interesting to note that the report claims that Apple has looked into the situation, and found that the general unhappiness of the workers and the recent spate of suicides could be attributed to low wages. The report says that Apple — which apparently pays Foxconn 2.3 percent of the final retail price for a given product — will pay an additional amount directly to the workers, which would give a significant boost to the roughly $132 they’re currently pulling in per month. The actual payout numbers we’re hearing — around 1 to 2 percent of a retail price of the products manufactured — don’t exactly make sense so we’re hoping to get clarification as to the breakdown if the rumor turns out to be true. The report also states that the iPad production line will be the first to benefit from the scheme. We have asked Apple for comment and will update if and when we hear back.

Apple rumored to begin paying Foxconn employees direct wages originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 12:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You one of those unlucky folks who found out about the iPad’s dislike of low-powered USB ports on standard PCs after you’d already pulled the trigger? Well, you can stop crying yourself to sleep nights and finally do something about it: Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS have all come out with software that hops up their respective, fairly interchangeable motherboards and delivers extra juice to an iPad-plugged USB port. Of course, they built these softwares for their own hardware, but there’s a video after the break of a reckless user putting the ASUS software to work on a myriad of non-ASUS (mostly Sony) machines. Your mileage may vary, but if you wanna play it safe we’d say look into who built your motherboard before installing: we’re not scientists, but we hear extra electricity “does stuff.”

[Thanks, Jeff F.]

Continue reading Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI deliver driver software to allow iPad charging from the PC

Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI deliver driver software to allow iPad charging from the PC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 11:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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