Hasta La Gadget!

Tesla, schmesla. This, friends, is the electric vehicle that your garage has been waiting for. Designed by North Carolina’s own Li-ion Motors, the downright stunning INIZIO is being hailed as the world’s first all American-made electric supercar, and while the Roadster is definitely peppy, it ain’t got nothing on this. Using the company’s own lithium-ion battery technology and management system, the car can purportedly cruise for up to 250 miles on electricity alone, and it can hit a top speed of 170 miles per hour without breaking a sweat. Naturally, you won’t (legally) fit more than two humans into this thing at once, but those two individuals will enjoy adjustable, leather / suede Recaro seating with heating and cooling features, an inbuilt 12-inch subwoofer, digital surround sound system, integrated navigation system, DVD player and rotational doors that raise on a 90-degree angle. Oh, and they’ll probably drool a little after racing from zero to sixty in 3.4 face-numbing seconds. The company also adds that it emits no carbon emissions, can be recharged over 2,500 times and can go from drained to rejuvenated after just eight hours on the plug. It’s expected to launch in mid-2011 with a starting price of $139,000, or just a few pennies more than the current value of the wretched Carolina Panthers franchise.

Update: Just a heads-up before you throw down for a pre-order… you may not actually ever get your vehicle. Just another one to the list, really.

Continue reading Li-ion Motors INIZIO: all-electric supercar hitting 170 mph next year, all yours for $139k

Li-ion Motors INIZIO: all-electric supercar hitting 170 mph next year, all yours for $139k originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We hate to point out the obvious, but it’s about time you threw procrastination in the nearest dumpster and started thinking about your holiday shopping duties. For the budding guitarist in everyone’s life (admit it, there’s always one), Tascam has a cutesy new guitar tuner that’s both a) affordable and b) Stocking Stuffer-approved at just 3.77- x 0.71- x 1.57-inches. The TC-1S claims to be the world’s first solar-powered tuner, complete with a rugged silicon wrap, a USB port for cloudy days and shadowy clubs, a sweet carrying clip, integrated microphone and a quarter-inch input for guitar and bass tuning. It can even be calibrated to an external source, and it’ll be available in a half-dozen hues (black, pink, orange, green, blue, white) later this month.

Continue reading Tascam’s TC-1S guitar tuner is solar powered, super tiny

Tascam’s TC-1S guitar tuner is solar powered, super tiny originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ask anyone, and they’ll say the kids today think wristwatches are a thing of the past: smartphones are so much more “now.” WEWOOD’s wooden watches forego touchscreens and brushed aluminum to embrace old-school craftsmanship and style.

Each watch costs about $120, and is made from Ebony, Maple, Guaiaco, or Red Wing Celtis woods. The Italian watchmaker’s design philosophy is “eco-luxury”: no artificial or toxic materials, use of waste and reclaimed woods whenever possible, and every watch purchased pays to plant a new tree.

But mostly, WEWOOD says wearing a wooden watch from connects you not with the present but time itself: “WEWOOD lets us rediscover nature in its beauty, its simplicity and inspired design. It reminds us of a tree’s powerful way of life; rooted, yet reaching… It respects your skin as you respect nature by choosing it. Your WEWOOD Watch breathes the same air that you breathe and may awaken memories from another time and place.” I guess that justifies using an all-wooden band, which otherwise seems like it could be totally obnoxious.

These watches (particularly the ones with the digital faces) remind me of the Futurama episode “Obsoletely Fabulous,” where the robot Bender rebels against technology and replaces his metal body with a wooden one.

You couldn’t really call these watches retro, because even a century ago, we didn’t usually make watches using so much wood. Maybe you could borrow an analogy from grandfather clocks and call them “grandfather watches.” Or even (sigh) “steampunk watches.”

Image via WEWOOD.

WeWood: Watches crafted from reclaimed planks [Cool Hunting]

See Also:

• 'Steampunk' Designs That Actually Do Real Work
• Nerdcore Meets Steampunk in The John Henry Complex
• Why Wristwatches Are Still Worth Watching
• How to Turn the iPod Nano Into a Wristwatch
• MakerBot fabbed open-source wristwatch

Christopher Bielawski, a brilliant mind working at the University of Texas at Austin, had this to say about his newest discovery: “I would love it if my iPhone was thinner and lighter, and the battery lasted a month or even a week instead of a day; with an organic battery, it may be possible.” Anyone that has ever owned an iPhone (or a smartphone or any sort, really) can grok just how bold those words are, but according to Mr. Bielawski, “we’re now starting to get a handle on the fundamental chemistry needed to make this dream a commercial reality.” At the center of this potential revolution is a newfangled organic battery recently detailed in the journal Science, but just as important is the artificial photosynthesis that the research also touches on. Bielawski and colleague Jonathan Sessler have seemingly figured out how to create an electron transfer process that can proceed in the opposite direction, with this forward and backward switching of electron flow opening up new avenues for the historically stagnant battery innovation market. Granted, these guys have yet to demonstrate that the process can occur in a condensed phase, so actual commercialization is probably a century millennium or two out, but hey — at least our list of “awesome thing that’ll probably never happen” has grown by one.

UTexas researchers develop organic battery, aim for week-long use in smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Solar farms are swell and all, but they aren’t exactly fit for laboratories or studio apartments. Thanks to new discoveries by gurus at the University of Birmingham, though, we could be on our way to a far more diminutive method of creating clean energy. As the story goes, we could soon be using microbes to transform wastes in metals into energy. The team managed to pinpoint Hydrogenase enzymes and BioPd in their research, which they believe can be used as catalysts for the treatment of persistent pollutants. The overriding goal, however, is to “develop a one-step technology that allows for the conversion of metallic wastes into high value catalysts for green chemistry and clean energy generation,” but it’s difficult to say at this point how close they are to realizing it. The best news? This is bound to start a new rash of Cash 4 Gold commercials.

Scientists using metallic wastes to generate clean energy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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