Hasta La Gadget!

This certainly isn’t the first electric car rally that has occurred, but the BC2BC-2013 Rally, which took place last week, gave electric cars the opportunity to strut their stuff. Not surprisingly, the Tesla Model S dominated throughout the race, as did the Tesla Roadster, with four Tesla cars finishing in the top 5.

The race consisted of four segments and a number of checkpoints, and each segment was timed, so the overall winner was the driver who had the fastest combined time of the four segments. There were also pauses between each segment that allowed the slower cars to catch up in order to all start together again in the next segment.

In total, eight electric cars and one electric motorcycle took part in the challenge and traveled from British Columbia in Canada, to Baja, California. The event included a Tesla Roadster, a Zero S electric motorcycle, Toyota RAV4 EV, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, two Nissan Leafs, and three Tesla Model S cars.

Tesla ended up dominating the competition, mostly thanks to the Model S’s and Roadster’s long range and fast-charging batteries. The Model S can recharge in about an hour using Tesla’s proprietary Supercharging stations. As for the Nissan Leafs, they performed well, but slow charging was the bane of their existence during the race.

While all but one of the cars successfully arrived at the finish line, the journey revealed major weaknesses in the infrastructure of electric vehicle charging. Despite promises that California would be part of the West Coast Electric Highway, the CHADEMO chargers used to charge Nissan Leafs stop at the Oregon border, which resulted in one of the Leaf drivers to get stuck in California for 15 hours charging at 120 volts.

VIA: PluginCars

Tesla Motors destroys competition in 1,500-mile race is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Fresh water is the most precious resource on Earth, and it’s becoming increasingly scarce — but a new invention could make desalination an affordable, cost-effective technology. A team of scientists from Germany and the US has developed a “water chip” that uses an electrical field to separate salt from seawater. That isn’t the only new innovation that has the potential to change the world. This week Inhabitat took a look at the Horizon mass transit system, a futuristic hybrid train-plane propelled by a maglev-style mechanism. The UK celebrated the launch of the world’s largest offshore wind farm, and Apple announced plans to build a 18-20 MW solar plant to power its data center in Reno, Nev. A 15-year-old from Canada created a flashlight that is powered entirely by body heat from a human hand. And in one of the week’s most uplifting stories, an amputee built herself a prosthetic leg out of Legos (it might not be very practical, but it sure is cool).

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Electric vehicles are becoming all the rage these days, and Ford is looking to make a dent in the market with their own offerings. They have a small variety of hybrid vehicles, but I ended up checking out the 2013 Fusion Energi and giving it a brief test ride around one of Ford’s test tracks at their headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the big features that the company is touting is the inclusion of gamification, which aims to encourage drivers to drive more efficiently on the road by providing a drive score.

This was my first time behind the wheel of any kind of electric vehicle, so I was a bit nervous at the start, which is odd since there was nothing to really be nervous about. It mostly came down to the fact that I wasn’t sure what to expect out of an electric vehicle, but I came to find out the car handled almost exactly like a normal car does.

However, one of the most obvious differences is that the Fusion Energi can run off of a battery, so when you start the car up, there’s no cranking of the engine or the all-too-familar whirring noise of an idling vehicle. Instead, when you start it up, you’re treated with absolute silence, making you wonder if the car even turned on. Indeed, it did, and off I went.

Handling of the Fusion Energi wasn’t all too different from a traditional gas-guzzling vehicle, although the brakes were extremely touchy – something that I find to be the case for a lot of newer cars, especially from Ford. In this case, it’s partially down to the regenerative braking in the Fusion Energi, meaning that the kinectic energy caused by braking is converted and used to power other portions of the vehicle.

As for acceleration, it was pretty superb, and the lightest touch of the gas pedal sprung me forward a few miles-per-hour for every time I applied more pressure to the gas pedal. I didn’t get it up quite to highway speeds during my drive, but I felt that the Fusion Energi would be more than a good option for daily commutes at the least.

On the inside, you have a comfy interior, and the center console includes your usual set of controls, and the touch screen up top allows you to adjust a number of settings with the tap of a finger, as well as get turn-by-turn directions and all sorts of media options. The instrument panel also includes some digital displays as well, with one that shows you how much battery you have left, as well as your mileage.

This display also gives you your drive score and brake score during your drive. You have a brake score that gives you a score out of 100% that’s based on how efficient your braking was. For instance, taking your foot off the gas, coasting, and then slowly applying the brake until you come to a gentle stop will most likely score you in the high 90% range, while stopping suddenly and creating a whiplash effect will give you a very low brake score.

The drive score is an overall score based on your driving habits. It accounts for braking, acceleration, top speed, and even interior features that use up energy, such as the air conditioning. Drivers are more likely to earn a high score for accelerating and braking gently, as well as keeping their top speed at the speed limit. However, the overall drive score is much harder than getting a good brake score. I was able to earn the best brake score out of all the other test drivers that day, but I found that getting a good overall drive score was a lot harder than I anticipated.

Essentially, Ford is encouraging drivers to drive more efficiently on the road using this clever gamification system. It’s proven that human beings love statistics and having the best score, whether that’d be through video games are other forms of activities. Adding a video game-like experience to everyday tasks makes them not only more enjoyable and engaging, but it can also make you better at these activities by attempting to do the best job you can in order to score points and level up, so to speak.

Ford says that their new Fusion Energi can go up to 620 miles on a full charge and on a full tank of gas, with a rated fuel mileage of 100 MPGe. The price is where reality sinks in, however. The Fusion Energi starts just short of $39,000, but it’s on par with its competition, with the Chevy Volt also priced in the $39,000 range. Then again, the only question you need to ask yourself is if the higher cost is worth the investment, seeing as you won’t need to fill up the gas tank as often.

2013 Ford Fusion Energi test drive: Ford does gamification is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Uranium-235 and -238 we use in modern nuclear fission reactors are humanity’s single most energy-dense fuel source (1,546,000,000 MJ/L), but that potent power potential comes at a steep price—and not just during natural disasters. Its radioactive plutonium byproducts remain lethally irradiated for millennia. That’s why one pioneering Nordic company is developing an alternative fuel that doesn’t produce it.

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Apple wants to build a solar array to power their data center.

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