Hasta La Gadget!

BMW Motorrad, the German-automaker’s division for motorcycles, has revealed its latest creation – the C evolution electric scooter. The BMW C evolution is a spin-off from the company’s E-scooter concept scooter presented at the BMW Motorrad Innovation Day 2011 and the BMW Concept e scooter. BMW says that its C evolution has a range of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) on a single charge, with a top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph).

Even better is its capability to fully recharge its battery in three hours using an integrated charging device via a charging station or a regular socket. With its 11 kW continuous output and 35 kW peak output, the C evolution offers a powerful and speedy experience. It also features a high-performance brake system with ABS to ensure maximum safety while on the road. BMW is currently testing a prototype version of the C evolution electric scooter in London, and the company expects to have one up and running anytime soon.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: BMW electric Mini E scooter has smartphone owners in mind, BMW will be the first to feature Nuance’s Dragon Drive! Messaging technology,

ARM isn’t content with dominating the mobile space. It’s been by the far the most vocal about an Internet of Things where everything is connected — and to make that happen, it just established an industry forum in the UK that it hopes will establish common ground for all those internet-linked light bulbs, refrigerators and thermostats. Home energy firm Alertme, cloud-aware sensing outfit AquaMW, lighting maker EnLight and white space wireless guru Neul will start meeting with ARM from August 24th onwards to hash out our automated, eco-friendly future. There’s a certain urgency in this for the chip designer: it expects 50 billion devices on the grid by 2020. With IDC estimating a billion new connected devices just in 2011, the clock on that connected device transition is ticking very loudly.

Continue reading ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020

Filed under: Household, Internet

ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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4,000 miles later, the odyssey of solar-powered Solar Impulse is finally over as it returned home to where the adventure began – right in neutral Switzerland. This is an epic journey for the record, where it is the first of its kind to complete a solar-powered intercontinental round-trip air journey. Making its way between Europe and Africa, the Solar Impulse experimental solar airplane finally touched down in Payerne, Switzerland at 8:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. ET) earlier this morning.

The entire odyssey took two months to complete – on May 24th to be exact. The whole idea of this particular exercise is not to figure out just how fast this plane is able to fly through the cross-continental trip and back again, but rather, to assess the endurance and reliability of its engineering as a whole. Not only that, I am quite sure that this particular project has done its bit to raise public awareness concerning energy issues.

The total flight time for Tuesday’s 382-mile (615-kilometer) trip from Toulouse, France, to Payerne clocked up 13 hours and 29 minutes, sporting an average air speed of 28 mph (46 kilometers per hour).

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Solar Impulse successfully lands in Europe after flight from Morocco , Solar Impulse heads for Ouarzazate in Morocco,

No thanks to Microsoft, the word “Windows” tend to invoke one of two things – a computer’s operating system, or the literal meaning of that transparent glass which you see occupy buildings and homes. Well, here is a way to have windows power your Windows, thanks to a group of researchers over at UCLA who have managed to come up with a mostly-transparent “high-performance solar cell. This will definitely pave the way for future architects to incorporate skylights in a building that is capable of generating electricity throughout the day – as long as there is adequate sunlight, of course.

This “high-performance solar cell” that is mostly transparent, and will come with a 4% efficiency rating, which does sound relative low at first, but it is enough to place it within commercially-viable efficiency levels. The panels will be able to absorb solar energy that are within the near-infrared spectrum, and yet allowing up to 66% of the light in the visible wavelengths used by humans to see to pass through so that you won’t end up in a completely dark room. Hopefully future iterations will be able to see the efficiency level increase to an even greater level.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Japanese village relies on solar power to get their juice on, Bsolar develops double-sided solar panels, boosts energy yield by nearly 50%,

If the research being conducted by folks at UCLA continues, we may some day see buildings that are able to provide what would look like invisible electricity to the naked eye. The university has developed a transparent solar cell that could potentially allow electricity to come from windows that still allow people to see outside.

The polymer solar cell absorbs infrared light instead of visible light, which allows the cells themselves to be about 70% transparent. If you’ve ever seen a traditional solar cell, you know that “transparent” isn’t exactly the first word you’d use to describe them. Previous attempts to create similar products have usually resulted in either really expensive solutions or ones that deliver a meager amount of energy.

“These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,” said UCLA professor and study leader Yang Yang. It’s an interesting first step at what could be a new path of innovation in electricity.

[via UCLA]

UCLA scientists working on energy-generating windows is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
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