Hasta La Gadget!

This summer has been one of the harshest in recent memory in the US, with record heat waves and more than half of the country experiencing the worst drought conditions in more than 50 years. And in an even more troubling development, an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan broke away from Greenland this week. The need to develop clean alternatives to fossil fuels and water-saving technologies is more urgent than ever, but we’re making progress in several key areas. In California, scientists fired 192 lasers onto a single point, producing an amazing 500 trillion watts of energy and bringing them one step closer to starting a nuclear fusion reaction that would produce an unlimited supply of clean energy. In another promising development, a teenager in Egypt figured out a way to turn the country’s plastic waste into $78 million worth of fuel.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: liter of light project, space tourism and a ‘Hyperloop’ train

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation, Science

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: liter of light project, space tourism and a ‘Hyperloop’ train originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hopefully, you haven’t paired up your Nissan Leaf with a GE WattStation for charging; if you have, you might want to power up with Ye Olde Wall Outlet for a short while. GE has confirmed to the New York Times that some Leaf drivers have encountered “problems” after charging up their EVs from WattStations. What problems? GE isn’t going into detail, but a Nissan regional manager claims that the the charging systems of 11 Leafs have been damaged after plugging into a WattStation. Whether or not there’s a crisis or a coincidence is still up in the air at this stage. Nissan isn’t issuing any warnings or recalls, and GE will only say that it’s “actively working” with the automaker to find the root cause. All the same, we’ll be cautious until the companies turn a new… you guessed it.

Update: GE reached out to us with the full statement, which you’ll find in the comments below. The company is mostly touching on what it mentioned earlier, but it’s adding that the WattStation meets the needed SAE and UL standards. Other EVs haven’t encountered problems to date.

Filed under: Transportation

Nissan Leaf, GE WattStation embroiled in charging damage shocker, invite other EV puns (update: full GE statement) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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