Hasta La Gadget!

EA has announced that it has signed a deal with Ken Block in which he will become the Racing Advisor for the Need for Speed franchise. Block is an amazing race car driver who has participated in rally racing and won multiple X-Games medals. EA will also be sponsoring Block and his Ford Fiesta ST 2013 racing car.

The best news from this announcement isn’t that Block will be associated with Need for Speed, at least not for me. The best news is that EA will be working with Block on the release of Gymkhana Six. If you never seen a Gymkhana video and you’re a fan of cars or racing, you’re really missing out. So why not watch the last one now?..

EA says that the next installment in the Gymkhana franchise will be released in its entirety on November 11. EA promises that the new video raises the bar for what can be done behind the wheel of a car. That bar was already pretty high after Gymkhana 5, in my opinion. The next video the franchise will be available directly from the Need for Speed website and on the franchise’s YouTube channel.

Hyundai has announced another very interesting show car that will be on display at SEMA kicking off next month in Las Vegas. The car was created by Hyundai in conjunction with Fox Marketing Cars and is claimed to be the most powerful street-focused Veloster Turbo ever built. The vehicle features a huge number of upgraded […]

Train enthusiasts who want something larger than a Lionel train set, but not so large that you have to buy real estate to lay down your track may want to consider this awesome ridable train set. With this cool toy, you can go for a ride anytime you want and even make some money on the side offering kids some awesome choo-choo rides. It should pay for its $23,000 tab in no time.

This train is based on the classic narrow-gauge 2-6-0 Baldwin Mogul from the late 19th century and is powered by four 250-watt, 24-volt DC motors. That will give you enough power to generate enough power to haul up to 1,600 lbs. at a 3% grade.

As for the actual railroad, you get 228′ of 7 1/2″-gauge track, enough to create a 60′ x 80′ oval. It even has an integrated 50-watt sound system for realistic train sounds. All aboard!

[via Gizmodo]

One of the biggest challenges in rolling out a electric vehicle charging system in cities around the world is where to place the chargers and how to wire them into the electric grid. Some interesting wireless electric charging devices are expected to land in New York City in early 2014 from a company called Hevo Power. The coolest part about these wireless charging systems isn’t the fact that they don’t need wires, but rather that they hide in plain sight looking like manhole covers.

Hevo CEO and Founder Jeremy McCool says that the idea to hide his wireless EV charges as manhole covers came to him while walking down the streets of NYC. He said:

I was walking down the street, pondering how wireless charging could be deployed. I was standing at 116th and Broadway, and I was looking down and saw a manhole cover. And thought, that’s the ticket. There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover.

That realization is where the idea of the company’s wireless charging systems came from. Hevo plans to roll out the charging systems in Washington Square Park in early 2014. The initial wireless chargers will be usable by a pair of Smart ForTwo EVs operated by NYU. The wireless charging technology from Hevo uses resonance charging rather than inductive charging used by other EV charging systems.

Hevo Power says that inductive charging is inefficient, but it’s resonance system uses coils in the vehicle and the charging plate connected with capacitors that resonate a specific frequency. That resonance technology minimizes energy losses, and allows energy to transfer at a faster rate and across a wider gap. The Hevo wireless charging system has three components including the power station that can be bolted to the street or embedded in the pavement. The receiver has to be connected to the EV battery system and a smartphone app is used to help drivers line the vehicle up on the charger to start charging.

Hevo’s current system is classified as a Level 2 charging station providing 220 V and up to 10 kW of energy. The system can produce more than 10 kW of energy depending on the application. Hevo is talking with major companies that operate large vehicle fleets including Pepsi, Walgreens, and City Harvest to potentially use the system for larger fleets of electric vehicles.

[via Wired]

The land speed record for females has stood for 48 years since it was set in 1965 by a woman named Lee Breedlove. The record was set on the Utah Salt Lake Flats with an average speed of 308.51 mph over a total of four runs. That record fell recently with Jessi Combs setting an […]