Capstone’s CMT-380 has proven that turbines, batteries and an unconditional love for Ma Earth actually can get along within the confines of an automobile, and now it looks as if the same type of technology will be touching a lot more lives in and around New York City. DesignLine, a New Zealand-based company with an “experimental turbine hybrid” of the same name, is currently being used in three buses in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and unlike petrol-powered alternatives, these are said to be as “quiet as a tomb.” They’re also environmentally friendly, omitting internal combustion altogether and relying on spinning turbines to recharge a Li-ion battery that powers the wheels. If the trial goes over well, 87 more of the $559,000 buses could be ushered into operation, and you’ll know one’s coming due to the shocking absence of creaking, sputtering and black haze rounding the bend to your stop.
The 12 Lunar Modules that went to the moon cost a total of $2 billion, or almost $17 million apiece. This full-sized replica, from Space Toys, cost just $90,000, making it a bargain.
We imagine that the manufacturing tolerances are less important if you don’t have to actually get the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) to the Moon, but the custom builds are promised to be authentic and can be customized “match a specific lunar lander Apollo Mission”, all of which were different.
Upgrades cost extra, but given that the computers in these landers were outclassed by the average cellphone, just throwing in a PS3 is a significant upgrade. It would also make this the ultimate nerd’s gaming den.
The National Geographic’s Ultimate Factories series keeps on giving. The videos show us the inside workings of factories around the world, and the results are both bite-sized and fascinating. This week, we see how New York’s subway cars are put together. Did you know that the bodies are welded by hand in Lapa, Brazil? Or that the roofs are formed much like those of a warehouse or even a garden shed, with beams that support the corrugated panels? Or that the front face of the car is called the “bonnet”, which is the British name for the hood of an automobile? Me neither.
After the car is finished (but still unfurnished) it gets even better. The car is tested for leaks in an artificial thunder storm, and finally the shell is, amazingly, shrink-wrapped for shipment. Time from steel to shipping? Two months.
We love Damjan Stanković’s tweaked stop-light design, which brings a little bit of Disney to traffic control. The lamp has a countdown timer which ticks away by blipping out a ring of 32 segments around the edge of the light. This expectation management is exactly what you’ll see at a theme-park ride — signs to tell you how long you have left to wait on line, for example.
Stanković’s concept design works in so many ways, aside from just pacifying waiting drivers. It tells cyclists that the light is in fact still working, and that the metal-detecting sensor which turns it green hasn’t missed their little bike, for example. It also acts as a warning for pedestrians who insist on crossing as their own green man starts to blink.
The single problem we see, though, is that it could also act as a dragster-style countdown for motorbikes that like to race off the lights. Here in Barcelona, moto riders watch the lights on the crossroad – or even the pedestrian lights – and take off when those start to flash, even when their own light is still red. As even the cops do this, and don’t seem to care that everyone else does the same, this countdown stop-light might just make things even more dangerous for pedestrians.
The Chevy Volt is one vehicle we can really get behind. It’s hard not to be a little excited over it — we have, after all, been watching its development for quite a long time now. The electric car gets an impressive 230 miles per gallon in the city (and, all shaky rating practices aside, that’s nothing to scoff at). Autoblog Green‘s just taken one of Chevy’s 80 IVER pre-production prototypes for a little spin, and they seem to have come away pretty impressed with the car. They report that the brakes are better than most hybrid vehicles, and said that when the engine does kick in after the battery’s depleted, they didn’t even notice it until they stopped and heard it running quietly. It was a short spin, so they weren’t able to gauge, for instance, whether the car can actually pull the full 40 miles per battery charge that Chevrolet claims it gets, but check out their full, detailed observations at the Source link.
What do you get when you throw cellular and GPS radios in with an accelerometer, a thermometer and a light sensor? If you answered a decently featured phone, you’d be almost right. FedEx has concocted the above tracker to be able to tell you everything about the package it’s in — if it has been opened, dropped, outside of temperature range, or insufficiently loved by its deliverator. The GPS and cellular signals are used to provide a real time position, and all that data is fed through a web platform for the increasingly obsessive sender to monitor. It is now being deployed with 50 medical clients — who actually have a use for all the intel — and once production ramps up and economies of scale kick in, the opening price of $120 a month is expected to drop rapidly. You can expect the Senseaware tracker to show up worldwide some time next year.
The Dutchess, from magnificently-named designer Wytze van Mansum, is the best concept bike we have seen in a long time. It is both practical, innovative and, even better, exists in the real world as a proper working machine.
Designed for Cannondale, the Dutchess is a woman’s bike based on the heavy old Dutch bikes popular in Europe (hence the punnish, creatively misspelled name). At fist glance you actually see nothing more than a streamlined, duck-egg blue version of the these omafiets (granny-bikes). But take another glance at the hubs, bottom-bracket, handlebars and even the rear fender and it starts to reveal itself as a rather futuristic machine.
First, the frame itself. The whole bike weighs in at just 14 Kg (31 pounds) and is based around the swooping bar that runs from the handlebar all the way to the back. On top of that is the tubular fender, which is structural and can support up to 50 Kg, or 110 pounds. Inside these hollow tubes are contained the brake lines (they are hydraulic) and cabling for the lights (they’re built-in and powered by the hubs).
Speaking of the hubs, these are innovative in themselves. The rims are laced to a generic hub into which can be slotted various cassettes. This means that both front and back wheels are identical, only the rear has the drive system and brake, and the front a generator and a brake. This would make repairs easier as you don’t have to rebuild the whole wheel just to change hubs. Wytze is realistic, though. Speaking to the excellent Bicycle Design blog, he says that “This is dreaming: [the hub] is a better standard then the current solution, but it will never happen.”
Another thing that may never happen is the crank, which as you can see does not use a chain. The actual drive train has not been revealed by Wytze, although it may have something in common with another design he came up with for a folding bike, which uses a cord and a cone-shaped freewheel to transfer power. In the accompanying video (below) it seems to work fine, and Wytze told Bicycle Design that the efficiency is a resectable 96%, compared to a chain’s 98%.
Up at the front, those handlebars can be left where they are or, with the flick of a locking lever, swept forwards or backwards for a more sporty or more comfortable position. A side-effect is that if the bars are pushed right back, the ends touch. As they can be locked in place, this forms a low-security lock that could be looped around a post.
When the handlebars are locked like this, the brakes are also secured (pressure is kept on the hydraulic fluid) for added security.
There is more. The gap between the rear fender and what would be the chain-stay on any other bike is covered with a skirt (or overcoat) guard, and everything is designed to be maintenance-free: the original sketches even put airless tires on there for puncture-free riding. The rear fender has a pull-out extension for really rainy days and the design (but not the prototype, which took five months to build) has a front basket and a kick-stand.
This is a very nice update to the Dutch bike. Even without all the smart extra features the weight advantage alone is worth it (and means you can carry it upstairs to your apartment to sleep). For more, check out the interview with Wytze over at Bicycle Design, and view some more (hot) product shots at his Flickr page.
We’ve ridden our fair share of electric bikes and motorcycles, but we’ve yet to get our hands on one that’s been hand assembled in Berlin/Biesenthal. Grace boasts a water-tight / ultra-light CNC-Aluminum frame, a 1300-watt motor, lithium-ion batteries, a 40 30 MPH speed, a range of up to 31 miles, and a one-hour recharge time. Looks good enough for a Kraftwerk video, although you’d better steer clear of the Autobahn with this thing. The bike starts shipping in January for €5,877 ($8,760-ish).Video after the break.
This is the Pardo, a concept human powered vehicle. Kind of cool looking, right? Like a big pedal-powered go-kart. Now take a look at this picture:
Less cool, and much more scary. The Pardo (short for guepardo, Spanish for cheetah) splays the rider out prone on its plywood surface where he can cling to the small handle and start to pray for survival. Those pedals at the back are used in concert, you pump them together like a frog pumping his legs to jump, and this sends you flying forwards, face-first into oblivion. As for steering, a good deal of luck (and perhaps leaning) appears to be involved. The body of the cheetah folds in two, so it can be safely tucked in the basement when you are done terrifying yourself.
Not content with cool-looking renders of his design, Argentinian Pablo Lopez actually built a working prototype. It actually looks like a lot of fun, and it’s certainly a great antidote to beardo-recumbents. As you may have guessed, this is unavailable to buy, but it seems that money-making isn’t Lopez’ aim. “My main goal is transmitting and creating sensations”, he says.
It always seemed to us that plugging in your iPod with a cable (or worse yet, an FM tuner or cassette adapter) was an inelegant solution to listening to your Namesakes Series MP3 audiobooks on the road (the shorter works of Washington Irving as read by Dr. J, for example). Lucky for us, the motor heads from Dual Electronics have devised the XML8110. This 200 watt AM/FM docking station sits in your dash under the guise of a mild-mannered car stereo, featuring a solid state “mechless” design, optional steering control input, remote control, Bluetooth for hands-free operation with caller ID, and more. Coming soon for a reported $99, with an iPhone app in the works. Now all you need is some wheels! get a closer look after the break.
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Capstone’s CMT-380 has proven that turbines, batteries and an unconditional love for Ma Earth actually can get along within the confines of an automobile, and now it looks as if the same type of technology will be touching a lot more lives in and around New York City. DesignLine, a New Zealand-based company with an “experimental turbine hybrid” of the same name, is currently being used in three buses in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and unlike petrol-powered alternatives, these are said to be as “quiet as a tomb.” They’re also environmentally friendly, omitting internal combustion altogether and relying on spinning turbines to recharge a Li-ion battery that powers the wheels. If the trial goes over well, 87 more of the $559,000 buses could be ushered into operation, and you’ll know one’s coming due to the shocking absence of creaking, sputtering and black haze rounding the bend to your stop.
