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Tesla's new Roadster will appear on 'Jay Leno's Garage' August 23rd
Tesla's new Roadster has been virtually impossible to see outside of its original launch event unless you've been fortunate enough to spot a prototype in the wild. You're about to get a better peek, though. CNBC is teasing a close look at the electric supercar with the August 23rd episode of Jay Leno's Garage, with Jay Leno talking to Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen about the upcoming machine. There's no guarantee you'll receive any profound insights from the TV segment (and its likely YouTube follow-up), but it's a rare chance to see the Roadster in action before its 2020 launch.
Mission Electric's record-setting motorcycle is dead
Electric motorcycle enthusiasts have been waiting a long time for the Mission RS, and that wait is finally over. Just not in a satisfying way. Mission Electric has announced it has filed for bankruptcy, effectively killing an impressive all-electric super-bike that its been teasing since 2010. The RS set records at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, helped the company secure a spot on the team behind Harley Davidson's Project LiveWire and even caught the attention of Jay Leno -- but none of that brought in the revenue Mission Electric needed to survive. "I have struggled to rescue the business to find a buyer for the assets," co-founder Mark Seeger said during recent court proceedings. "To date, we have not earned any cash / revenue of any kind."
Jaguar will actually build million-dollar C-X75 hybrid supercar in 2013
You know how we said that 780bhp electric pipe dream Jaguar had last year wasn't going to be anything more than a concept? Well, we were wrong. Sort of. You see, the British automaker has just announced its intention to produce a limited run of 250 C-X75 supercars in partnership with Formula 1 team Williams, however the retail model will eschew the craziest aspect of the original design -- the twin turbine engines at the back. Those will be replaced with a four-cylinder, turbocharged petrol engine, which will aid the four electric motors (one attached to each wheel). Don't worry, though, this tweak has actually made the C-X75 accelerate even faster, as it's now rated to go from 0 to 60mph in under three seconds. 2013 is when the earliest production of this road-faring beast is expected to commence, with prices starting at £700,000 ($1.15 million), and there's even a glimmer of hope that a version with the gas turbines will also be built at some point down the line. Crazy, just crazy. Check the C-X75 out on video after the break, where Jay Leno gives you a tour around its dramatic design.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Honeycomb skyscrapers, solar funnels, and the Karma PHEV supercar
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. High tech architecture took the spotlight this week as Aedas unveiled a set of photovoltaic crystalline honeycomb skyscrapers for Abu Dhabi and San Francisco unfurled plans for a sail-shaped solar stadium for the America's Cup yacht race. We also took an exclusive look inside a high-tech solar home that actually produces more energy than it consumes, and spotted a new technology that can transform any home's electrical wiring into an information-transmitting antenna. We also showcased some of the world's most efficient vehicles as the winners of the $10 million Automotive X-Prize were announced, and we were excited to hear that the first factory-built Fisker Karma supercar will be rolling up to the Paris Auto Show next month. Finally, we peek inside Jay Leno's envy-inducing green garage in this week's episode of Green Overdrive. In other news, MIT made waves on the renewable energy front as they revealed a new "solar funnel" technology that could increase the efficiency of photovoltaic cells 100 times. We also took a first look at Eddy GT's new streamlined city-friendly wind turbine, and we saw Tesla batteries jump-start residential solar systems by storing excess energy.
BlackTrail BT-01 is the $80,000 electric bicycle of your dreams (video)
When Germany's PG-Bikes sets out to build a cruiser, it doesn't mess around -- the contraption above may look like an electric bike, but when it goes on sale in the US this year, you may have to register it as a motorcycle. Constructed of lightweight carbon fiber, aerospace aluminum, titanium and magnesium, the BlackTrail BT-01 travels up to 65MPH with a 1.2 kilowatt motor embedded in its 44 pound frame, and can carry you across 120 miles on a single 2.5-hour charge of the leather-clad 17Ah Li-ion battery pack. Of course, those sorts of numbers don't come cheap -- the company's marketing it to the likes of West Coast Customs, The Sharper Image and a vehicle enthusiast named Jay Leno -- and each of the 667 limited pieces will cost $80,000, the better part of a Tesla Roadster and far beyond a Brammo. Still, if anyone has an offshore bank account they care to donate, we call dibs on 666 -- the number of the beast. Video after the break.
Send tweets automatically during a Keynote presentation with Keynote Tweet
Imagine if, as Steve Jobs moves through each slide of his Keynote presentation, he also has the telepathic powers to automatically tweet information related to the slide. But even the almighty Steve Jobs can't do that. Fortunately for him, there's Keynote Tweet. An open source AppleScript app, Keynote Tweet will automatically tweet the text from your presenter notes (accessible by clicking on "view" and selecting "show presenter notes"). Keynote Tweet was exposed to me while reading a piece by IDEO Labs' Gentry Underwood, who highlights the idea of large presentations increasingly occurring within the context of a backchannel in which audience members are responding to what's being presented. Getting Keynote Tweet up and running is fairly straightforward. Simply download the app, and then add the following entry into the Keychain Access app: Keychain Item Name: http://twitter.com Account Name: Your email address Password: Your Twitter password Now, with the Keynote Tweet app running, any text between the [twitter] and [/twitter] tags will automatically tweet when that slide is displayed (while in slideshow mode). For example, "Jay Leno lacks the charm, wit and red headedness of Conan O' Brien" will be tweeted the moment I reach the slide showing the percentage of people that hate Jay Leno. Keynote Tweet is available as a free download here. [via IDEO Labs]
NBC's Jay Leno claims Blu-ray is "above HD"
Well, now isn't this an interesting predicament. Jay Leno, who no doubt garners quite a few viewers on his NBC late night talk show, was casually conversing with Sandra Bullock about the film Premonition, and while fielding questions from Mrs. Bullock about the nature of Blu-ray vs. DVD, Leno actually blurted out that BD was "like, above HD." Granted, we're sure he was simply trying to prove a point to someone who had already admitted her ignorance towards the format, but it is quite ironic that Leno's network is the main player still refusing to support the aforementioned high-definition format. C'mon Universal, even The Chin recognizes that Blu-ray has its benefits.
Unboxing the 24-inch iMac
It's taken a little longer than we anticipated, but here they are: the first unboxing shots of Apple's new 24-inch iMac to go alongside those recent benchmarks. It's not the most comprehensive unboxing set we've seen, nor the most tidy (check out that cable mess!), but the fact that it's the first means that the guy behind the camera automatically gets our Engadget-branded kudos. The scale of the machine is a little hard to judge -- we *think* that's a 17-inch iMac in the later shots -- but the one thing we have learned from the pictures is very welcome: the increase in screen size makes the 24-incher's plastic "chin" the least distracting of all the iMac models. Apple, take note -- making an iMac that looks less like Jay Leno was a good decision. Keep reading to check out this new Mac in all its unboxed glory, then hit up the Read link for the full gallery...[Via TUAW]
