Pininfarina delays prototype showing of B0 electric car
[Via Register Hardware]
Pininfarina posts
[Via Register Hardware]
Pininfarina-designed B0 electric car debuts at Paris Motor Show
Pininfarina said it was going to build an electric car and, go figure, it's actually built one. As we had heard earlier, the car, now dubbed the B0, is the result of a collaboration with the Bolloré Group, which was mostly responsible for the car's lithium metal polymer battery pack. Pininfarina, for its part, seems to have handled just about everything else, and it sure looks to have gone all out, with the car promising a range of 150 miles and a reasonable top speed of 80 mph, plus some suitably nifty touches like two LCD screens for instrumentation, and even some solar cells on the roof to help top off the battery (most of the charging while driving is done with regenerative braking). Pininfarina is also apparently still ticking to its 2010 roll-out date, with mass production set to begin in late 2009 -- no promises on a price just yet though.
Fabrik intros colorful new SimpleTech Signature Mini USB drives
Those looking for something that'll stand out a little more than your run-of-the-mill external hard drive now have a slew of new options to consider from Fabrik, which has once again teamed with Italian design firm Pininfarina on some of its SimpleTech-branded drives. Dubbed the Signature Mini, the drives are available in your choice of seven different colors and 120GB, 160GB, 250GB or 320GB capacities, although each color is not available in each size. Taking things one step further, each drive comes with 2GB of free online backup space, and optional unlimited online backup for $5 a month, each options of which employ 448-bit Blowfish encrypted servers to keep your data safe. Look for the whole lot to be available sometime next month for between $110 and $230, although Mac users will have to wait until later in Q1 in order to take advantage of the online backup options.
Pininfarina sets out to build its own all-electric car
Pininfarina may be best known as the design firm behind vehicles from Ferrari, Maserati and the like, but it's mainly popped up on our radar as of late due to its sporadic forays into hard drive design. We're now getting a little closer to the company's bread and butter, however, as the firm recently announced that it's planning to build it's own all-electric car. That'll apparently be done in collaboration with France's Bolloré Group, who'll supply the car's Lithium Metal Polymer battery technology while Pininfarina handles just about everything else (including the branding). Details on the car itself are still a bit light, obviously, but it'll apparently be a four-seater, and boast a range of 155 miles in city driving, with a top speed of 81 miles per hour. No word on what they expect the car to cost, unfortunately, but Pininfarina's hoping to have it available in Europe, Japan, and the United States by 2010.[Via Core77]
SimpleTech SimpleDrive: up to 1TB, Pininfarina design
SimpleTech external HDDs designed by Pininfarina
We've never really felt the specific urge to have the plastic casing that houses our data be designed by a company like Pininfarina -- the same people who designed cars such as the Ferrari 575M Maranello, Jaguar XJ-S and Volvo C70. If, however, such design standards strike your fancy, SimpleTech is offering up some portable USB 2.0 drives that could do the trick. They range from the $110 40GB version to the $180 100GB version, and all spin their disks at 5400RPM with 8MB of cache.[Via The Gadget Weblog]
