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Inhabitat's Week in Green: LA Auto Show, tidal energy farm and Japan's futuristic eco-city
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. It was a big week for green cars, as Inhabitat scoured the floors of the LA Auto Show to search for the latest and greatest in green auto design and innovation. We were excited to check out Audi's hybrid-diesel E-Tron Spyder concept car, Croatia's first electric vehicle prototype the DOK-ING XD, and Honda's hotly anticipated 2013 electric version of their popular Fit. Honda also made waves at the west coast auto show with their Civic Natural Gas car, which took home the title of 'Green Car of the Year' -- the Civic is the cleanest running internal combustion car certified by the EPS. Meanwhile, Ford announced that their EVOS plug-in hybrid will be hitting the market next year, FlyKly's ultra-modern electric bikes have become a choice ride in New York City, a German museum decided to recreate an operable version the world's oldest electric car, and the US Navy successfully sent a test-ship out on a 117 hour voyage using a 50 percent algae-derived fuel. There were also some exciting announcements in clean energy technology this week, including a recent report completed by leading scientists that predict giant orbiting solar power plants could supply all the earth's energy needs by 2041. We also learned that France will open the world's largest tidal energy farm in 2012, and GE will provide the turbines for a $100 million wind farm in Mongolia. Also for Mongolia, a local geo-engineering firm is making plans to battle the capital's scorching hot summers by cooling it down with gigantic manmade chunks of ice that mimic naleds. London's audacious mayor came up with an equally ambitious idea -- his plan is to curb pollution by spraying the city's roads with a sticky calcium-based adhesive able to catch airborne pollutants. We also got the inside scoop from Panasonic's Energy Solution Business Director, Haruyuki Ishio, on the futuristic eco-city that is being planned for Fujisawa, Japan.
Trexa's EV platform comes out of its shell, reveals its true torque-tube nature
We liked what we saw when we first set eyes upon Trexa's EV platform, but the company decided to ditch the skateboard façade for a slimmer, cylindrical form factor. After stripping away that somewhat chunky exterior, Trexa used a torque tube (where the center tube is the main load-bearing structure for the suspension and drivetrain) to create an egalitarian EV platform suitable for any road going application. The Entertube chassis's both flexible (2WD or 4WD) and scalable -- from a nine-inch diameter tube with seven kWh of juice in an eight-foot wheelbase to an 18-inch diameter tunnel with a massive 90kWh power pack crammed in a 180-inch wheelbase. That means there's an EV for every occasion, from small cars to semi-trucks and anything in between. What you see is a production prototype, but it's being commercialized as we speak, so it won't be too long until Enertube-powered EVs are ready for the open road. Until then, you'll have to settle for the plethora of pics below and press release after the break. %Gallery-121182%
Range anxiety gets real: Nissan Leaf drivers run out of juice on the road
Fears of range anxiety have loomed over EVs since their inception, and those fears were validated courtesy of a couple unfortunate souls whose Nissan Leafs apparently died on them while driving. The drivers put their faith in the Leaf's remaining range calculation, and were sorely disappointed when the car's dash said they had enough juice to go 10+ miles, but the batteries had other ideas. Turns out, the Leaf needs some time to get to know you and your lead foot before it can accurately determine the bounds of its own range. Nissan sent engineers out to check the cars and found no technical faults -- but one driver reckons the cold sapped some of the batteries' power (a theory that Mini E drivers would disagree with) and the car's software didn't factor that in when making its range estimates. Who's to blame? We suspect that while there was some user error, Nissan should rework the Leaf's software to improve range calculation -- else we may be talking about the death of EVs instead of internal combustion.
Nissan to give Leaf faster charger in 2012: home charging goes from glacial to a snail's pace?
Though well on its way to joining the Dodo, one of the internal combustion engine's advantages over its plug-in competition is refuel time -- it only takes a few minutes to gas up, but you're talking hours for an EV to top off its batteries via a standard 220 / 240-volt socket. This fact is not lost on Nissan, as it just revealed plans to offer a higher-rate charger in its 2012 Leaf -- the current model's 3.3kW charger needs eight hours to power up -- in order to better compete with the Ford Focus Electric's three to four hour charge time courtesy of its 6.6kW unit. And all you early adopters won't be "orphaned," as 2011 model Leafs can be retrofitted with the new electrics -- no word if Daddy Warbucks will be footing the bill.
Japan considers adding noise pollution to hybrids
Any big city bicyclist knows that being small and silent on the street is a deadly combination. Drivers of 2-ton cages are simply immune to anything but the sights and sounds of combustion engines riding four on the floor. This issue affects silent-running hybrids and compact electrics too, something Japan's government is taking seriously in a new government review that could result in a mandate for the inclusion of "a sound making function" in their future eco-rides. Safety aside, we presume Japanese manufacturers would choose a sound that's as tasteful and unassuming as their locally brewed hybrids. Imagine if GM was to make a similar decision... oh, right.
