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UMaine's clean snowmobile runs on (a lot of) natural gas
Take a look at what these mechanical engineering students from the University of Maine say is the only natural gas-powered snowmobile in the US. Why make all these changes to what used to be a stock Arctic Cat XF1100? To compete in the Society of Automotive Engineers Clean Snowmobile Challenge, which was founded to create machines capable of running in Yellowstone Natural Park where rules about noise and emissions keep gas snowmobiles out. Changing the fuel source from gasoline to natural gas not only meant swapping out the gas tank, but also the injectors inside the motor. As you can see in the video after the break, last year's team got the beast running, but this year students are working on improving the handling and tuning.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil: Nanotech is the key to better EV batteries
Living up to his billing as an inventor/visionary, Ray Kurzweil kicked off an engineering conference in Detroit this week by imagining what might power cars of the future. Sure, he mentioned the self-driving cars his employer Google is working on, but a more interesting response was to a question from our AutoblogGreen colleagues. Pressed on the future possibilities of electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells, Kurzweil first mentioned the "modest" progress batteries have made so far and suggested nanotechnology will provide a solution. He believes that being able to "manipulate energy and matter at a molecular level" will lead to revolutionary applications.
Terrafugia's flying car project is still a couple of years away
Terrafugia's car/plane hybrid has been "coming soon" for nearly a decade and it will stay that way a bit longer. The Transition vehicle has come a long way since those early renders, and in a talk today Terrafugia COO / VP of Engineering Kevin Colburn explained some of the design decisions involved and what else need to happen before pilots/drivers can climb in. The estimated price seems to have climbed a bit from the $279,000 projection, as he said the company is targeting between $300k and $400k. At that price it's not going to replace your (or anyone's) daily driver, but that's not the point. Terrafugia believes that being able to drive the plane from the airport to one's destination is enough to give it an advantage over other small planes or forms of travel.
