The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.
This week Inhabitat explored the high-tech side of green building, showcasing Shigeru Ban's new design for the Pomidou-Metz art museum, and announcing the near-completion of the greenest skyscraper in the world. We also explored green building strategies ranging from super efficient LED lamps.
We also saw several signs that the next generation of efficient vehicles is right around the corner - this week Chevrolet rolled out its first production Volt while Nissan announced the final pricing of its Leaf EV - a remarkably affordable $25,280. Even the hard working vehicles at FedEx are getting some much-needed relief as the company rolls out its first round of electric delivery vans. And if you're concerned about green vehicles going the distance, look no further than this student-built supercar that's able to get 2,487 MPG.
This week biotech also blew our minds as researchers unveiled plant-based molecules that could create more efficient solar cells and a new type of photovoltaic frog foam that's capable of capturing carbon. Finally, sticks and stones may break bones, but scientists have figured out a way to grow new ones -- using liposuctioned human fat.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: hypermiling, electric FedEx, and frog foam originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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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.
2011 Chevrolet Volt gets taken for a test drive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Nissan's gotten into a bit of a bragging contest on Twitter -- possibly fueled by
Chevrolet's recent, shaky claim that the Volt will get 230 miles per gallon. The company is now saying that its new electric car, the Leaf, will get an astonishing 367 miles per gallon... even though it's a 100 percent
electric car, and runs on absolutely no fuel. So, isn't that zero miles per gallon? Well, yes and no: all these massive numbers are based on both the
Department of Energy and the EPA's calculations for estimating equivalencies in electric cars. Why? Well, it seems that car companies are still giving us -- the prospective buying public -- MPG figures because they think that's what we understand best. Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for Chevy's Volt recently admitted to the
New York Times that the miles per gallon matrix is "probably not the best measure of goodness" for a car that uses no gallons at all, but that it's "what people are accustomed to." We agree -- he's got a point -- but people were also accustomed to the hi-fi, the corded landline, and the steam engine. We assure you: people understand that a car that runs on zero gas (and therefore gets an astonishingly low amount of miles per gallon) is really, really awesome. So the MPG matrix is useless when talking about electric cars -- we'll adjust!
Read - Nissan claims 367 miles per gallon for electric Leaf
Read - The Chevy Volt: mileage numerology
Filed under: Transportation
Nissan says its new electric car, the Leaf, gets 367 miles per gallon originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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