Smokin’ Hot Green Machines!

It is nearly impossible to keep up with the world’s ever changing technologies. One
thing that can’t be ignored is the world’s attempts at reducing our carbon footprint.
The auto industry is racing to come up with stable solutions to replace their existing
lineup of fuel hungry vehicles.

Hybrid vehicles have been around for awhile now, but they tend to only be driven by
people who aren’t concerned with performance, leaving all the sports car market stuck
with the big gas burners. Finally, fuel efficiency and performance will meet face to
face in the following innovative upcoming eco friendly vehicles, becoming the
standard for new and eventually used cars. Buying one of these cars isn’t only trendy,
it will also make you one of the few people in North America with an ‘Exotic’ eco
friendly car. The only problem left is trying to find any companies willing to offer
auto insurance quotes on these rare gems. I’m guessing replacing a bumper on one
of these cars will cost you more than half a dozen regular car bumpers!

Ecotricity’s Electric Lotus Exige

Ecotricity has been planning to launch an electric Lotus Exige for over a year now.
The developers are planning on launching the car with a zero to 60 in less than 4
seconds. The goal is to be as fast as a V12 Exotic sports car with the ability to go 150
miles on a single ‘electric tank’. This car has yet to come to fruition; hopefully we
see it on the streets one day.

Audi R Zero

The Audi R Zero is definitely one of the sexiest prototypes out there. This exotic
beauty features four electric in wheel motors totaling an enormous 1091 horse power.
That is right, over a 1000 HP in this bad boy excelling it from 0-60 in less than 3
seconds.

Venturi Fetish

The Venturi Fetish is one of the more exotic looking electric cars out there. Although
very exotic looking, the Venturi Fetish is one of the slower electric cars available
topping out around 100MPH. The sexy Fetish goes from 0-60 in just shy of five
seconds making it fast enough for the average person. The Fetish is capable of
driving around 150 miles without charging. Luckily the batteries are capable of
charging in roughly an hour on a 30kW three phase charger or in three hours on your
standard power plug.

Citroen C-Metisse Concept

The Citroen C-Metisse was first unveiled in 2006 at the Paris AutoShow. The concept
is an interesting mix of performance and technology. The power plant is a 2.7L
208HP V6 diesel engine coupled with a 20hp electric engine. What makes this
vehicle interesting is that it is capable of running independently on either engine, or in
mixed mode depending on your performance needs.

Going from 0-60 in the C-Metisse will take just more than 6 seconds, however the
slightly slower speeds are made up with the amazing fuel economy; 36MPG!
Saab Aero-X

Ever wanted to know how a car would perform that ran on a pure ethanol engine?
Wonder no more, Saab came out with the Aero-X concept car at the 2006 Salon
International de L’auto. This gorgeous dream car is hosts a 2.8L Twin Turbo V6
engine producing 400hp and tearing through 0-60 in 4.9 seconds. To make the Aero-
X really stand out, it doesn’t even have doors! The entire cockpit opens up in a similar
fashion to a jet.

Toyota FT-HS

Toyota should not be counted out when considering your next green sports car. The
FT-HS stands for ‘Future Toyota Hybrid Sport’ and looks to make a major dent in the
eco friendly sports car market. The FT-HS’s power train is scheduled to produce over
400HP and hit 0-60 in under 4 seconds. The Toyota HT-HS will combine a 3.5L V6
motor with an electric motor to accelerate the car to ridiculous speeds. Expect to see
this car available at a starting point of roughly $30,000 USD making it not only
breathtakingly beautiful, but also affordable, something most of these cars lack.
Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster is probably the most famous eco friendly sports car getting
attention from all around the globe. The Tesla Roadster is the first car being produced
by Tesla Motors. The car borrows the basic chassis from the Lotus Elise but aside
from the chassis is a unique vehicle. The Tesla Roadster can accelerate from 0-60 in
less than four seconds and is capable of 244 miles on a single charge. The estimated
fuel consumption when compared in terms of energy usage is the gas equivalent of
120mpg making the Tesla Roadster probably the most efficient electric sports car
available.
Eco-Crusader @ December 10, 2009

Cool Green Bike

The GoblinAero will fit a large variety of people. How you determine fit is by
measuring the rider’s X-seam (to see how to easily do this, visit this link. After
measuring the X-seam, compare it to the large frame size variation of this vehicle. It’s
frame size is adjustable to fit X-seams that range from 37-46” That is a large segment
of the population. The frame size is adjusted merely by sliding the seat forward or
rearward.

Eco-Crusader @ December 6, 2009

10 Super “Hot” Technologies Using the Sun

Solar power technology is moving forward by leaps and bounds, with some new
advancements being built out into usable installations virtually every day. Design
concepts once thought to be ‘pie in the sky’ ideas are being implemented, and making
a simple solar panel array look like old-school technology.

While it may be some time before you see some of these solar technologies in use,
chances are it will be sooner rather than later, so keep your eyes on these:
 1. Water Cooled Solar Panels: The Pyron Solar
Triad uses a specially designed, short focal-length, acrylic concentrating lens to
reflect and refracts the light, effectively concentrating it to equal the power of 6,500
suns in a small pinpoint of light. A secondary optic captures this concentrated light
and focuses it on a small PV cell. According to the company, the HE Optics System
produces 800 times more electricity than a similarly-sized silicon solar cell.

2. Home Solar to Hydrogen Storage: An MIT professor, Daniel Nocera, formed a

company this year to commercialize a new technology that can “split water” and store
solar energy. The company’s key objective now is to achieve a solar energy
breakthrough by to making solar energy cheap and widespread.

“The idea is to use solar panels to power the electrolyzer to produce hydrogen which
would be stored in tanks. When people need electricity, the stored hydrogen would
put through a fuel cell.”
3. Solar Roof Shingles, Printable and Paintable Solar Panels: If solar power was
as easy to install as putting new shingles on your house, or painting your roof with a
solar paint, it would lower the bar for home solar installation. The paintable solar
technology is called silicon ink, and according to the U.S. National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, solar cells using the technology have “demonstrated a record 18
percent conversion of efficiency.” Solar shingles, by Dow Chemical, should be
available in limited supply by mid 2010 and then readily available by 2011, says the
company.

4. Large Thin Film Solar Panels: The SunFab™ system uses amorphous silicon
based thin film technology to deliver the world’s largest and most powerful thin film
panels and combines low-cost materials with one of the industry’s most advanced
fabrication technologies.The company’s thin film solar panels have a frameless
design, eliminating two predominant field reliability challenges for thin film panels:
water penetration and weakened structure integrity over time.

5. Organic Solar Concentrators: Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT) have created a sophisticated and affordable method to turn
ordinary glass into a high-tech solar concentrator, using dye-coated glass to collect
and channel light which is usually lost from the surface of the panels. This technology
could allow buildings to use tinted windows to collect energy. Another company,
GreenSun, has developed bright-colored panels which capture different parts of sun’s
spectrum, and don’t need direct sunlight to work.

6. Space Based Solar: Japan is developing a giant space based solar power generator
to transmit solar energy to earth from 36,000km above the earth within the next 30
years. The Japanese government is backing the $21 billion project, which will include
a solar power space station with four square kilometers of solar panels, cranking out
an estimated 1 gigawatt of electricity - enough for almost 300,000 homes in Tokyo.
7. Solar Roads: The Solar Roadways concept, would pave roads with glass panels to
collect and distribute solar energy to light the road at night and heat it in winter, with
enough electricity leftover to power homes and businesses. The founder, Scott
Brusaw, estimates that each mile of solar panels could power 500 homes, and
estimates that the cost of producing a single 12′ X 12′ Solar Roadway panel could
reach about $5,000.

8. Concentrated Solar: Stirling Energy System’s SunCatcher, consisting of a solar

concentrator in a dish structure supporting an array of curved glass mirrors, may be
deployed in Arizona soon, the first commercial-scale installation of the world’s most
efficient solar technology. The SunCatcher employs a system of mirrors attached to a
parabolic dish to concentrate the sun’s energy onto a high‐efficiency Stirling Engine,
with each dish generating up to 25,000 watts of power.

9. Nanotechnology Solar: Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario have

grown light-absorbing nanowires made of high-performance photovoltaic materials on
thin but highly durable carbon-nanotube fabric. They’ve also embedded the tiny
particles in flexible polyester film which could lead to solar cells that are both flexible
and cheaper than today’s photovoltaics. In other nano-news, a team from the
University of Southanpton’s School of Physics and Astronomy has developed a new
range of photovoltaic devices using a process found in vegetative methods of light
harvesting (photosynthesis), to deliver unprecedented amounts of electrical current
from light.

10. Integrated Grid Ready Solar: Andalay AC solar panels, built with Akeena
Solar’s proprietary technology, integrates the racking, wiring and electrical grounding
components into the panels themselves. According to the company, this safeguards
against breakdowns and boosts system reliability, delivering thousands of dollars in
savings throughout its 30 year lifetime. The Andalay AC solar panels produce safe
household AC power, and will enable a safer and easier installation process for solar
installers and do-it-yourselfers by reducing the number of parts by 80% and
eliminating complicated and potentially dangerous DC wiring. The Andalay AC solar
panels were named as a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Product for 2009.

As a bonus solar technology to watch out for, CoolEarth’s solar balloons are made
with metallic plastic films, with half of the balloon being transparent, which lets the
sunlight in to be concentrated on a small high-efficiency solar panel. The balloons are
8 feet across and suspended with a patented support system, based on the
architectural principles of tensegrity. (stabilized by continuous tension or “tensional
integrity” rather than by compression.) The resulting suspension system of posts and
steel cables uses a minimum amount of material, has a small footprint, and causes the
least disruption to the natural environment of any solar power plant.