Hybrid Technology: Plug-In Retrofit Kit designed for mileage savings - YouTube

Powered by at least nine MTSU students' work since 2008, Dr. Charles Perry continues driving toward success in the development of the plug-in hybrid retrofit kit for any car.

Perry, who holds the Russell Chair of Manufacturing Excellence, and a five-member team saw gas mileage increase anywhere from 50 to 100 percent on a 1994 Honda station wagon retrofitted with laboratory prototype plug-in hybrid capability.

Learn more about the project.

SUGAR Volt: Boeing's Hybrid Electric Aircraft - YouTube

NASA asked a Boeing-led team to explore the possibilities of a hybrid electric aircraft. Marty Bradley, Boeing Research and Technology, explains how the SUGAR Volt concept is defining the future of flight.

Personalised Tron Lightcycle up for auction

If you are impressed with the All-Electric Lightcycle, you now have the chance to get one in their garage, and help the environment.

The opportunity comes courtesy of Charitybuzz, which is auctioning off a replica Lightcycle, otherwise known as a Xenon Light Motor Bike.

The vehicle on offer was designed by Parker Brother Choppers and donated by Evolve Motorcycles, which created a custom lithium ion battery system to power the bike's electric motor. The bike features a handcrafted fiberglass frame and 32-inch hub-less wheels offset by OLED light tape.

Although the auction listing cites a range of 100 miles and a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h) for the bike, it also says the winning bidder will be able to choose the bike's battery and motor type.

The personalization options will also extend to the bike's light tape colour.

Evolve sells the bike for US$55,000 and as of publication the bidding stands at $24,000, so you might just be able to nab a bargain. The auction closes on March 14, 2012 with all proceeds benefiting Global Green USA.

Source: Charitybuzz

Ridekick provides an electric boost to regular bicycles

Although some cycling purists may sneer at them, electric bicycles certainly do come in handy when hills need to be climbed on morning commutes, or loads need to be hauled.

E-bikes can be quite expensive, however, plus their motors and batteries make them heavy and clunky when their electric-assist feature isn’t being used.

That’s where the Ridekick kicks in. The motorised trailer quickly hooks onto an existing bicycle, pushing it to speeds of up to 19 mph (30.5 km/h), for a distance of about 12 miles (19 km) per charge. When you want your regular ol’ human-powered bike back, you just unhook it and go.

Ridekick provides an electric boost to regular bicycles - Images

Honda Microcommuter Concept: Can it outsmart the Smart

Honda's Micro Commuter Concept EV has heads-up display, social networking, advanced aerodynamics, seating for three (1+2 like the T25 and T27 city cars), luggage capacity, a customizable exterior and a fold-up electric bike for last mile transport.

Honda's Micro Commuter Concept looks like it will take the basic design Micro Car design and update it to the world of today, with advanced aerodynamics, seating for three (1+2), luggage capacity, a customizable exterior and last mile transport in the form of an ingenious fold-up electric two-wheeler known as the Motor Compo.

Very little has been revealed by Honda in its pre Tokyo Motor Show press release, but the electric city commuter vehicle looks like a winner from the get-go.

Studying the photos released with the press blurb suggests that the Micro Commuter Concept has seen plenty of time inside a wind tunnel to optimise its aerodynamics for the low to medium speed range of urban roads.

The relationship between the compact, fold-up Motor Compo electric two-wheeler is not clear as yet, but one of the very few indications of the functionality of the two-wheeler in the press releases states it to be a "compact EV commuter which offers the casual and convenient mobility of a two-wheeler, but also strives to be useful even when it's not being ridden.

This model can be loaded into the Micro Commuter Concept, with the battery that drives this commuter detachable and designed to be used as a power source in everyday life."

The Micro Commuter Concept and Motor Compo are just two of seven concepts to be shown in Tokyo, but Honda clearly has the concept of last mile transport still firmly in its mind.

It may be difficult for Americans living in cities with a lot of space to comprehend the problems faced by other city dwellers around the world, but as urban roads become more crowded, the distance between where you park and your final destination is set to become a significant part of the daily commute.

Read the full article here

Brammo: Electric motorcycle maker raises $28 million

US based electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo announced on Wednesday that it has raised $28 million from investors to boost development of electric powertrain technology.

Leading the charge was investor Polaris Industries, a powersports giant that makes all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorcycles and road-legal electric vehicles.

This company's innovations are under development, including military vehicles that can shrug off small arms fire and his company’s entry into sustainability, from supply chain simplification to the company’s first electric vehicles, launched in 2009.

“We’re not going to buy something to get bigger; we’re going to buy something to get better, faster,” he said when asked about future acquisitions.

It would appear that time is now.

The deal extends Brammo’s powertrain technology to different vehicle types much in the way that Tesla supplies Toyota with its all-electric powertrain.

It gives Polaris, inventor of the first snowmobile and the market leader for its various segments, a leg up on EV technology that it knows will replace the Swiss-developed four-stroke engines it traditionally uses.

It also gives Brammo more places to reap revenues for its R&D efforts. The company has dabbled in off-road vehicles before, with its Encite motorcycle, but cooperation with Polaris opens the door for more applications.

Electric car charging from public solar panels

Electric car owners in Zurich who want to charge up with green energy can have their battery communicate with a local utility’s solar panels and find out whether the panels are producing at that point in time.

If they are, the battery can instruct the utility to send electricity.

It’s part of a small trial between IBM and Swiss utility EKZ involving an app, cloud computing services and a phonebook sized data-recording device installed on “several” EVs including a Renault Twingo, an IBM press release states.

The device was developed by Zurich University.

The app also lets the car owner hand over charging responsibility to EKZ, which can schedule charge-ups when sun and wind power is available, and better manage its peak load generation.

One knock on EVs is that they’re only as green as the form of electricity that feeds them – coal-base electricity does not reduce a car’s carbon footprint as much as renewable electricity does. But wind and solar sources do not furnish constant electricity the way coal does.

The app can help assure the car charges only when the sun shines or the wind blows. (Although the bigger step will come when utilities switch to 100 percent renewable, taking the guesswork out).

The app runs on mobile devices, tablets and web browsers.

In addition, owners can read the app while they’re away from their car – say, in the office or even thousands of miles away – to check how much charge remains.

All the more reason why cars might could one day come for “free” as part of a service package from a utility, a mobile phone company or an internet provider.

Photo: BP Solar

Antonov's 3-speed transmission for electric vehicles boosts efficiency by 15 percent

Electric vehicles have been a reality for more than 100 years, but it's only in the last decade or so that the world has truly woken up to their potential as a viable, cleaner urban transport alternative to their combustion engined cousins.

During this EV renaissance much of the focus has been on developing improved power sources like batteries and fuel cells in order to deliver the range and performance consumers have become accustomed to during the age of oil.

Transmissions on the other hand, despite being so important in the ICE space, hardly rate a mention because the wide torque curve of electric motors makes them largely irrelevant. It could be time to rethink that approach according to U.K. based engineering firm Antonov.

The company has produced a 3-speed transmission designed specifically for electric vehicles that promises to bring significant efficiency gains and a better driver experience.

The company's Business Development Manager Dave Paul outlined these benefits in a presentation at the IDTechEX Electric vehicles conference this week in Stuttgart.

Honeywell, Safran eye green airplane taxiing

Honeywell and Safran, a French aerospace company, said they will launch a joint venture to create an electric taxiing system for airplanes in a move that will save money, fuel and carbon emissions.

The companies said the electric taxiing system will use an airplane’s Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) generator to power motors in the main wheels without using primary engines while on the ground.

Today, airplanes use their main engines and taxiing eats up 4 percent of total fuel consumption.

That percentage equates to 5 million tons of fuel used just to taxi.

Under the joint venture’s plan, the Honeywell-Safran system will be installed on new aircraft and retrofitted on existing planes starting in 2016.

The two companies appear to be a good fit since Honeywell specialises in auxiliary power units and Safran makes landing gear systems.

Safran explained how the system works on its Web site:

From the technical standpoint, each powered wheel in the main landing gear is equipped with an electric motor-reduction gearbox-clutch assembly to drive the wheel. The aircraft’s own auxiliary power unit, or APU, provides the electrical power needed by the motor. The APU is actually a gas turbine/generator unit, generally located in the fuselage tail, that provides the electrical power needed to start the jet engines, power air conditions and supply electricity for other onboard systems, mainly on the ground when the jet engines aren’t operating. With this new system, we can also do away with the tractors that tow the aircraft after the doors are closed at the loading gate. In other words, the aircraft taxis using only electric power until just a few minutes before takeoff – and then again after landing, right after it leaves the runway.

Among the key benefits of this electric taxiing system:

• Airplanes will be able to push back from the gate and go faster.
• Fuel costs and related equipment costs such as tugging, brake wear and carbon emissions taxes will decline.
• Airlines will save “several hundred thousand dollars” per aircraft a year.

The two companies said that they will initially focused on narrow-body aircraft, which are used for short-range flights and are generally more sensitive to fuel costs.

Redox-Flow batteries to power 2,000 households

Above is a schematic of a redox-flow cell detailing the technology.

The energy storage units operate in conjunction with an electrolyte tank for each of the two electrodes.

The liquid electrolytes (e.g., vanadium) contain metal ions that flow through electrodes made of porous graphite fleece, separated by a membrane which is proton-permeable.

During this exchange of charge a current flows over the electrodes which can be utilised.

The battery can provide unlimited capacity simply by using larger and larger storage tanks, and it can be left completely discharged for long periods with no ill effects. And because both electrolytes contain the same materials they do not contaminate the cells and the tanks if the electrolytes become mixed. They only need to differ in terms of ion charge or oxidation stage.

“This makes it possible to build very robust and durable batteries – a decisive advantage of this battery technology,” emphasizes Fraunhofer’s Dr. Tom Smolinka.

On the downside, redox flow battery technology has relatively poor energy-to-volume ratio, and the system is more complex than standard storage batteries. For instance, insuring that the vanadium fluid flows smoothly through the large membranes and past the felt-like carbon electrodes in the cells themselves is a challenge, according to the researchers.

Fraunhofer researchers are convinced that the advantages of redox flow batteries will drive development, and in the next five years larger demo systems will be built and quickly followed by commercial redox-flow batteries.

Eventually, the focus will move on to the development of redox-flow batteries as a feasible technology for electric cars.


Giant futuristic batteries to power 2,000 households | ZDNet

Thomas Edison and the Incandescent light bulb

Though Thomas Edison is usually cited as the father of the light bulb, it's more accurate to give Edison credit as the creator of the first commercially viable light bulb.

As early as 1820, inventors were honing in on the principles that would lead to the first electric illumination.

An English inventor, Joseph Swan, took their early work and developed the basis of the modern electric light bulb in 1879 — a thin paper or metal filament surrounded by a glass-enclosed vacuum. When electricity runs through the filament, the light bulb glows.

Edison refined the design, trying filaments made out of platinum and cotton before eventually settling on carbonized bamboo, capable of burning for more than 1200 hours. With Edison's design — and settlement of a lawsuit with Swan that resulted in the two inventors joining forces in 1883 — electric lighting became viable for the first time.

Incandescent Bulb Banned in Europe
Europeans bid farewell to the 100 watt bulbs today. From now on, Edison's brainchild can no longer be legally made in, or imported into, the European Union, thanks to a European Union-wide ban which kicks off today.

Shed a tear, but don't let your sentimentality tempt you into smuggling one into the EU under your jumper: you'll be hit with a £5,000 fine. That's the price for individuals caught transgressing the ban but companies will face unlimited fines.

The EU hopes that the ban on incandescent light bulbs will force businesses and consumers to invest in low-carbon Light Emitting Diodes and Compact Fluorescent Lamps, which use up to 80 per cent less energy.

The ban could save the EU anywhere from 15 to 53 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, says Matt Prescott, founder of the Ban the Bulb campaign.