By Jack Taylor on September 3rd, 2009
The car industry is currently undergoing a green revolution, with a number of exciting new technologies vying to challenge the predominance of petrol and diesel and put an end to the internal combustion engine’s negative effects on the environment.
For many years now, private cars have been a favourite target of environmental campaigners, mainly due to the harmful emissions that all internal-combustion engines release into the atmosphere. Their effect was illustrated starkly several times in the 1970s when ‘car-mad’ cities like Los Angeles and London were frequently shrouded in a thick, polluting smog. Car manufacturers have been working on improving their products’ environmental credentials for quite some time now. The most significant developments of the last quarter of a century include the rollout of unleaded fuel, as well as the mandatory fitment of catalytic converters, which remove many of the most harmful elements of vehicle exhaust fumes, to all new cars. But as the 21st century dawned, talk of diminishing oil supplies and the ongoing threat of global warming has incentivised both carmakers and governments to accelerate development of the technologies that will one day take over completely from those in the cars for sale today, which remain dependent on fossil fuels.
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By Simon Leufstedt on April 1st, 2009
Tesla Motors, the electric car startup company, recently unveiled their new Model S car in Los Angeles. The electric prototype car will cost $49,900, after a $7,500 tax credit and will be available for purchase in late 2011.
“Model S doesn’t compromise on performance, efficiency or utility — it’s truly the only car you need,” said Tesla CEO, Chairman and Product Architect Elon Musk. “Tesla is relentlessly driving down the cost of electric vehicle technology, and this is just the first of many mainstream cars we’re developing.”
The Tesla Model S will have a range of 300 miles with the possibility to buy less expensive batteries that will give you a range of 230 or 160 miles. The charging time is expected to take 4 hours, or 45 minutes by using a “quickcharge”. The car will do 0-60 mph in less than six seconds (5.6 seconds), a sport version of the car is promised to achieve 0-60 mph “well below five seconds”.
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By Miguel Dias on March 24th, 2008
Green WebHost is an UK company that started providing environmental guided hosting in 2003. They were, according to them, the first ISP in UK that took this issue seriously.
Their datacenter is located in California, east of Los Angeles, and uses 120 solar panels which generate all the electricity they need to power the servers and their offices, becoming the first and only solar-powered hosting company in the UK.
We “assist” in the offset all of our estimated 25 Tonnes per year of CO2 (by “sequestration” or “Carbon Fix”) by working with TreeSponsibility, a community based Climate Action Group, we also plant a tree for every new Broadband and Web Hosting customer.
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By Simon Leufstedt on January 12th, 2008
Did you know that about 25% of the entire size of Los Angeles is made up of roads, parking places and other areas designed for cars?
Also check out this picture, taken by the Press-Office City of Münster (Germany). It demonstrates the amount of space required to transport the same number of passengers by car, bus or bicycle.
It’s really mind-boggling.
Image credit: Marshall Astor. Image licensed under a
Creative-Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
