Ushering in a new generation of partially compostable cars, Ecovative has teamed up with Ford to use their mushroom-based foam as a key component in bumpers, side doors, and dashboards. The best part is that the material will decompose just one month after being buried. Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer discovered that mycelia (mushroom roots) are a natural binding agent that can be combined with agricultural products such as corn and oat husks to make an incredibly durable material that can replace styrofoam and polystyrene in practically every application. Several companies from a number of industries are looking to the Green Island, NY-based startup to cook up alternative materials for their products as well — so we can finally leave polystyrene and styrofoam in our earth-loving dust.

Ecovative combines mushroom roots with corn or oat husks in trays of various sizes. These are then left to fester and furl in a dark warehouse for five days, after which the mix emerges glued together. This is then cooked and fried, and voila! a new packaging material is born. Not only is the new product biodegradable, but it is also fire and waterproof, making it an excellent substitute for polystyrene and styrofoam – the bane of every environmentalist’s existence.

The head of Ford’s plastic research department Deborah Mielewski became interested in the product, as that company hopes to replace 30 pounds of each car’s petroleum-based foams with more environmentally sensible alternatives. It turns out that Ecovative’s mushroom foam is every bit as affordable as polystyrene and styrofoam, uses very little energy, and reuses what would otherwise be agricultural waste.

The company, which has approximately 30 employees, has received a total of $4 million in grants and other funding to buoy their research and development initiatives. Other potential applications for their products include cosmetics and computer parts; a wine distributor has even solicited their genius – but we’re not allowed to know why just yet. There is a caveat: Ecovative has to overcome the challenge of maintaining a consistent density with a raw material that is a living organism, but a lot of people believe that they are going to make it work.

 Retweet This Post

October 29, 2010 – Toyota Motor Corporation, in conjunction with 3 other companies, announced this week that they have developed the first recycling business to recover the nickel in hybrid vehicle batteries that will be re-used in similar hybrid battery products.

Until now, the nickel that was recovered for recycling from these batteries was sent to stainless steel manufacturers for use in their products. By reusing the nickel from nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the company hopes to reduce the production costs of its hybrid vehicle batteries, and in turn its hybrid vehicles.

The company hopes to use the project as a springboard to showcase recovering and recycling technologies in response to global resource limitations. The 3 participating companies, other than Toyota, are Toyota Tsusho Corp, Sumitomo Metal Mining Company and Primearth EV Energy Company.

 Retweet This Post

Now, here is an interesting piece of news for all you movie buffs. The world gets its first “smallest solar-powered movie house.” Hailed as “Sol Cinema,” the movie house is powered by four large lithium-ion batteries that are charged by two 120W solar panels. Commissioned by the media arts charity Undercurrents, this unique entertainment house is made using a two-berth caravan from the 1960s. It features a full library of comedy, quirky, music videos and short films with inspiring environment themes to offer a unique cinematic experience to 8 adults or 12 young people it houses comfortably.

 Retweet This Post

Tesla, schmesla. This, friends, is the electric vehicle that your garage has been waiting for. Designed by North Carolina’s own Li-ion Motors, the downright stunning INIZIO is being hailed as the world’s first all American-made electric supercar, and while the Roadster is definitely peppy, it ain’t got nothing on this. Using the company’s own lithium-ion battery technology and management system, the car can purportedly cruise for up to 250 miles on electricity alone, and it can hit a top speed of 170 miles per hour without breaking a sweat. Naturally, you won’t (legally) fit more than two humans into this thing at once, but those two individuals will enjoy adjustable, leather / suede Recaro seating with heating and cooling features, an inbuilt 12-inch subwoofer, digital surround sound system, integrated navigation system, DVD player and rotational doors that raise on a 90-degree angle. Oh, and they’ll probably drool a little after racing from zero to sixty in 3.4 face-numbing seconds. The company also adds that it emits no carbon emissions, can be recharged over 2,500 times and can go from drained to rejuvenated after just eight hours on the plug. It’s expected to launch in mid-2011 with a starting price of $139,000, or just a few pennies more than the current value of the wretched Carolina Panthers franchise.

 Retweet This Post

Pru Trailer EMAV

Modern electric cars are still in their infancy, and one of the most onerous growing pains has to be their limited range–even the otherwise-pretty-awesome Nissan Leaf can only go about 100 miles on a charge. In answer to that issue, the Pru trailer concept offers a 700-mile boost in range, extra storage space, and sweet details like topographical analysis via Google Earth.

The Pru trailer (it stands for Power Regeneration Unit) from Electric Motors and Vehicles is more than a simple extra battery on wheels attached by trailer hitch. Powered by software called the Smart Hitch, the Pru actually measures its own speed and powers itself along at the same speed as the car, thereby making sure it doesn’t slow the EV down with its weight. It’s even equipped with a GPS sensor that syncs with Google Earth, measuring topographical details that might affect its charge cycle.

 Retweet This Post

Fuel economy, nil emissions, use of green materials, and state-of-the-art design: you just name any of these features, and you will find them all in the Toyota NORI concept car. Recently showcased at the LA Auto Show’s 2010 Design Challenge, the concept car contains several solar cells within its PODULAR form to capture and generate supplemental solar energy for the 4-wheel motor.

Contrary to current generation automobiles, the NORI concept features a Podular form that plaits the body and chassis into a single entity, and helps in reducing the overall body weight. The next-gen car, conceived by Craig Kember, Erwin Lui, and Kevin Hunter, makes profuse use of bioplastics technology for strength that uses “nori” (the Japanese word for seaweed) and a carbon fiber weave.

 Retweet This Post

Stanford’s Pikes Peak-Climbing Audi TT-S Stanford University has a long tradition of building autonomously navigated cars, like this Audi TT-S designed to race the famous Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Now, researchers from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University – itself no stranger to building autonomous vehicles – have teamed with Google to build a fleet of robotic vehicles that negotiate traffic without human intervention.

When it comes to artificial intelligence Google has a head start, what with all that free data we give them every time we search for a 30 Rock clip. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the search giant is the latest enterprise to pursue a future where cars drive themselves via complex, decision-making artificial intelligence software. Over the weekend it was revealed that Google has seven test cars that have driven 1,000 miles each without any human intervention whatsoever.

Of course, the cars aren’t exactly driverless. There is always someone sitting behind the wheel, ready to seize control should something go awry. There’s also a passenger, a technician to monitor the navigation system and ensure the software is running smoothly. But the cars do pretty much all of the work – one of them even negotiated San Francisco’s famously treacherous Lombard Street (that steep stretch of pavement that’s more or less a series of sharp switchbacks). If you count up all the miles that required only occasional human intervention, the cars have logged some 140,000 miles altogether.

The cars are years from commercialization and mass production obviously, but Google’s effort is just the latest in a series of attempts to create safer, more efficient passenger vehicles that move people around autonomously. An Italian team is currently en route from Italy to Shanghai in a pair of electric-powered driverless vans, and DARPA’s Grand Challenge has produced a handful of promising software and vehicle designs.

In fact, the Stanford Professor behind the team that won the second DARPA Grand Challenge with the Stanley robot car is the brainpower behind Google’ fleet of artificially intelligent automobiles (he’s also a Google engineer). That fleet is made up of six Toyota Priuses and one Audi TT.

The idea behind all of this, of course, is to make roadways safer and reduce energy costs. A fleet of shared smart vehicles means cars could be summoned only when they are needed rather than being owned (and parked) by each individual. Robot drivers also react faster than humans – who are increasingly distracted by a growing cacophony of technological noise in our cabs – have 360-degree vision, and remain sober and alert even after weddings and football games. And if roadways were packed with automated, networked robo-cars rather than angry, lane-weaving, stop-and-go drivers, traffic would move more efficiently as well.

Ambitious predictions say self-driving autos could be deployed in the next eight years. Getting them certified for the road and brought within the letter of the law is going to cause unenviable headaches along the way, but the end result could be a complete re-engineering of car culture beginning before the decade is out.

 Retweet This Post

October 1, 2010 – UPS announced yesterday that they will be adding over 130 hybrid electric vehicles to their fleets in New York, New Jersey and California, while Verizon said they will be concentrating their new 260 hybrid sedans, pickup trucks and aerial fiber splicing trucks in New Jersey.

UPS will be deploying 30 new hybrid electric delivery vehicles in New York/New Jersey, with the remaining 100 heading to California. The company estimates that they will save over 66,000 gallons of fuel annually and improve fuel economy 35%.

For Verizon, the move is a step toward the company goal of deploying 1,600 alternative energy vehicles across the country in 2010. Their new Chevrolet pickup trucks will be used by their telephone service personnel and are expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 43% over the previously used vans.

 Retweet This Post

Skyrocketing fuel prices inspired a former technical director of the Fiji Police Force Kitione Namakadre to invent an outboard motor that could run without traditional fuel. The retired engineer created the device in a month. His solar motor relies on solar energy and a battery to run a 40 horsepower engine.

While planning to take his invention to the museum for storage, Namakadre says:

I would like to ask engineering students to come and have a look at the invention if they are interested.

He hopes that people would bring their outboard motors to him for transforming those into solar ones.

 Retweet This Post

September 14, 2010 – With the U.S. debut of the Nissan Leaf just months away, the first-to-market auto maker in the electric vehicle race launched a new set of television ads that debuted during the NFL’s opening weekend – and caught the attention of many marketers, bloggers and social media mavens in the process.

The ad is long, at a full minute, and features a lone polar bear on a journey from a melting arctic glacier, through warmer wilderness, into a city, and finally arriving at a suburbian home where the family car is of course, a Nissan Leaf. Upon seeing the driver of the vehicle, the bear rears up and gives the man a big “bear-hug.” (See the spot below this story)

After its debut, the reviews were mixed. The NY Times Green Blogsummed many of them up nicely. “As subtle as a box of hammers to the face,” a writer for the Web site Autoblog opined, while others praised the spot. “I’ll be honest, that commercial made this old man tear up quite a bit.  Great job, Nissan,” wrote a commenter on YouTube, where the commercial was posted by Nissan.

In one day the ad has gathered almost 700 comments on Youtube alone, ranging from “I’m much more concerned about an economic climate crisis that’s currently happening than a global climate crisis that may never happen. This is the last thing on the list of what people are concerned about, and with good reason” to “This video = Epic Fail.” Regardless of opinions expressed online, the company should be happy with the result – this ad is creating buzz.

 Retweet This Post