Tag: GREEN TECH

To all of you traditionalist motorheads unimpressed by all the nerdy, newfangled hybrids on the market, be prepared to be mopped up with a sponge and bucket after the electric Jaguar C-X75 tears through you at 205 miles per hour. You have some time before you become luxury roadkill, though, since the vehicle was only just unveiled as a concept at the Paris Motor Show. And how the hell does it ...

Portland General Electric (PGE) and NEC unveiled what they've billed as "North America's first public-use, quick-charge station for electric vehicles" yesterday. Governor Ted Kulongoski helped to juice up a yet-to-be-released Nissan LEAF at the station, which will charge lithium-ion-battery-based vehicles to 80-percent of their capacity in 20 to 30 minutes. "The station was awarded public-use ...

China thinks it may have a solution to its growing car and congestion problem: giant buses that straddle the road. Although calling these monstrosities "buses" seem misguided (as they run on tracks, and independently of other street traffic), it's obvious that they could greatly increase the speed and quality of your average Beijing commute. The shuttles arch over the road, allowing other ...

Humans pioneered various methods of removing waste from their homes and dwellings thousands of years ago. From that first "Eureka!" moment, indoor plumbing has been a constant source of experimentation and innovation (and sophomoric humor, of course). Unfortunately, particularly for certain victims and Grandpa Simpson, that innovation sometimes goes horribly awry. One hundred years after the ...

An unlikely trio of cities can lay claim to the United States' most energy-efficient buildings, thanks to a report in USA Today. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston have been named by the EPA as having the most efficient buildings in the U.S., with annual energy savings of $87.2 million, $83.8 million, and $70.6 million, respectively. While we would love to jump on the bandwagon and slap ...

Could this mean the end of laundry day? Textile scientists in Australia and Hong Kong have developed a special coating for fabrics made of titanium dioxide nanoparticles that actually cause the fabric to self-clean when exposed to sunlight. Besides the obvious benefit of less time spent doing laundry, the new fabric could also mean less water used to wash clothes and less detergent being washed ...

Three years ago Jay LeBoff got snowed in and lost power for four days. During that time, LeBoff was forced to rely on a cell phone as his only way of contacting the outside world for emergency purposes. But without power to recharge the phone, he would have been up a certain creek without a paddle if the battery gave out. The experience, and a little bit of environmentally-friendly ...

Not like we couldn't see it coming, but news is that a big theme at this year's CES will be "green technology." The environment, being green, and global warming have been on everyone's minds this year. The Prius, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' OLEDs, and tons of research into alternative power sources and fuels were all the rage in 2007, and '08 doesn't look to be any different. A number of new ...

Greenpeace has been making a lot of noise lately with its attacks on Apple for using nasty stuff in the iPhone and in general for not being very green. Apple is implementing plans for getting greener, and now it seems Greenpeace is moving on to, well, greener pastures, attacking a whole boatload of tech companies with its latest Guide to Greener Electronics. The guide rates electronics ...

Slowly but surely, the automated future that industrialization and science fiction have long promised is creeping up on us. And if reality is to be believed, automation might actually run us over (or shoot us) if we're not looking. The BBC reports that an English town called Daventry is testing out a driverless car, controlled by a computer that -- drumroll please -- uses lasers to avoid ...