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Greenlings: Why don't we use solar to power our electric cars?
Venturi Astrolab concept - Click above for high-res image gallery For years, we've been watching as solar-powered race cars travel at relatively high rates of speed for hours on end – as long as the sun happens to be shining, of course. In fact, the World Solar Challenge has been taking place in Australia every few years since 1987, and the actual vehicles competing in the event got so fast that race organizers eventually had to alter the rules in the name of safety back in 2005. Since these solar-powered racers had gotten so fast and ... Read more →
8th graders build solar human hybrid vehicle Sam Abuelsamid
A group of 8th grade students at Novato Charter School in Marin County in California have produced an interesting new project. They've created a solar human hybrid vehicle that combines the power of ...
Omaha man builds electric motorcycle in spare time (w/VIDEO) Jeremy Korzeniewski
Electra Green DIY electric motorcycle - Click above for an image gallery A man from Omaha, Nebraska named Tony Parker (no, not that Tony Parker) recently found himself with a bunch of extra time ...
Kyocera offers details on solar cells used by 2010 Prius Jeremy Korzeniewski
Want to know more about the solar moonroof option that's available on the latest third-generation Toyota Prius for 2010? Read on. According to Tech-On from Nikkei newspaper in Japan, the actual ...
NREL hosts Colorado middle school teams to race solar, hydrogen models Sebastian Blanco
The DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory is hosting a Junior Solar Sprint and Hydrogen Fuel Cell car competition today out in Colorado. Even though grown-ups won't get any more Federal money for ...
More solar news
Project Goldfish: world's first solar-powered submarine 6 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Solar energy and submarines might seem like two things that just don't go together very well. But if a tiny Tango EV can plow snow, then why not give underwater solar a try? A new Swiss project is set to prove that nothing is impossible with a good set of batteries and a solar platform. Project ...
London announces that Aston Martin has winning bus design 6 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above to enlarge the winning designs for a 21st Century Routemaster bus What would a modern take on the old London Routemaster double-decker bus look like? How would it function, and what would power it? One more question: who would design it? The answer to all of these questions has just ...
Solar Taxi arrives at UN Climate conference after 17 months on the road 6 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Swiss teacher Louis Palmer is nearing the completion of his round-the-world trip in a solar-powered vehicle. Palmer arrived at the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, Poland last week in his solar taxi. The two-seat trike has completed 32,365 miles over the 17-month trek, running mostly on ...
Phylla EV officially unveiled and driven in Turin 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for more shots of the Phylla ZEV We first took a look at the Phylla 2+2 electric vehicle back in May. Back then, it was nothing but a series of ideas, plans and renderings. Now, though, it's been realized in the metal (and composites, we're sure) and has been officially unveiled at ...
Mazda's outlandish electric racer, the KAAN, wins design award 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click on image above for a high-res gallery of the Mazda KAAN and more from the Design Challenge The collection of outlandish green racing design concepts submitted as part of the "Motor Sports 2025" at the Los Angeles Auto Show has been whittled down and we have a winner: the MAZDA KAAN ...
More shots of the 2010 Prius leak out 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for more leaked shots of the 2010 Toyota Prius Finally! Some actual interesting images of the new 2010 Toyota Prius, along with a couple of videos that we've pasted after the break. We already had a pretty good idea of what the hybrid hatch would look like, but there are a few more ...
SolarWorld offers to purchase Opel, kind of 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Well, it's not exactly a solar car, but it's a start, right? By now, everyone is aware that General Motors is in a bit of financial trouble at the moment, and those U.S. problems will definitely have an impact on the European automakers also owned by GM, including its Opel subsidiary. A German power ...
Metrocable: solar-power assisted cable car as public transportation 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Now that winter is coming, some people are getting ready for cable cars rides at ski resorts. But what if a city used cable cars as for public transportation? Such is the case in Medellín, in Colombia, and its Metrocable system. There are currently two aerial cable car lines which are fully ...
Twill Wicked wouldn't be so mean to the environment 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for high-res images of the Twill Wicked Vehicles with a single track, i.e. two wheels inline with each other like a bicycle as opposed to a Segway, can go places that their four-wheeled brothers and sisters cannot. Plus, having just two contact patches reduces friction and drivetrain ...
Al Gore plan to solve economic, energy and warming crises would boost electric car 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
As most Americans are aware, we are in the midst of several crises. Luckily, this country has people with, not only ideas, but also some clout to help see their ideas come to fruition. One of those people is inventor of the internet 43rd President political punching bag Al Gore and this past ...
UK Petrol Retailers Association suggests solar-powered EV stations 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
We'd imagine that the UK Petrol Retailers Association would have a vested interest in making the business model of the tried-and-true gas station survive. So, we aren't all that surprised to read about the group's suggestion that future gas stations should carry solar roofs that feed power into ...
SEMA 2008: Nissan Altima Hot Rod Hybrid 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for more shots of the Hot Rod Hybrid Nissan Altima SEMA's tuner crowd and the green culture seem at first to clash. Starting last year, though, and continuing even stronger in 2008 are green performance cars infiltrating the gas-guzzling ways of the typical SEMA show car. A prime ...
Solar-powered Power of 1 (Xof1) sets new distance record 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Way back in 2006, we spoke with Marcelo da Luz about his ambitious project to drive a solar car farther than anyone had ever driven one, about 14,000 kilometers across North America. This past weekend, he reached his goal up in Victoria, British Columbia after cruising over 15,070 km (9,364 miles) ...
Newest electric car to come from... NASA? 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for a gallery of the Small Pressurized Rover NASA has been testing its latest rover that it hopes will shuttle astronauts around on the surface of the moon when the agency heads back around 2020. Initial testing is taking place in the Arizona desert, which features a rocky landscape ...
WTF will racing be like in 2025? 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
click above to see more of the 2025 racers The indie rock band The Flaming Lips has a compilation album called Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid, and if ever there was a collection of automotive concept car designers about which we could say the same thing, it's the folks who designed the ...
Honda Soltec PV panels now available for public/industrial applications 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Honda's Soltec subsidiary has been selling smaller scale photo-voltaic panels for residential use for the past year. Honda Soltec has just expanded its capacity to build larger panels more suitable for large scale installations like factories and public buildings. As of this week, the large scale ...
Meet the soleckshaw, the solar-powered rickshaws running in Delhi 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
The pedal-powered rickshaw is a time-honored method of getting around in many countries where not every citizen has the means to drive a car. Of course, time marches on, and the classic rickshaws are definitely a step or two behind the times. Still, there is a market for zero emission people ...
Austin Alt Car: Lighthouse Solar roof, carport an enviously good deal 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
When I head just how (comparatively) cheaply you can get solar panels installed in Austin, Texas, I was pretty jealous. The real short version is that a $20,000+, 3 kWh system can be yours for around $6,000 thanks to local and federal tax breaks. And considering the amount of sunshine that Austin ...
Driving Less? Let the sun maintain your car battery 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
The other day we had a post about the need to continue doing some basic maintenance on your car even if you are driving less in this age of higher fuel prices. One of the items we mentioned was caring for your battery. If you drive your car infrequently as I do (I drive a lot of loaner vehicles ...
Buy a solar powered car ... in China 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Believe it or not, a solar powered car is on sale in China. Shown at the 29th (!) Zhejiang International Bicycles and Electric-powered Cars Exhibition in Hangzhou, eastern China, the vehicle is a cheap and dirty clean way to get around. According to an engineer, the solar cells can absorb 95 percent ...
Homebrew solar electric car wins fans in Utah 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Utah is a state that gets a lot of sun but not a lot of attention on these pages for their green transportation moves. Still, it does seem that the DIY crowd is strong there. Remember the homemade Ariel Atom? That's not the only homemade vehicle taking to the street in the state. Kyle Dansie ...
Paris 2008: Nissan Nuvu in the flesh 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for a high-res gallery of the Nissan Nuvu concept We've finally got pics of the Nissan Nuvu concept and its, um, interesting. Sporting a very bulbous shape with bug-eye head lights, the Nuvu couldn't be anything but a concept. As Nissan promised, there are leaf-shaped solar panels on ...
AltCar 2008: Prometheus' solar-powered electric motorcycle 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
click for more shots of the Prometheus Electric Motorcycle Jim Corning had an idea. Wouldn't it be cool if you could put four solar panels on your house, and then be able to power a vehicle with the energy created with them? Corning, who founded Prometheus Solar LLC, didn't have a vehicle he ...
Toyota will put North America's largest single-roof solar installation on CA parts center 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Solar power is nothing new to Toyota, but the company's latest solar array does offer something new to North America: the largest such single-roof installation on the continent. According to Toyota, a new huge solar set-up (it covers 242,000 square feet and is made up of more than 10,000 modules) ...
Space-based solar transmission test successful 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Although one of the oft-cited criticisms of solar power is that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day, the fact of the matter is that the sun never actually stops shining. Armed with this knowledge and a strong desire to solve the planet's energy supply problems, the former manager of NASA's ...
Wonder what it takes to build a competitive solar racer? 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Lest you think that it's easy to make a competitive solar racer, take a look at the videos of the University of Texas' Samsung Solorean (the name is a reference to the DeLorean from the Back 2 The Future movies), which are pasted after the break. In a nod towards that movie car, the portal to enter ...
University planting solar trees on parking garages 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
As part of a program to provide the University of California at San Diego with renewable energy from several sources including sun, wind and bio-gas fuel cells, the school has "planted" a virtual grove of Solar Trees™ on the upper levels of a pair of parking garages. The "trees" provide ...
Watch out, coppers! It's a solar car, Code Xof1 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Is it a secret image taken in Area 51 of a spacefaring vehicle? Has the Mothership come for all of us? Or is it just the aerodynamic slipperiness of the Xof1 (Power of 1) solar powered car? It's the latter, but that didn't stop someone up in Alaska from thinking suspicious thoughts as Canadian ...
Japanese firms to build solar-powered car ship 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
While much of the focus of carbon dioxide reduction has been placed on ground transport, it only accounts for about 20 percent of those emissions. At least as much is spewed during ocean-going shipping, and it presents another place to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air. To that end, Japanese ...
GM plant in Maryland to get solar panels 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
GM's hybrid transmission plant goes solar This sounds like it must have been a really easy decision for General Motors: Install a brand new solar array which will provide 1.2-megawatts of power - enough to cut its electricity bill by 20-percent per year beginning in 2009 - for free. We wish ...
Introducing the World's Smallest solar-powered car 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Click above for a few more shots of the World's Smallest solar racer These days, one of the most-heard complaints about cars in the United States is that they are too large. Each new generation, for some reason, needs to somehow one-up its predecessor by adding a few inches of girth in every ...
Mass transit going greener: Urban tramway to work with solar power 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
I've had the pleasure to visit the beautiful island of Tenerife a few times, which is the largest of the Canary Islands. Being a very mountainous island, it's a difficult place to build a railway system, but they're catching up with a new tramway line which serves the island's capital, Santa Cruz ...
Sunmotor Group to introduce solar car this year 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
We just got tipped that Sunmotor, an electric vehicle hopeful based in Boston, plans to release its first product in America. It's solar and electric powered car ain't pretty, that's for sure. In side profile from wheel-to-wheel, you'll notice that Sunmotor's car is a clear smart fortwo knock-off. ...
Nissan to use solar chargers to keep batteries charged up 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
While solar-powered cars have a long road ahead of them before there is any real chance that our daily driven vehicles will be powered by nothing more than the sun (not counting large arrays powering a single electric car), a small smattering of solar cells hooked up to a car battery is enough to ...
GM Manager to chat about Spanish solar project live on GMNext 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
We recently told you about a General Motors assembly plant in Spain that was getting its roof covered in solar panels. For those that are interested in learning more about the project the GMNext site will be holding another in their ongoing series of live chats with GM leaders. On Thursday July 17 ...
Elon Musk on PHEV's, battery technology and solar cells 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria recently got some face-to-face time with Elon Musk, who, as you surely know by now, is one of the "product architects" at Tesla Motors. There were plenty of interesting quotes to come from the interview, but a few truly stood out from the rest. For instance, Musk slams ...
