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I am writing about energy supply modernization because it is thought more as an article of quasi-religious belief than as an actual process involving engineering. Electric Car Recharging Subject to sufficient supplies of lithium for batteries and copper and rare earth metals for electric motors, electric cars have a great technical future. However, changing technology can result in changing job opportunities since vehicle-making jobs might forcibly be relocated by governments to countries that supply the essential raw materials. Vehicle manufacturers should endeavor to build multi-year crucial raw material stockpiles. An electric car might go about 280 miles on 70kwh of...

54 models affected. Toshiba has issued a recall for Li-Ion battery packs sold with certain models of its laptops and notebooks due a risk of the device catching fire. The hardware company yesterday advised customers to immediately turn off their PC and remove their battery to check whether their device was affected. The vendor is offering free replacement battery packs for customers with affected units. Around 54 different PC models are affected, sold nationally from retail stores like Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi from June 2011 to September 2015. A full list can be found here. "There is a risk...

Forget hand-cranked chargers and solar-powered cases, the latest way to solve the ever-present problem of a dying phone battery is by using thin air. Researchers from Texas have developed a miniscule ‘micro-windmill’ that is just 1.8mm wide and can transform wind energy into electricity. The team behind the design claim hundreds of the nickel devices could be fitted to a phone case, for example, and users could charge their phone simply by waving it in the air. - - - - The technology was built by micro-engineering experts at the University of Texas Arlington (UTA). Each windmill is made of...

Tampa Bay's first electric car station Updated: Thursday, 30 Jun 2011, 7:14 AM EDT Published : Thursday, 30 Jun 2011, 7:14 AM EDT TAMPA - Call it one small step toward making gas pumps a thing of the past. On Thursday, AAA Club South unveiled the first of 100 electric car charging stations at its offices in Palm Harbor and Westshore. The station was installed at the Westshore office, where FOX 13’s Jen Epstein spoke with AAA official Jessica Brady, and another is set to open in Palm Harbor in July. "You pull up, plug it in, push a button...

I went to breakfast this morning at Eat 'N Park in PIttsburgh. When I pulled into the parking lot, the spaces next to the handicapped spots were open so I thought, "Sweet! I"m gonna get a rock star parking spot" but as I pulled in, I noticed a sign posted in this spot that said "Reserved for Those Driving Hybrid Vehicles". I was PISSED! Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a new trend? Am I that out of the loop?

Wash. Senate approves $100 fee for electric cars...The state Senate approved several bills Tuesday, including a measure to impose a $100 annual fee on electric cars to make up for lost gas tax revenue, and a bill that eases the transition to a new statewide high school math assessment. The Washington State Department of Transportation estimates that drivers with gasoline-powered vehicles pay about $200 a year in gas tax. The state gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon. The bill now moves to the House for approval. The Senate also passed a bill that would ease the transition into new...

Who is going to buy all these cars? The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel. This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle. At least that's what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that...

Car-rental giant Hertz Corp. said it planned to offer the Smart fortwo electric vehicle as part of a car-sharing program in three metropolitan areas starting later this month. Hertz will make the tiny vehicle -– a two-seater smaller than a Mini or even the new Fiat 500 that’s about to hit the U.S. auto market -– as part of the Connect by Hertz car-sharing program in New York later this month. It is part of an effort by Hertz to offer a variety of electric and plug-in hybrids worldwide.

Austin City Council members this week will consider charging Austin electric car drivers $50 a year to boot up their batteries from any Austin Energy plug-in. The proposed rate would apply to Austin Energy's "Plug-in Everywhere" program — a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles. The city would offer a $25 six-month subscription for unlimited service, including sales tax. Without the subscription, it would cost about $2 per hour of charging. Austin Energy is installing more than 100 public charging stations throughout the city by the end of this summer. The Coulomb Technologies Inc. stations are being paid...

For a list of the greenest 2011 model-year vehicles, there sure are a lot of traditional gasoline engines among the top 12 cars ranked by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The council's 14th annual ratings of the most eco-friendly cars on the market include internal combustion models such as the Smart Fortwo, the Ford Fiesta and the Hyundai Elantra. (Snip) The battery manufacturing and disposal processes -– which can be emissions-laden and toxic -– were also factored into the calculations and knocked electricity-dependent vehicles down a few rungs.

Even if they aren't always terribly accurate, EPA fuel economy estimates have at least made it easy to compare the gas mileage of one car to another. But now that plug-in cars are entering the market, things are about to get much more complicated. How do you compare the fuel efficiency of a car that runs on gasoline to one that plugs into an outlet? ... Q: So what's the fuel economy for the Chevrolet Volt? The question is, which fuel economy are you talking about? The Volt gets 93 MPGe when running on plug-in electric power. The EPA estimates...

Travelers will soon be able to get more than country cooking and a fire-side game of checkers at Cracker Barrel. The Lebanon-based restaurant chain announced Tuesday plans to install electric vehicle charging stations at 24 locations in Tennessee. Cracker Barrel will be part of a pilot project funded primarily by the Department of Energy. Company officials say the locations of their restaurants near interstates make them ideal for charging stations. CEO Michael Woodhouse points out that the original Cracker Barrel locations sold gasoline. Fueling pumps were removed during the early 70s because of the oil embargo. Twelve of Cracker Barrel’s...

Imagine: It’s Friday evening, and the sun is down. You are rolling home in your environmentally responsible EV after an honest day’s work, emitting exactly zero greenhouse gases. You give a wave to your likewise electrified neighbor who’s bringing home the bacon to wife and family. You put the car in the garage and hook it up to the charger that nice electrician had installed. You shout “daddy’s home!” Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. A huge fireball shoots into the sky as the transformer on the pole out on the street explodes. Down at the corner, another explosion. A block...

<p>Getting your home ready to charge an electric car will either require little time or money ---- or a couple of months and thousands of dollars. It depends on what kind of electric car you buy, the wiring in your home and how quickly you want to juice your ride.</p>

Richard Gilbert is a Toronto-based consultant who focuses on energy and transportation. His latest book is Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, written with Anthony Perl. My last post suggested that two types of transportation fuel could replace oil products. One kind – including natural gas and biofuels – could be used in versions of the internal combustion engines (ICEs) that today provide propulsion for almost all road vehicles. The other alternative fuel – electricity – would require a switch to electric motors (EMs) for propulsion. I concluded that electricity is the best alternative, especially where there is...

Visitors to the Los Angeles Auto Show are wooed by the vehicles' futuristic designs and the promise of fuel savings, but many tire-kickers raise worries about how they would keep the cars powered up. So amid a flurry of announcements about ever more clean-fuel models coming to market, industry officials kept busy touting how there was a growing network of public and private charging stations available for electric vehicle operators. "Southern California is really quite close to completing this electric web," said Mike Sullivan, who sells clean-fuel cars at his chain of LACarGuy dealerships in the Southland. Sullivan's company has...

No workers yet have vehicles that need them, but company hopes to enable greener commuting. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has installed three electric vehicle charging stations at its office campus in Southwest Austin, the company said Tuesday. The stations are the company's effort to support workers who might want to buy electric cars and plug-in hybrid vehicles that are coming to market. No AMD employees currently drive such vehicles to work, but several have expressed an interest, said Justin Murrill, the company's global sustainability manager. "We wanted to have these charging stations so that our employees could have the confidence...

ECOtality and Coulomb are the leaders in the emerging EV-charging market. They convinced the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) they were well-equipped to put a charging infrastructure in place quickly and gather important driving and charging data for the department about early EV users. In turn, the feds showered ECOtality with a $115 million grant to install, at no cost, around 15,000 charging stations in homes and public locations through the EV Project; Coulomb, meanwhile, got $37 million for a 4,600-charger program called ChargePoint America. These aren't the only two companies making chargers. Nissan has partnered with AeroVironment to equip...

The electric movement is still well underway, and for companies like NRG Energy, it takes a huge investment to make sure that it sticks around. Teaming up with Walgreens may seem like an unorthodox move to some, but apparently NRG Energy believes that choosing 18 locations across Houston and Harris County in Texas is a safe bet for seeing some return on their investment. The eVgo Network, from NRG Energy, is one of the first commercial electric-vehicle-charging networks in the United States, and they will initially feature over 100 charging stations throughout the US. The total investment from the company...

Local governments across South Carolina are planning to set up 80 car charging stations as new electric cars arrive in the state. The State newspaper reported Monday that a nonprofit organization called Plug-In Carolina is coordinating efforts to set up places where vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf can be recharged. Plug-In Carolina has obtained grants from the South Carolina Energy Office and gotten support from public utilities to help with the projects. Local governments in Columbia, Greenville, Charleston, Conway, Myrtle Beach, Spartanburg, Rock Hill and Union each plan to install charging stations. The first 40 of...