It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that the school, whose students manage to build cars overnight inside off-limits campus structures, has a team working on an EV that rivals the Roadster. And this one can charge in ten minutes.
The team is retrofitting a 2010 Mercury Milan hybrid with an electric engine built for a bus. Their EV will have a top speed of 100 mph, will crank out 12,000 RPM, and - using a mere 7,905 lithium ion batteries – can drive 200 miles on a single, 350 kwh charge.
The bad news is, 7,905 batteries are expensive – the MIT team spent $80,000 on their battery pack alone. Also, 350 kwh is a humongous amount of charge; you don’t get that from your outlet, you need special chargers for that. A lot of EV batteries might be able to charge that quickly if they were hooked up to a mega-sized charger like that.
The good news is that this car isn’t bad for a group of inexperienced students’ first try. GM, and all the other car companies who want to build EVs for real should take note, and make sure to hire the best and brightest engineers. Maybe they should just hire these guys.
Via Gas 2.0
Original post by Yoni Levinson
Photo: Flickr, CC They Ran the Pumps 24/7 Because it Costs too Much to Pay Someone to Turn Them Off…
I think few people realize how much water is used for food production. The numbers are quite mind-boggling, and a side effect of this is that a lot of energy is used to pump that water. So much so that the Idaho Power Company has started paying farmers to turn off their water pumps in the afternoon (during peak demand), resu…
Original post by Yoni Levinson
Regular readers of this site may remember Vanessa Farquharson, a reporter at Canada’s climate-denying, right-of-the-WSJ National Post, who from March, 2007 to March, 2008 made one green change in her life every day, and blogged about it at Green as a Thistle. Now, like every green blogger, she has produced a dead tree version, Titled “Sleeping Naked Is Green ” and subtitled ” How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days.” The blog was fun; Vanessa writes well and has a great sense of humour. She put it all in perspective in one of my
Original post by Yoni Levinson
Image via Greenpeace Greenpeace is up to their usual antics to try and bring attention to an electronics manufacturer they’re particularly upset with - Hewlett-Packard. This morning, Greenpeace activists climbed to the roof of HP’s global headquarters in Palo Alto, California and painted “Hazardous Products” in enormous letters. It is a response to the fact that HP is backing away from a promise to exclude PVC and BFRs from their products by the end of the year. But, do big words on a rooftop lead to big actions from big manufacturers?…
Original post by Yoni Levinson
Photo via Twilight Earth As the number one coal user in the world, China’s got a lot of soot on its hands. Around $13 billion worth, according to a recent report from Greenpeace. That’s how much the nation’s coal-burning ways cost the environment last year: $13 billion worth of damage by polluting the air and water, degrading the environment, and injuring…
Original post by Yoni Levinson
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