The 2015 TT ZERO electric motorcycle race is coming up — the electric companion race to all the gas bike racing during the famous Isle of Man Tourist Trophy week. A new face is having a go at the TT ZERO, Victory Motorcycles, a subsidiary of Polaris Industries. Polaris recently bought out…
Yesterday I posted a very long (nearly 10000 words) piece summarizing the TTXGP’s history. It took over 24 hours of effort to sift through all my old news reporting and pictures, to construct the summary. All that work for a dead electric motorcycle racing series may sound like I’ve lost my…
Back in 2009, three electric motorcycle racing events formed the basis of several years of electric motorcycle racing. I was privileged enough to attend two of the 2009 events, and form a relationship with the TTXGP series that let me attend several years of electric motorcycle racing events in North America…
Last week I had the chance to visit Hyundai’s North America headquarters as one of a gaggle of automotive press trying out the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid and 2016 Sonata Plug-in Hybrid cars. This is an important step for Hyundai, because until now they’d been touting their Tuscon Fuel Cell vehicle,…
Maybe the 2016 Leaf will (finally) come with two battery pack sizes – 24 kWh and 30 kWh? And maybe Nissan will be selling upgraded battery packs to owners of existing Leaf’s? But maybe the people on a certain MyNissanLeaf forum are just smoking crazy stuff? Over on a MyNissanLeaf…
This week Hyundai is holding a series of press/media events at which they’re unveiling the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug-in Hybrid. I’ll be in Los Angeles on Friday to see the car, and a few days after that will be posting my review. In the meantime let’s go over the press releases…
A couple days ago, an Amtrak train crashed in Philadelphia killing 8 people and injuring dozens more. While the NHTSA hasn’t finished its investigation, thus learning the root cause, it’s known the train was traveling at 106 miles/hr on a track segment with a 50 mile/hr speed limit. Therefore the immediate…
On Monday the Obama Administration, specifically the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, approved a plan by Shell Oil to begin exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea, off the north coast of Alaska, on the Outer Continental Shelf. It’s an area where the Bush43 Administration held a…
Today Tesla Motors released preliminary quarterly financial results figures through a shareholder letter (as is Tesla’s customary practice, a 10Q giving official figures will be published in a couple weeks). The good news is the manufacturing rate was 11,160 vehicles (10% better than guidance), averaging more than 1000 cars built per week,…
PlugShare just became extremely more useful. It was already the best smart phone app for locating electric car charging stations, not just in the U.S. because its data extends to Australia, Europe and other places. What’s new is Recargo has added a Trip Planner that’s pretty useful. What’s shown is trip…
Some electric car charging station installations require a power management system to ensure power consumption is constrained to the service panel capacity. The “service panel” being the grey box containing circuit breakers for each circuit, and the master circuit breaker for the panel. Service panel capacity is what constrains the total…
There are two climate change related efforts which put conflicting constraints on building electrical service and energy accounting. On the one hand we want “Net Zero Energy Buildings” where, between a combination of energy efficiency and local renewable energy (rooftop solar), the building generates all the electricity it consumes. On the other…
In May 2013 at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green Conference, then-GM-CEO Dan Akerson promised that the Next Generation Chevy Volt would be $10,000 cheaper, and profitable. Today, GM announced the Next Generation Chevy Volt MSRP, starting at $33,170 (excl $825 deliver charges), and while that’s a lot cheaper than the 2011 Volt’s…
A neat trick that could give us the power needed to charge any number of electric cars is simple – switch all streetlights from sodium vapor lamps to LED streetlights. LED streetlights are far more power efficient than other lamps, plus reduce light pollution giving us the possibility to see…
Another potential land development proposal in Santa Clara gives me a great example of the disjointed disconnected non-integrated planning process I discussed the other day. That is, as a long-time resident of Silicon Valley (over 25 years) I see that much of the sprawlitis-causing-traffic-congestion that’s now plaguing our area is sourced…
