In the largely unknown village of Pungesti, Romania, a battle is being waged between locals fighting off an illegal encroachment by Chevron seeking to deploy hydraulic fracturing for drilling in shale reserves. According to reports I’ve found, the local council voted to deny Chevron access to the site, but the…
A few weeks ago we broke news that Arthur Kowitz and a few collaborators were planning to launch a new electric motorcycle racing series for North America. They’ve been busy building interest, putting together rules, and other organizational stuff ahead of their first scheduled race in February. Between the Open…
The San Francisco Bay Area has a transportation problem/crisis on its hands. Every day some corridors turn into miles of gridlock, while the region is saddled with a pathetically fragmented mass transit system. The other day I wrote about how Google (and other Tech companies) are building privately owned mass…
Tesla Motors is the poster child for the whole project of electric car adoption. They make what may be the best car ever, the Tesla Model S, whose sales are growing to the point where it has a significant market share in luxury car sales. But if Tesla were to…
Here in Silicon Valley a growing phenomena is “The Google Bus” which is actually practiced by many of the Tech Companies here, not just Google. The simple implementation is a shuttle bus operated by the company that drives employees between the mass transit station and the campus. But the new…
Is rogue plugging into a 120 volt outlet a “theft”? The news this week is full of shock over a man arrested for “stealing” 5 cents worth of electricity from his school. As electric car owners we might be looking for any opportunity to plug in and charge, and an…
A new electric motorcycle team, Future Electric, has launched via IndieGoGo (link below) and claims to have designed the worlds fastest electric motorcycle. One of these days we’ll get all the groups who make that claim into one race and settle it once and for all. Maybe. Anyway, the team…
The FIA Formula E World Cup electric car racing series has been up to a lot of actions, which I’ve not kept up with. The most recent is that the FIA has approved their 2014 proposed schedule, and before that they approved several teams and a media partner. An asterisk…
Even if the Keystone XL pipeline is blocked, that might not block the shipment of Alberta Tar Sands Oil to refineries. The “Carbon Bomb” that Bill McKibbon wants us to be afraid of is set of with every shipment of Tar Sands oil to a refinery, so that the oil…
Prof. James Hansen and a group of scientists released a paper today claiming we need to go nuclear to prevent climate change. Generally speaking I’m against nuclear power, and point at the Fukushima disaster as proof of my fear of that technology. But.. the scientists behind the paper make an…
Professor James Hansen and a team of climate scientists from around the world released on Tuesday a scientific paper, “Assessing Dangerous Climate Change,” to call for serious action now to address climate change. The scientists argue that Humanity has already delayed action enough that drastic action is now required to…
Brammo announced today that Darvill Racing would be contesting the 2014 FIM eRoadRacing World Cup as a factory supported team. This is both great for Brammo, and the first sign that there will be a 2014 eRoadRacing series. Darville will be running with two “Factory-supported privateer Brammo machines”. One is…
I see from the Facebook pages of the Buckeye Current electric motorcycle team (from Ohio State Univ) that they are planning a run at the 2014 TT ZERO. I thought I’d seen a post from the VA Tech Bolt team that they’re heading to TT ZERO as well, but I…
Finally, a “Cruiser” styled electric motorcycle, though it’s still not the kind of cruiser bike I want (hint: my gas bike is a Honda Rebel 250). Anyway, Voxan Motors has unveiled the WATTMAN at the Paris Motorcycle Show. Details are slim: 200 horsepower, 200 Nm of torque, up to 10,500…
The Nissan DeltaWing entry in the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans was built by a consortium of companies, and its official name was “Delta Wing Project 56” (DWP56). That detail is leading to a lawsuit, from the leader of the project team, that could derail the Nissan ZEOD RC…
