At the UNFCCC COP21 Climate Summit in Paris, France, eleven banks including the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Credit Agricole, announced the launch of ‘Five Voluntary Principles for Mainstreaming Climate Actions Within Financial Institutions’. The potential importance of this is that banks have a great deal of control over…
A new development proposal slated for property next to Santana Row (a mixed use retail development in San Jose) would drastically increase car traffic, while doing nothing to encourage use of mass transit. Earlier this year I wrote about a proposed “Agrihood” project nearby which would combine high density housing…
The promised future of zero emission technology is not just electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable electric systems. Fuel cell technologies have long been promised to play a large role in cleaning up the system around us, even though fuel cell deployment rates are very low. Today the…
For years we’ve had a little semantic squabble in the plug-in electric car field. General Motors insists on calling the Chevy Volt a range extended electric vehicle, while in truth it is a plug-in hybrid. But, point out that obvious truth in certain crowds is sure to cause outrage because…
Self-driving electric robotic race cars will take the stage in the 2016-2017 FIA Formula E season. Called the ROBORACE series, it will be a “support” race to the main Formula E event. Where the Formula E series features electric race cars driven by humans, the ROBORACE series will feature electric race cars…
The quest for long range electric cars is heading towards lithium metal batteries, according to two companies who presented at the IDtechEx battery technology conference last week in Santa Clara. The companies, Sion Power and Solid Energy, both claim the lithium-ion battery won’t supply the needed energy density and cost improvements to implement…
Audi seems to have a clue — for long range electric cars to succeed, there must be a widespread fast charging network offering charging rates well above 100 kiloWatts. Tesla Motors has demonstrated with its Supercharger network that the combination of 70 kiloWatt-hours or more energy, and 120 kiloWatt charging,…
An announcement today from Audi tells us that the German automakers are, through the Charging Interface Initiative e.V. (CharIN), planning to extend the Combo Charging System to support 150 kiloWatt charging rates. This jibes with plans from Audi, Porsche, and others, to begin selling electric cars with 95 kiloWatt-hour or more…
At The Long Tail Pipe, we’re all about clean energy stuff and getting into the middle of technology to understand how to improve all our lives. With that in mind the last couple months I’ve been studying how to do solar design, and recently wrote a resource page on…
Tesla Motors electric cars use a proprietary charging plug. Adapters are available from Tesla Motors allowing owners of their cars to use public charging stations built with standard charging plugs (J1772, Mennekes, CHAdeMO). Tesla Motors is also deploying charging stations, both fast charging and destination charging, to locations around the…
Toyota today announced their 2016 Toyota RAV4 lineup, and instead of reinstating the RAV4 EV (as many of us want Toyota to do) the company added a RAV4 Hybrid to the line. It means Toyota now has eight hybrid cars in its complete car line. While this results in a…
The Obama Administration has (finally) rejected the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, in a hollow victory for environmentalists who’ve staged this as a key battle in preventing climate catastrophe. While this is an important victory, other news from today’s news feed demonstrates that the oil companies plan to simply take the…
Electric Vehicle adoption should make a big contribution to reducing the urban heat island effect, significantly lowering temperatures in big cities during the summer, causing a large decrease in electricity consumption because there’ll be less need for air conditioning. That’s the claim of a research paper published in Nature in…
In a statement today from BMW’s top management, the company said clearly – electric vehicles are the future. Oh, and “digitalization” meaning the integration of advanced computer systems and networked connections into cars. The statement by Harald Krüger is attributed to a quarterly conference call dated Sept 30, 2015. As we’ll see…
The first Tesla Model S theft in Canada results in a quick capture of the thief, thanks to technology built into the car. The car’s owner had been at a concert with a friend, but found the car missing when they returned. Using a smart phone app for the car…
