There was a little bit of difference between the original calendar announced by Formula E, and the most recent calendar. Namely: Hong Kong was not to have a Formula E date, and was replaced by a date in Rio de Janeiro. When the calendar was announced, I went “ho hum”…
This thought has been in the back of my mind for awhile – the Formula E electric car racing series will set up an FIA sanctioned race track in each of the host cities for a full weekend. The focus of the event is an electric car race, and presumably…
US Senator Max Baucus (D-MONT) wants to kill the federal tax credit for electric cars (section 30D) in favor of a system for “technology-neutral” tax credits for “clean fuels”. The proposal is part of a larger package of energy tax code reforms that Baucus thinks will simplify the tax code,…
Those of us who are fans of electric motorcycle racing are probably jealous of all the attention the Formula E electric car racing series is getting. In any case, the latest bit of news is that Boston Celtics managing partner Wyc Grousbeck and a dozen of his co-owners in the NBA…
Is Silicon Valley’s mass transit system underfunded because the population density is too low, or because rich people don’t take mass transit? Last week I posted a couple items about the Google Buses – generally speaking, the privately operated bus systems run by several Tech Companies in the SF Bay…
Tesla Motors is getting ready to nearly double its production capacity. The company is buying new manufacturing equipment worth up to $415 million, for its factory in Fremont, that will bump capacity from 21,000 cars a year to 35,000 cars a year. Tesla is expanding sales to Europe, China, Japan…
Officials in Japan are beginning to suggest the unthinkable at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant: releasing stored radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. On Tuesday, the China Post reported that a Japanese government panel studying the problem of radioactive water at Fukushima have agreed to postpone the problem of…
An intense anti-hydraulic fracturing protest is underway in a remote tiny Romanian village, Pungesti, where the Jandarmeria (military style police from the central government) were deployed to brutally put down protesters, and ensure that Chevron can go ahead with plans to begin fracking and drilling for natural gas. As I…
The other day I wrote about Romanians in a tiny village fighting off Chevron’s plan to tap Shale Gas reserves, deploy hydraulic fracturing, while facing police violence because the Government is doing Chevron’s bidding. The story is an encapsulation of the whole globalized search for fossil fuel resources, and the…
According to a Bloomberg News piece diving deep into how Mary Barra came to replace Dan Akerson as CEO of General Motors, we learn that GM is planning to introduce a 200+ mile range plug-in hybrid electric car (electric car with range extender) by 2016, that will cost about $30,000. …
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…
