| Wednesday, March 22, 2006 |  |
| The New “Power Plants”: Trees Make Electricity? | 2 comments |
 22 Mar 2006 @ 02:41 Jacob Gordon, Los Angeles, CA It appears that a small electrical component company near Boston has figured out how to get electricity out of trees. MagCap Engineering is pretty sure they’ve come up on the next renewable energy revolution. By pounding a nail into the trunk and a conductor into the ground, a faint but consistent charge is detected in a wire running from the tree to the earth. They are now charging NiCad batteries and illuminating LEDs off the current. MagCap is applying for a patent while MIT tests the phenomenon in the blistering Cambridge cold. A company spokesperson told The Boston Globe they hope to be able to charge hybrid batteries this way, but they also propose lighting roads. Makes sense, I suppose. Everything living is running on electric current. More > |
| Smart Cars: Still Coming to America | 1 comment |
 22 Mar 2006 @ 02:39 from Tree Huggers Collin Dunn, Durham, North Carolina TreeHugger first reported that Smart Cars would be availabe in the US about 10 months ago, yet a story in PCmag.com quotes parent-company Smart-Automobile LLC as announcing last week that they would begin making their way in the States. After a bit of digging, we discovered that there was a Smart Car sold stateside in May of last year, but it appeared that the lucky husband & wife in Reno, NV received the first (and only, at the time) model imported into the US via an auction on eBay. In any event, according to a much newer ZAP (Zero Air Pollution, the company responsible for Americanizing and distributing the cars) press release, there are now more of the diminuitive ForTwo models on their way. 85 units will be made available to select dealerships across the country; we can only hope that more will soon follow as there are still about $750 million in advance orders waiting to be filled. Once they arrive, prices will range from $15,000 to $25,000 More > |