The Optibike is a purpose-built e-bike with all the electronics, batteries, and motor built right into the frame. The base model has a 400 watt motor and NiMh battery pack that will scoot you along at 20+ mph for about 20 miles, and the high end model, with an 800 watt motor and Li-Ion battery, will go 30+ with a little pedaling for almost 60 miles!

The Motorized Bottom Bracket® (MBB) is a patented design that keeps the mechanicals of the bike as simple as can be, allowing the use of standard bicycle equipment to get variable gear ratios for different terrain, which is something you can’t do with most e-bikes. The motor is available with output levels that vary from 400 to 850 watts, depending on which model you pick. The aluminum monocoque frame is unique, providing protection for all the electronics, and making for a stiff yet lightweight bike.

All in all, a very slick looking bike that has the potential to become a good alternative mode of transportation for a lot of people. The biggest obstacle of course is the price — $5,000 for the base model, up to $13,000(!) for the limited production OB-1 custom model. I guess bleeding-edge technology usually comes with a high entry fee. I doubt I’ll be able to talk the CFO at my house into spending that much money on an e-bike any time soon… But here’s to hoping that volume, economies of scale and competition will help to bring the entry price down out of the stratosphere. Soon.

The Saudis are widely believed to be concerned that escalating oil prices - crude hovered around $134 a barrel Thursday, nearly double what it cost a year ago - will cause a permanent drop in demand as consumers get more efficient or, worse, the global economy slows.

”[..] a permanent drop in demand.” That’s great for us. Horrific for them. They simply have to keep us addicted to oil. Put another way, they are not doing this to help us.

I’ve said before that the Kingdom’s biggest fear is a country full of Priuses (Prius animosity of late nonwithstanding). They’re trying to stamp that out by keeping us sucking down cheap oil.

I stopped to fill up my tank on my way back to work after lunch ($3.85 this afternoon, up 5 cents from yesterday, and an average of about 26mpg on this tank; not bad for a 13 year old Suzuki Sidekick). I drove into the station behind a city-owned street maintenance truck, and while I was filling up (and checking the oil & washing my windows) the truck sat there in the parking lot, idling. A 2 1/2 ton diesel-engined truck, idling for at least five minutes.

Living in the upper midwest, I know that there are times when it’s not a good idea to start & stop a diesel engine; usually in the dead of winter when the cold temps make restarting a diesel engine difficult (years ago I worked with a guy who drove an old Mercedes diesel, and he let the thing run 24 hours a day from mid-November through March every year so that a. he wouldn’t have trouble starting it in the cold, and b. so he’d have a nice warm vehicle on those cold cold mornings.)

But the temperature today is in the low 70’s and the sun is shining. So I’m left wondering; is there a compelling reason for this guy to have left his engine running during a five minute snack stop? Or is this an example of fraud/waste/abuse in our fine city’s workforce that warrants a letter/email of complaint to the street department?

I would’ve said something to the guy at the time — after all, he is working for me — but… Can anyone help me out here?

The result was astonishing: both cars had used nearly identical amounts of fuel. The Jeep had averaged 38.9 mpg - only 3.1 mpg less than its computer had recorded. However, the computer of the Prius appeared to be telling whoppers: it actually achieved just 39.9 mpg - a massive 17.1 mpg less than it had claimed.

I maintain that the Prius is something of a crock. Though it did get us all thinking green, this thing isn’t close to as wonderful as they all claim.

Update: This article claims that this test is flawed. Due to the type of fuel tank used by the Prius, the method they used to calculate real-world mileage is invalid, the article claims.

“We started with a clear liquid mixture on this side, we pumped it across this reactor filled with zirconia and we got a yellow liquid on the other end,” Krohn explained.

“So we knew we’d done something,” McNeff said. “We didn’t know what it was, but we had the instrumentation to take a look at it and compare it to biodiesel. And it matched perfectly.”

[…] There’s no electricity, the process is perfectly clean and there’s no waste. Anything that doesn’t get turned into oil is reused through the process.

Another pipe-dream, you say? Apparently not. They’ll be generating fuel before the end of the year.

A new plant is being built in Isanti, Minn. Using the Mcgyan process, it will be up and running by October, producing 3 million gallons of diesel per year.

I guess I’d fall into the hate column on this subject. My thought is that today’s hybrids are a waste; basically over-teched toys that return a miniscule increase in gas mileage from a comparatively massive increase in complexity and cost. To me a true hybrid would be a much better solution — an electric motor driving the wheels with a small bank of batteries to hold enough of a charge to get you up to speed, and a small gas or diesel motor driving a generator to provide enough power for cruising speeds & keep the batteries topped off. Same concept as a modern diesel electric railroad locomotive, just scaled down a bit.

So, how about you? Do today’s hybrid vehicles do anything for you? Are they the greatest thing since the threshing machine, a transitional step on the way to something better, or are they a total joke? Or are we about to get into a bloody war of words over the previous paragraph?

The 1996 2-door 3-cylinder Metro Solomon now owns opened on eBay May 7 with a bid of $200. A week later, Solomon won the car auction with a bid of $7,300. In 1995, a new Metro hatchback sold for about $9,000, according to Auto Mall USA.

Back in the 80s, my Mom had a two-door, 1986 Chevy Sprint. It had a three-cylinder, 1100cc Suzuki motorcycle engine and a 5-speed manual with a tall fifth gear.

I swear that one night, on a highway trip back from Minneapolis, with a tailwind, my brother and I clocked 60 m.p.g. in it.

Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Paster. A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota’s green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile. A used car, on the other hand, starts with a significant advantage: The first owner has already paid off its carbon debt.

I’ve often wondered about this: should we all just buy used cars? I look at the folks down in Cuba who have kept 1950s-era cars running just fine for decades now.

But then I think, doesn’t buying a used car just free someone else up to buy a new car? If you buy a used car, are you preventing a new car from being built? Or is it still going to be built and just go to someone else? You might not be directly responsible for a new car being built, but you’re indirectly responsible in the sense that you enable the market to exist. Right?

The sad, inescapable fact this all hints at is this: we just need buy less stuff, in general. We tend to only consider the energy efficiency of something once it’s built. We ignore the fact that an enormous amount of energy and resources go into building something in the first place. We pat ourselves on the back because we bought the efficient option, conveniently glossing over the manufacturing piece of it.

I guess that’s because once it’s built, that cost is sunk — it’s already incurred, so we therefore don’t feel responsible for it. I mean, the Prius is already built, and there’s nothing I can do about that right? But, back to my previous point, are we somewhat responsible because we enable the market?

At the risk of a jarring analogy, it’s like child porn. In the eyes of the law, if you consume it, you’re just as guilty as if you produced it, because without you, the market couldn’t exist and it wouldn’t need to be produced in the first place.

So, perhaps the true environmentally-friendly answer is…don’t buy a car at all? Buy a bike? But how much energy does a bike take to manufacture?!? Oh, hell, just walk then. But the walking shoes…

So, the final solution: walk naked (link mildly NSFW, but highly relevant).

Wired has a whole series of articles in the latest issue debunking sacred cows of environmentalism. It’s a good read.

What I bought is an electric Rear Wheel Conversion Kit from Golden Motor. It consists of a 36 volt, 500 watt brushless hub motor laced into a bike wheel, the motor controller and the hand controls. Aside from all that I also had to source a set of batteries, then figure out how best to attach it all to the bike.

As advertised, the kit should be fairly easy to install and set up — pull the original wheel off, pop on the wheel with the motor, then figure out how to hang all of the extra gear on the bike. But… as it was delivered, the wheel and hub required a bit of surgery to get everything to fit together properly. I learned afterward that the hub motor was originally designed for use on electric mopeds in China, and was later repurposed to be used for bikes. I won’t bore you with a lot of Make-like detail on all of the extra work and expense that went into getting it set up… Even after all that it still doesn’t fit the bike perfectly, but it does work.

Now that it’s all together — and the weather around here is finally shaping up — I’ve been able to venture out on it a number of times & make a few trips to work and back, and I have to say that the thing is a blast to ride. At speed, the motor is totally silent, so it’s like you’re riding a regular bike, except you move like you’re always on a downhill slope.

I usually find myself pedaling while I ride; it just seems weird to not pedal. And it’s rare that I take it out of high gear, as it takes very little effort to keep it going at about 20-25mph. Pedaling is somewhat optional, but how far you can go on a battery charge depends a lot on how much you help things along, and it also affects speed to a degree.

I use three 12V/7ah batteries for power, and I figure that’s good for about 5 miles or so on flat ground without pedaling. I live about 6 miles from work, so the more I help out the less chance I have to pedal the thing up the hill the last quarter mile on my own power. The motor is installed on an old ProFlex mountain bike with street tires. I haven’t weighed it with all the gear on it, but I’m guessing it probably tips the scale at about 70lbs or so. And at that weight pedaling up a hill with no assistance isn’t a lot of fun.

If I were to do it all over again, I’d do most things the same, but definitely wouldn’t buy a kit from Golden Motor. Their rear hub is still a work in progress, and the company is less than responsive to requests for help and complaints (like, not at all. And since they’re in China, what can you do?) When I bought my kit the cost for a front or rear hub was just under $300; now it’s more like $338 shipped, which is still considerably less than what other manufacturers sell. While my motor works fine and appears to be well designed & built, reports on Golden’s user forum make it apparent that quality problems are far too common, and the attitude that comes across from Golden is that they don’t give a rip. Spending a little more with another company would probably get a better product, and more importantly, better support.

All in all, I think the project is a success. The bike is fun to ride, the motor seems to be pretty durable and reliable (time will tell…), it still gives me a bit of aerobic exercise, and most importantly, I won’t be using a 3,000lb vehicle to haul my 230lb arse to work & back every day, finally getting the vehicle to driver weight ratio back where it ought to be.

After getting a green light by State environmental impact assessors, [the California High-Speed Rail Authority has] begun implementation of an 800-mile bullet-train system that will connect Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego. Trains traveling at 220 mph on the systems are forecast to carry up to 100 million passengers per year by 2030.

The biggest difference between KERS and a regular battery-electric hybrid is that KERS stores recovered waste energy in a rotating flywheel. Instead of converting waste energy into electricity and than back into useful energy again with an electric motor, KERS simply transfers the kenetic energy to a ~5kg flywheel in the F1 car’s transmission. The energy stored in the flywheel can then be used by the driver by pushing a “boost” button.

The “boost” button will align F1 with all those racing video games I played in the 80s. Drivers will need to “charge their boost” — I wonder if they’ll get a little progress bar which will grow as they earn boost back. Think of the fun n trailing driver will have coming up behind another driver who is out of boost.

Seriously — this will be an absolute riot on the track.

During its time at sea, the kite-assisted ship traveled a total of 11,952 nautical miles. During the time that the kite was deployed — which lasted anywhere from a few minutes to up to 8 hours — it pulled the ship with up to 5 tons of power at force 5 winds — a relief of more than 20% on the ship’s engines. Projected onto an entire day, this performance by the “Beluga SkySails” represents savings of about 2.5 tons of fuel and more than $1,000 a day.

After several agonizingly long seconds, we made the turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean. ‘You might want to pull it back,’ Walter suggested. It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. It was the fastest we would ever fly. I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily, but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar.

The ad aired during the Kent Hrbek Outdoors Show, and made me laugh out loud. I mean, a purpose-built $10,000 buggy made for rapid deployment for… ice fishermen?

Roll this bad boy off your trailer, drive out to your favorite spot (using your GPS, of course), drop the bottom down on the ice, pop up the tent top, drill a couple of holes and you’re in. Hear about a hot spot somewhere else on the lake? Pull in the lines, drop the tent top, lift the bottom, start the engine, and you’re off in seconds flat. Thin ice in between the spots? No problemo. This baby floats. If the snow is deep, all you need is the optional Track System; next best thing to a snow cat.

I think some people have just too much time & money on their hands. How long until we see photos of a redneck-built version, made from a jonboat and an old 4-wheeler? Or maybe that came first.

Fighter jet pilots are subjected to forces up to 10 times the pull of gravity, but the Mark V has produced forces upward of 20 Gs slamming against waves, said Lt. Damon Shearer, senior medical officer of Naval Special Warfare Group 4.

Soon after the vessel went into service, the Navy began getting reports of injuries.

Though it responded by installing shock-absorbing seats, there continues to be a problem with back, neck and joint injuries that occur over time […]

The Navy has engineered a new boat that runs smoother through the waves. Who would of thought that ride quality was a mission critical issue?