Tagged With "Innovation"

Vehicle collisions with animals kill more people than dog, snake and bee bites combined. And while the photo you use shows an animal that weighs about 1000 pounds, that animal is a moose. I know it's tough for city folks to tell them apart. Here is what a bull elk looks like.... Here's what a cow elk looks like....

A great piece! Amazing to me how some of the best products of their day were not built commercially . Even when they were, sometimes they were not successful. Cars like the GE-100 are great examples of that. A true find and thanks for teaching us more!

Love it! Exactly the type of finding that makes a trip memorable. Something proponents of electric cars seem to forget or choose to ignore -- where does the electricity come from? Currently mostly from coal and oil fired plants, so the practical side of having them for most doesn't currently make that much sense (might as well burn the oil product in the car engine, right). But I am hopeful that was energy technology improves, as it surely will, we'll develop better ways of charging these...

The argument, and I'm not informed enough to judge it, is that the amount of fossil fuel needed to generate electricity for a plug-in is far less than that required to run a gasoline engine. The same sort of argument that points out that a gallon of fuel moves far more freight on a diesel train than a diesel truck. On the other hand, that's about plug-in cars. For hybrids, it's a different story because the batteries charge while the car is running on gas. So less gas is used than using gas...

As I understand it, with hybrids the batteries charge when the car brakes are applied (transferring the energy of moving to the battery), so they're especially well adapted to city driving in places with lots of stop signs and traffic lights. Less useful for driving on open road because you don't brake often. So living in Brooklyn, I think the hybrid would be a reasonable choice for you. I don't think battery technology is anywhere near "ripe" yet, but as with the Mercury and Gemini...

Much further to go, of course, but even in a highway driving situation (and a city/highway mix), hybrids are generally cheaper to run than their gas-only counterparts. That's Camry vs Camry hybrid, for example, not Corolla vs Prius.

A little further research confirms what I thought: at least in the Toyota and Ford hybrids, the gasoline engine powers a generator/charger while in use. That's in addition to the power captured from braking.

I have some friends with a Prius, and their greatest fuel efficiency comes when driving in the city, not on the highway. Paradoxical, but it shows how good the braking is at building up a charge. Good to know there is a backup generator. While the hybrids save on fuel, they also cost thousands of dollars more than their non hybrid counterparts. For an average consumer, it takes many years to recapture that extra cost for the hybrid on fuel savings, if they ever will. And there's the issue of...

In the past week, we've covered reports of multiple people gored by bison while taking selfies and a report yesterday about an angry elephant breaking up a dinner party. Fair enough, but what about collisions with elk on Sweden's rural roads?  ...

The Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation takes a big leap on July 1, moving from backstage to a public exhibition space of its own in the National Museum of American History in Washington.    Its 3500...

Two small but fascinating museums in Schenectady, New York offer a day's worth of information and education. One's for science, the other for history.

Long forgotten except in Schenectady's science museum, the little GE electric car that could, long before Prius and Tesla. Here's its story.