The Green Optimistic

Porsche has already been recognized all over the world as building quality performance cars, despite their “heavy” price and big engines. It looks like now Porsche is trying to green itself out and use an innovative hybrid technology based on a flywheel, installed in a racing car.

I’ve always wanted to have a Prius, but didn’t have the “tim€” and “$pace” for one up to now. Good news are on the way, as Toyota is planning a smaller variation of the Prius – the FT-CH. Cheaper and smaller, the FT-CH is addressing the younger segment of the green-trendy population.

2010 comes with no surprises anymore as it continues the trend imposed last year, when most of the manufacturers presented electric vehicles and hybrid or plug-in hybrids.

One of Europe’s largest automotive manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz, announced that the next generation of the S-class will come with a plug-in hybrid engine.

CMT-380 is the name of the newest hybrid electric concept car, built by 48 year-old Richard Hilleman, a former electrician at the Nuclear Test Site in Nevada, who is now Chief Creative Director for Electronic Arts, the video games company. The CMT-380 is powered by a microturbine, built by Capstone Turbine Corp.

A long time ago, Toyota Motor Corporation has started its green thinking trend with hybrid cars which revolutionized fuel consumption. Now they found a way to combine electric vehicles with hybrid ones and they presented their concept just days before the Tokyo Motor Show.

A research team at the Tennessee Tech University and Middle Tennessee State University has developed a Plug-in Hybrid Retrofit Kit that allows car owners to convert their regular cars to a hybrid vehicle.

Researchers from Purdue University discovered precisely how fluid boils in capilary cooling sytems, and that by designing a system by using those rules they got a much more efficient heat transfer between the object to be cooled and the liquid.

One of the major cities in Europe, Madrid, has found an innovative solution to give a new meaning and usage to the phone booths.

Israeli start-up ETV Motors, located in Tel Aviv has invested about $12 million in this technology that combines a car, electricity and a jet engine. The prototype of a modified Prius will be ready next year for testing.

It’s time for some fun once in a while on The Green Optimistic. I wish I could do that a habit and, once a week, present some funny environmentally-related video. If there are lots of them, I’ll even make a category.

Toyota has announced that plans to develop a cheaper hybrid vehicle, a competitor for the Insight model which just entered the U.S. market. Toyota officials have revealed that their hybrid will be developed on the current Yaris platform.

The diesel charges a battery, and the battery propels the bus for as long as fuel exists in the tank. A dutch company, called e-Traction has developed a new type of hybrid bus. It has the same working principle, but the difference is that the electric motors are embedded in the wheels.

For almost two years, Toyota went quiet about their FT-HS Concept car which was first presented at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. All actions were stopped until now, when the need of a new car on the market has increased. FT-HS has a 3.5 litre V6 hybrid engine, and is an environmentally-friendlier sports car.

A few days ago, the Geneva Motor Show was the event where we could see the hybrid that can travel 187 mph (almost 301 km/hour), or 2,000 km without recharging or refilling.

Saturn Aura is going to be the first hybrid GM is launching on the US market, as a direct competitor for Toyota Prius. Only in 2006, Toyota sold 107,000 Prius units, creating a big popularity of the hybrid.

Who said a car has to be electric to be called a “hybrid”? Artemis Intelligent Power has converted a BMW 530i to mechanically capture the energy resulted from braking (aka “regenerative braking”), and use it in an electrically-hybridized car fashion.

While some study ways of electronically controlling the shock absorbers and giving you a smooth and steady ride, and others are seeking ways to convert the heat generated by the engine into electricity, a team of undergraduate MIT students invented a shock absorber that harnesses the energy from the very bumps it hits. Several truck manufacturers and the U.S. military have given them attention, and planned to use their technology in their cars.

Toshiba has announced for a while that they will introduce on the market a direct methanol fuel cell-based battery charger(DMFC) at the end of march 2009. The company also announced it will releases for market DMFC packs for cellphones and laptops starting with April.

Remember the article about the GM’s Chevrolet Volt? Not much time has passed and now Opel is talking about their hybrid car, Opel Ampera, created on the same technology as Volt.

The new car will be released at 2009’s..