A team of scientists from Cornell University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook announced this week in a specialized publication that they discovered, at least theoretically, how to turn hydrogen into a metal at significantly lower pressures than ever thought and make a superconductor out of it.
A German supplier of electronics and powertrain design to most of the major automakers for the last 25 years gives a solution to both the battery and the car manufacturers. The company is called IAV (Ingenieurgesellschaft Auto und Verkehr), and their solution is to charge the electric cars on-the-go through electromagnetic induction.
The electric cars' problem of a low mileage may have found its solution. Recently discovered Nickel-Lithium batteries have 3.5 times more energy than the standard Lithium-Ion batteries and besides this, they are much safer to use.
A company named Dow Chemical revealed a new line of solar roof shingles that convert sunlight into electric energy, being able to generate $5 billion in revenue for the company by 2015.
The French government announced that it plans to spend €1.5 billion (about $2.2 billion) in the development of an infrastructure that will encourage the development of clean vehicle technology and battery manufacturing.
Scotland built a 180 m tube they call "The Sea Snake", that will capture the waves' movements and energy and transmit it via subshore cables to the land.
Napa Wine Company in Oakville found an interesting way of producing hydrogen by using the winery's own wastewater, using naturally-occurring bacteria and a small amount of electricity to extract hydrogen the organic material they usually throw away,with a generator the size of a refrigerator.
Yesterday morning, the Hefer intersection along the old coastal road of Route 4 in Israel was the place where a piezoelectric generator was put to the test and generated some 2,000 watt-hours of electricity. The setup consists of a ten-meter strip of asphalt, with generators lying underneath, and batteries in the road's proximity.
With small steps, LEDs entered in the home and industrial lightning, as well. Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corp will soon release a high-output LED light bulb which power will be equivalent of an incandescent bulb of 60 W.
IBM, through its "Big Green" - "Battery 500" project, aimed to produce a battery for an electric car that would be able to carry a family-sized sedan up to 500 miles, spotted the lithium-air (STAIR) invention as its goal, and predicted that they could improve the STAIR battery further with the nanoscale semiconductor manufacturing techniques they possess.
