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2011 was supposed to be the year of the electric vehicle. All kinds of people said it—including this guy. And in some ways it was. After years of anticipation—and piles of presumptuous magazine stories and unending commercials—2011 saw the commercial introduction of GM’s extended-range electric Volt and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf. The tax credits were ready, gasoline [...]
The makers of electric cars have a serious challenge before them. Right now electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or the Tesla Roadster offer significantly inferior range at much higher prices than conventional cars. Of course, the cost to recharge an electric car is considerably less than the price of gassing up a conventional vehicle—especially [...]
If you’ve ever looked up at the sky when you hear the hum of an airplane, chances are you’ve seen the channels, streaks, and halos that sometimes pattern the sky in the aircraft’s wake. These cloud constellations can happen because of temperature changes as airplanes pass through certain clouds, as we learned in 2010. But [...]
I’m on a deadline today for the magazine (that thing that shows up sometimes at your house), so blogging is going to brief. But wanted to link to a neat video from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) on the true price of gas. CIR tallies up the environmental, climate, health and security costs of [...]
Here in the U.S. there’s a lot of excitement that 2011 could really be the Year of the Electric Car. GM is coming out with its plug-in model the Volt, Nissan has the all-electric Leaf and Ford has announced a line of plug-ins, hybrids and electrics. Throw in outside-the-box ideas like the Israeli startup Better [...]
Vice President Joe Biden earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe” not because he used to hop the rails hobo-style in his youth—that would be the Onion version of the Veep—but because he made over 7,900 commuting trips on Amtrak between Washington and his home in Wilmington during his 26-year career in the Senate. Logically, the White [...]
After decades of waiting and wishing, 2011 really is shaping up to be the year of the electric car. GM’s Volt—an electric car with a gas-powered “range extender”—and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf will soon be appearing in Americans’ garages. (Ads for the cars—Nissan has the one with the polar bear—are already almost impossible to avoid.) With [...]
Gasoline is like the circulatory system of the American economy. When it’s working fine, you barely notice it. But if something goes wrong, you end up in mortal trouble really fast. Is the struggling U.S. economy headed towards a gasoline-induced heart attack? A report by the Lundberg Survey of American cities found that gas prices—which [...]
When executives from General Motors visited the trading floors of JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—the two firms handling the auto company’s initial public offering—they were given a standing ovation from the bankers. Maybe the rest of us should join in. Less than a year and a half after the company declared bankruptcy and seemed headed [...]
Welcome aboard the cruise ship of the future: shuffle board, casino, ballroom, and….nuclear reactor? Today Lloyd’s Register, the international standards organization for the classification and design of ships, announced that it has begun a two-year project with a consortium of companies to look into the feasibility of nuclear-powered commercial ships. The primary application will be [...]
