Toyota will reportedly start to make plug-in hybrids in 2012 with an initial annual production around 25,000 vehicles. This would allow for drivers to plug in and cruise (presumably at speeds below 45MPH) for about 15 miles before the battery has depleted its plug-in derived charge and reverts to traditional hybrid mode.
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Posted in Hybrid Vehicles, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles.
Tagged with toyota, toyota plug-in.
The developers of Handbrake have announced their first official build for bug testing for the 0.9.4 release. The software is unsupported and undocumented. This means you wont get any support for how to use it, or why something isn’t working right. But its another sign that we are getting closer to 0.9.4. It is a big release – the core engine of handbrake (x264) has got a big performance boost since November last year – from Nehalem instructions, and all around performance increases of about 30% (depending on CPU architecture) over the x264 that was released in 0.9.3 (tested on my C2Q 2.66, OSX). Also added was soft subtitles – subtitles embeded in the video file as text, rather than burnt (rendered on top of) the video frame. Best of all, it seems to properly encode HD video (which is a problem I had in 0.9.3). Cant wait for the final release…
Posted in Digital Video, iphone.
Tagged with handbrake.
GM has purchased enough lithium-ion batteries from Hitachi for over 100,000 hybrid electric cars over the next several years. While this doesn’t relate to the Volt, it does give GM a leg up on other hybrid car manufacturers by moving to lithium-ion technology first.
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Posted in Batteries, Hybrid Vehicles.
Tagged with gm, hitachi, hitachi batteries.
While the headline might sound bad, it turns out that, according to a source, GM is looking to put the Voltec powertrain into more mainstream products – rather than one specific model around 2015.
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Posted in Range Extended Electric Vehicles.
Tagged with Volt, voltec.
The Western Governors’ Association released their phase 1 report on renewable energy zones in the western United States, Canada and Baja in Mexico. They’ve identified over 180,000MW of power generation facilities in 11 western US states (and a small sliver of Texas) that meet basic suitability criteria.
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Posted in Geothermal, Green, Solar Power, Wind Power.
Tagged with renewable energy, wecc, wga.
Ford rolled out their Escape PHEV to Hydro Quebec this month. For three years, Hydro Quebec will drive the vehicles for research purposes.
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Posted in Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Vehicles.
Tagged with ford escape, ford escape phev.
So I’ve been playing around with the iPhone OS 3.0 (since I have a developer account, I really should come up with some awesome software and make money…). Now that the software is officially released and reviews are going up from all over the web, here is my 2c on the improvements…
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Posted in Apple, iphone.
We all know the Volt is set to hit at the end of 2010. But how much of an impact will they have? My own calculations show me reducing my gasoline consumption by 90%, but is that the case for everyone? How do you compute gas mileage for the average buyer?
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Posted in Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Vehicles, Range Extended Electric Vehicles.
Tagged with argonne national labs.
AT&T put out a FAQ (pdf) in which they put any speculation to rest that they might be working on a billing system to charge users for MMS messages on the iPhone. They stated…
Later this summer, as part of the 3.0 software, AT&T will make multimedia messaging (MMS) available at no extra cost to customers with a text messaging bundle.
They also said they will support tethering later as well, but its understandable AT&T would charge more for tethering as the amount of data that can be transferred increases dramatically.
Stay tuned for my OS 3.0 firmware review Wednesday (when Apple pushes it out for the public to download and install).
Posted in Apple, iphone.
Tagged with att, iphone, mms.
I’ve been trying to brainstorm what Apple could have in store for the 2010 iPhone. OS 3.0 and the new iPhone 3GS models seem to wipe out just about every major reasonable criticism (carrier support aside).
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Posted in Apple.
Tagged with iphone, iphone os.