Smart car charging comes to San Diego: If you envision freeloading friends trying to charge their cars up at your place in the future, fear not: as a part of its testing of car-charging stations, San Diego will have participants use a Plug Smart “intelligent charger” that makes sure the drivers get the bill for the electricity.
Package delivery by UrbanMole: Both Fed-Ex and UPS (among others) are doing there best to green up their operations. Designer Phillip Hermes’ UrbanMole concept would take the trucks off of the street completely with a “capsule-like device … that travels through an underground pipe network that transports packages of all stripes.” (via Cleantechnica)
Phones, flashlights, and sweet solar-powered rides… all that and more in this week’s green tech finds.
Funding priorities: Is a national smart grid the best investment right now? Or would local micro-grids fed by renewable power serve us better?
More proof that teenagers do know it all: Fourteen-year-old David S. Dixon built “a street-legal quadricycle with a solar-powered electric motor” for a middle school project. (via Gas 2.0)
A 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle is probably not your idea of a dream car. At 25 mpg, it’s probably also not your idea of a green car. But a group of mechanical engineering students at the University of Kansas have completed a year-long project aimed at making a Bug much more eco-friendly… with an eventual goal of creating a 500 mpg vehicle.
Deutsche Bank’s online carbon counter
