Remember Earthrace, the awesome carbon-fibre and Kevlar trimaran that was designed to take on powerboat speed-trials for round-the-world sailing? In the few years since it debuted the $2.5m bio-diesel boat has been whipping around cracking world records; now it’s going into its next job, acting as a stealthed support vessel for the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling organisation.
What’s bright red, has an almost comically-long chin and bug-eyes? No, not my ex-wife (yes, Marion, your damned check is in the mail) but the latest incarnation of the Factory Five ‘33 Hot Rod, perhaps the best alternative to a pious Prius we’ve seen so far. Factory Five took the regular planet-destroying engine out and replaced it with a custom 300+ horsepower electric drive that musters over 660ft/lbs of torque and pegs 0-60mph times of four seconds.
T-Mobile are offering a fuel-cell portable power pack as an accessory for their cellphone range, one of the first mainstream fuel-cell applications targeted at everyday consumers. The Medis 24/7 Xtreme Portable Power Solution runs on sealed cartridges of sodium borohydride, and can offer 20 Watt-hours from a single cartridge.
Each cell lasts up to 18 months unused, and is activated merely by squeezing it and slotting it into the charger device. Once activated, the cell should last for up to 3 months, though Medis recommend using it within six weeks.
After Shane flagged up a couple of interesting and definitely distinctive electric cars yesterday, it only seemed fair to counter with this: Nissan’s Land Glider concept. Reminiscent of the VentureOne tilting trike, the twin-seater Land Glider leans into turns to avoid falling over, and is blessed with one of the coolest cockpits we’ve seen in some time (you can see it in the gallery after the cut).
Video demo after the cut
Sometimes a gadget comes along that is so pretty that, when you realise it has a spec-sheet more barren than the Sahara, you can’t help but tear at your chest and roar. LG’s GD510 “Pop” isn’t quite so bad as all that, but it’s a handsome 3-inch touchscreen phone – the most compact ever with such a screen-size, they say – with a brushed aluminum body that throws out most of the things we take for granted in today’s handsets. WiFi we can live without, but a handset lacking 3G? For shame!
Video demo after the cut
Lexus have announced not one but two hybrids, though we have to say there’s only one of them that we’d like to find in the SlashGear garage. The 2010 Lexus HS 250h, shown here, is the bread & butter of the range, a four-door saloon capable of 35mpg and various combinations of hybrid power. Meanwhile the more exciting model is the Lexus LF-Ch Concept, which you can see after the cut, and which is headed to Europe to show that hybrids don’t have to be slow.
The “earth friendly” juggernaut continues, with even high-end home automation specialists feeling the need to slap some green on their spec sheets. You’d find it pretty hard to fault the range of amps and control panels from Knoll Systems generally, but if the one factor stopping you was concern for the livelihood of the Crested Grebe then their new GSZ44 and GSZ67 controller-amplifiers should salve your conscience.
It’s been a few months since Samsung announced their GT-S7550 Blue Earth cellphone, a solar-powered touchscreen handset made from recycled PCM plastics sourced from old water bottles, and since then the company has officially named it and slapped TouchWiz 3.0 onto it. Russian site Mail.ru have been playing with a pre-production model.
Video after the cut
Lamborghini may not be the first brand you’d associate with a hybrid, but then again you wouldn’t assume they’d make a four-door saloon and look what they did with the Estoque. The car company’s CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, has revealed that Lamborghini will release a hybrid version of their Gallardo supercar in 2015.
If you’re going to ask someone to design a bike, you may as well make it an Olympic medal winner. Chris Boardman has put pen to paper and come up with this concept for his Boardman Bikes brand, an “intelligent” cycle that not only keeps track of your calorie count but has fingerprint recognition for a biometric lock, integrated mediaplayer and a solar-powered motor for giving you a push when faced with hills.
JP
