Every gramme counts

... when it comes to fuel-saving driving. The company Elmoto shows how you can make even a scooter lighter and protect the environment. The 45 kg light electric scooter of the company holds an L1E approval allowing to travel "from A to B" at 45 km/h with a clear conscience. Here we go - for a price of € 4,498.

Click here for details: http://elmoto.com/en/

Driving a car using thought control instead of a steering wheel?

An iPhone, iPad or even thought-controlled car - this is made possible using technology which was developed for autonomous cars. It proves: In the future artificial intelligence will find its way into traffic - but only from the passenger seat.



Further information about the project AutoNOMOS:

http://autonomos.inf.fu-berlin.de/

Who is that - the solution

The Nobel Prize winner who wanted mankind to benefit from his discovery is Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.



Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923) was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Following transliteration conventions for characters accented by an umlaut, "Röntgen" in English is spelled "Roentgen", and that is the usual rendering found in English-language scientific and medical references.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6ntgen

Who is that?

He was the first physicist who was awarded a Nobel Prize and refused to take out patents on his discovery.

Maverick – the flying car

A driving car is just too boring for you and you have 80,000 euros and don't know how to spend them? Just invest your money into Maverick, the second flying car since 1956. The tandem designed two-seater gets off the ground with a propeller and a parachute. The small craft can fly on one tankful for about 2.5 hours at 65 kilometres per hour.



Click here for more information:
http://itecusa.org/maverick.html

Protecting dykes and walls digitally

"fibrisTerre“: The company produces, installs and distributes measurement equipment for uninterrupted monitoring of the health of large structures for early detection of damage.

http://www.fibristerre.de/



The entrepreneurs have developed a digital sensor on the basis of one single glass fibre sensing even the smallest earth movement. "Using our fibre we can monitor each structure uninterruptedly and record the strain at any point", says Nils Nöther from fibrisTerre. The sensor - a 1/8th mm glass fibre with plastic sheathing - is placed in the soil, either as an individual fibre or as a mat. The sensors detect any crack as small as it may be along a distance of some hundred metres up to several kilometres and signals it accurately to the metre.

Car made of bamboo

Since 1992 Frank M. Rinderknecht has shown visionary car ideas at the Geneva Auto Salon. This March 2011 the Swiss showed BamBoo and here the name is program. The vehicle reminding of a Rabbit or a safari car is partly made of bamboo. It can be admired in the fair halls at Geneva from 03 to 13 March 2011.




Thanks to the electric drive you can also quickly drive through the dunes and the foldable bicycle for the last few metres to the ocean is also on board - likewise equipped with an electric helper. A motorway is not part of the ideal world of the BamBoo.




Besides the many grey-white-brown creations at the Auto Salon, the new concept does not only raise enthusiasm with eye-catching design by the world-famous New York Pop Art artist James Rizzi. The car provides really smart innovations such as a communication display instead of a radiator grill, an inflatable roof which can also be used as a beach mat or a foldable bicycle for the last few metres from the vehicle to the beach.



The driver can communicate with his passengers via the innovative "identiface", a display-based surface developed by MBtech, a Daimler subsidiary, without having to speak. "Identiface" replaces the radiator grill. Your own facebook contents or news can be recorded and played thanks to a connection with the internet. For this purpose, the development service company Helveting, supported by Zürich Versicherung, developed the "BamBoo community" platform.



Here some technical data: The vehicle provides space for four people and features an e-drive from the group of companies Fräger (German e-Cars) in the front and its power is rated at remarkable 54 kW. This high-torque aggregate "made in Germany" accelerates the 1090 kilogram vehicle to a maximum speed of 120 kilometres per hour. Thanks to the light construction - the steel chassis with lying shock absorbers carries a robust composite chassis in conjunction with the use of polymer plastics - the battery lasts for 105 kilometres.

You can find more information at:
http://www.rinspeed.com/~bamboo

OK, but this whole idea is not exactly new, for example the Shellette Beach Car by Michelotti:

http://www.flickr.com/~fine-cars

http://rides.webshots.com/~Fiat-Shellette

If you cannot decide

... simply take both: Rail and motorway are used by the rail/road Unimog from Zagro.

For first impressions go to:



On the road or off the road, the wide range of implements and auxiliary equipment enables the Unimog to carry out a huge range of varied jobs. On rail the Unimog with ZAGRO track guidance constitutes a high value rail vehicle. The Unimog can perform shunting, track laying work, service, repair and maintenance work, as well as rerailing and emergency rescue work.

It represents a perfect multi-purpose vehicle, meeting and often exceeding the demands of customers and specific rail authorities. A skilful driver can quickly change between rail and road. The requirements to on-rail the Unimog is merely a 5m section of level track.



At Hannover Messe 2011, a Unimog fully equipped with ifm control technology and sensors could be admired. But Zagro also develops other vehicles to the rail/road principle:

http://www.zagro.de/en/

Do electric cars have to look like electric cars?

The magazine mobility2.0 reported on 17 March 2011 on page 2 that electric cars have to look different to be successful: For design professor Lutz Fügener of the Hochschule Pforzheim it is clear what makes electric cars attractive for buyers: "You have to see by passing by in the street: That is such an ecological thing."

Do you agree?



To download the German magazine go to:

http://www.leoni-electromobility.com/~mobility_week.pdf

Further information about the Renault Twizy:

http://www.renault.com/~twizy

Using the sun to circumnavigate the globe

Futuristic is an understated expression for this sea vessel. Covered all over with solar panels, the world's largest solar-powered vessel by the name of MS TÛRANOR PlanetSolar has been accepting the challenge since April 2011 to circumnavigate the globe as the first sea vessel powered by solar energy - to be precise this means about 40,000 kilometres in 160 days.

The name means 'The Power of the Sun' in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings language because the vessel made of carbon fibre is driven only be solar energy. Thanks to its ca. 500 m² solar modules consisting of 38,000 solar cells on a surface 31 m long and 15 m wide, the MS TÛRANOR PlanetSolar can be navigated without direct sunlight for up to three days. Because the most modern submarine accumulators of the world store the energy. Furthermore four electric motors are supplied by them with current.



According to the technical data the vessel weighs 85 tons, 12 tons of which go to the batteries. The vessel is navigated via a small joystick. 160 days are planned for the 40,000 some kilometre trip at an average speed of about 8 knots.

The circumnavigation is to take the message of the efficient use of renewable energies symbolically around the globe. During the long-term use during the circumnavigation the efficiency of the vessel is also to be tested. German and Swiss companies were involved in the construction of the catamaran. The MS TÛRANOR PlanetSolar shows at present that the engineers have done an optimum job.

http://www.planetsolar.org/en/expedition.html