If you have seen an episode of Pimp My Ride, then you’ll find this commercial for Zima pretty funny. You’ve got three kids and a loving husband, but from the look of your brand new mini-van, no one would be able to tell. The Zima team is willing to Mom Your Ride and turn it into the mini-van that SCREAMS, “I have three kids and a loving husband!”
What if I told you that this car can get 230 mpg, drive at freeway speeds AND only costs about $20K? I can’t believe it myself, actually, but those are the exact claims about this car from Aptera Motors:
Everyone loves the story of the guy who tinkers in his garage and creates a prototype that will change the world. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did it with their Apple Computers. What about Steve Fambro? Can his car that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie change the way we think about cars? I hope so because he is promising me a lot:
* 0 to 60 in under 10 seconds
* Choice of hybrid or all electric (150 miles on a single charge)
* 230 mpg at the speed of 55 mph
It’s a two-seater, with not much room for anything but two people. The car itself only weighs 850 pounds, which helps improve the gas mileage substantially. By using a carbon composite frame, he reduced the weight of the car without compromising the safety. He based his models of design and safety on airplanes. Are you willing to sacrifice a backseat for that kind of fuel efficiency? I sure am. Where do I sign up?
For more information:
* Car creator has grand designs | The San Diego Union-Tribune
Sure, robotic parking structures are cool, but this device allows for parking sixty-seven cars in a space that would usually only hold twenty-four. In cities where land is the limited resource, the cost of a robotic parking structure actually makes sense. In Salt Lake City, we just knock down an unused old building and put a new parking structure in its place. They have these in Europe and Japan, but the U.S. finally has one in where? New York, of course. If you would like to know more, Popular Mechanics has the full story here:
Watching this video sparks an innate fear of technology that comes from watching too many 1950’s sci-fi movies and 1980’s action flicks. This could be the scene of science gone terribly wrong or a horribly gory fight sequence.
Advertisements have been popping up everywhere for Cadillac. In my gaming magazine, on my websites and everywhere. They feature alternative-looking individuals who are obsessed with Cadillacs. It really makes me feel bugged. You can see the videos that they have put up here:
The whole advertising campaign makes me mad. You can’t make me like your cars by sticking one of my peers behind the wheel. Cadillacs are monsterous boats of cars with the gas mileage of an SUV. There is NOTHING about them that appeals to me. Just sticking a multi-tattooed person in front of them isn’t enough to make me want one.
Here’s a unique idea, Cadillac: Try designing a car that I want to buy! How about a sleek tiny thing with great gas mileage and unique styling? It can cost a lot of money. That’s what Cadillacs are, but throw me a bone.
With the design of their cars, Cadillac is running into the sad fact that their consumers are getting so old that their children have taken away the keys. Your population is dying off, Cadillac. I’m sure you realize that, but you can’t get the living to buy your cars without an automotive makeover.
Here is a great video from Ryan and Jay at Ryan is Hungry. Greg Rose gives an indepth look at his veggie oil car. He gets used vegetable oil from a local Asian restaurant and powers his car with it.
Greg makes this conversion look so simple until I realize that half the year, I would have to run on straight diesel fuel because it’s so cold in Utah that veggie oil can’t be heated enough to actually work as auto fuel. There are so many ideas on how to make cars that are fuel-efficient and even liberated from fossil fuels, but unless they can work in places like Utah and Canada, they won’t catch on in the mainstream.
There are some places where you can get Bio-Diesel mixed fuels for colder climates. Here is a link to find a distributor in the U.S.
You’d have to have a pretty fuel-efficient car to get from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas without a fill-up. That means packing your fuel with you or risking frozen fuel in your lines in Cedar City if you buy a big bottle of Wesson Oil at Costco. Veggie cars aren’t quite ready for primetime. The biggest problems are the climate issues and the availability.
Can’t wait until it’s easier to drive my car without making a dent in our environment!
The thought never once occurred to me, not even when I was staying in San Francisco and parking was so burdensome that I just left my Beetle in the one good spot I could find the entire time I stayed in the city. Why own a car when you live in San Francisco, New York or other towns with amazing public transportation? Well, sometimes you need to buy pillows and taking them home on the bus is just an exercise in futility. Sometimes you have a last minute appointment and you need to be there NOW, not 45 minutes from now. Sometimes you need to actually LEAVE the city.
Those are all rare occurrences, though. What if you could share a car? These few companies are actually making that idea a reality:
I heard about this concept from Tara Hunt on her weblog, HorsePigCow:
She lives in San Francisco and she has been using Zipcar for awhile. She has a list of what she loves about them, but my favorite reason is here:
“It’s a ‘community shared’ car. This means when you join Zipcar, you are part of a community of people. I was walking down the street in NYC, chatting Zipcar up to my friend and a very stylish guy walked by us, turned around and said, ‘You are right, honey, Zipcar is da bomb!’ winked at me and gave me a big grin. I was on the bus and mentioned Zipcar to my son and a couple smiled at me and said, ‘We love Zipcar.’ People can connect through these things.â€
In cities like Salt Lake City, Utah, reliquishing my car would limit my life to five square miles. Our public transportation is merely adequate in the city and pathetic in the suburbs. I could get rid of my car, but my access would shrink to the area available to my bicycle. I wouldn’t even be able to visit my mom without an hour-long bus ride (not including transfers). In larger cities where these car sharing services are available, however, it actually makes sense. I wonder if it will spread to the inner reaches of the country and if it does, how long it will take…
Here is an article from CNN Money about a partnership announced between Ford and Microsoft.
They are talking about a system that will be in the new Ford cars that will let them wirelessly download email, MP3s and allow you to talk hands-free on your cell phone. It just shows me that Ford doesn’t get it. I don’t need my car to download MP3s.
Here is a list of five things that the tech-saavy person needs from their car:
Several Electrical Plugs: I want to plug in whatever I need, whether it’s my laptop, cell phone charger or a DVD player. Preferrably, I would like a plug for every seat, an extra plug for the driver’s seat and two plugs in the trunk. Sure, I can use a converter, but why should I? If you want to make me happy put some REAL electrical plugs in the car instead of those nearly useless cigarette lighter units.
Gas-Efficiency: Why are they wasting time trying to get my car to download MP3s when I’m paying almost three dollars for one gallon of gas? Being gas efficient is just as high-tech as MP3s. Wow me with a car that can get 50 MPG without plugging it into the wall. That’s the kind of gadgetry I can really get behind!
Drink-Holders: I don’t think car companies realize how much we live in our cars. I want built-in drink holders that will hold ANY drink I want. This technology hasn’t been perfected yet and convenience stores and beverage companies are constantly trying to create containers that will work in our cars’ pathetic drink holders. If I have to commute for an hour in traffic, I don’t always want a coffee. Maybe I’ll want a Big Gulp. Maybe I’ll want a soda in a bottle. Impress me by inventing a drink holder that will work with whatever drink I might be obsessed with right now. When I’m driving from one end of the country to another, I’m going to be drinking a wide variety of drinks. Make a drink holder that works with all of them and you’ll have my heart.
Unique Design: All the cars look the same. Right now, you can choose between sedan, van, compact and SUV. That’s it. Every car from every manufacturer falls into those categories. I want a car that looks DIFFERENT. That’s why the VW Beetle, the P.T. Cruiser and that funny box of a Scion are interesting to folks. They don’t look like all the other cars. Sure, they pigeon-holed the Beetle into the compact car category, but nothing else looks like it. Quit designing the same car over and over. Give me something completely different.
Standardized Stereo Units: It is so difficult to change the stereo in a car that there are technicians who are hired to do that every day. A smart car company would adopt standardized stereo units that can be swapped out easily. To prevent theft, they should require a key or RFID tag of some sort, but I want to be able to just pull it out of my car like an old 8-track tape. I want to be able to swap easily between a GPS system, fully functional stereo or even a DVD player for the passenger seat. I don’t want to have to worry about whether there is a free technician to install my new GPS system. I want to be able to just pull out the old one and easily plug in the new technology. Since I expect my car to last longer than the lastest technology, I want to be able to replace the stereo without involving anyone else.
It seems like car companies are wasting their resources trying to get their cars to wirelessly download MP3s and have a person online who can unlock your car remotely when what I really need is pretty simple. Stop listening to what other companies tell you what you need and start listening to your customers. We’re here, screaming our needs to you and it feels like you never listen.
I love to hear about cars that have incredible gas mileage, are smaller and more efficient or run on alternative fuel sources. That’s why I write about so many different transportation methods here. You can understand my excitement at finding this:
They have reviews of all the alternative fuel and hybrid cars that are and aren’t available. You can get your green car fix once a month with them and read their articles online all you want. They also have a pretty interesting forum that is active. I found this subject to be pretty good:
The worry about a car that can’t travel a long distance seems to be a common one that hasn’t been solved yet. Have fun investigating. I sure did!
ProClip is one of those great ideas that seem obvious—after you’ve seen it. ProClip is a mount for various gadgets that doesn’t require modification to your vehicle and doesn’t damage it. The ingenious part is its two-part universal design: You select one component that matches your car, and one component that matches your gadget. Joining the two together (with screws) creates a customized mount that fits both car and gadget perfectly.
I’ll admit I was quite skeptical when I got my ProClip: I own a car that I’m loathe to damage in any way, firstly because it’s leased and I’m not allowed to modify it, and secondly because I want to keep it nice. So of course I’ve tried suction cup solutions, and you probably know about how well those work—you wind up tossing them after a week in frustration.
The ProClip fits into two of the seams in the car’s dashboard (different ones for each car) and uses the spring tension of the bracket to stay in place. In my car, the lower shim fit between the upper console plate and the bottom of the air vent, while the top shim fit between the dashboard and the top speaker grill (the bass speaker is in the center front of the dash in my car). The lower shim was easy—it slid right in and hooked behind the place when I rotated the bracket into position. The upper shim was a bit more work: There actually wasn’t any space for the shim between the dash and the speaker grill. The ProClip came with a little wedge shaped tool to “make space†between them—hence my skepticism.
But I used it as instructed, and it actually worked. The tool did open up enough space for the top shim of the bracket to fit into, and once it was fit, it stayed perfectly in place. Putting the gadget (in this case, a Treo 650) into the clip takes a little force because it fits snuggly, but the bracket was more than secure enough to stay in place. I worried about the top clip coming off or squeezing out if too much downward force were placed on the bracket as I put the Treo in, but I couldn’t get it to happen so it’s not an issue.
Most importantly, the whole ProClip could be removed easily and didn’t leave any evidence of ever having been there. The gap between the dash and speaker pressed right back together on its own once the ProClip was removed. Now, I don’t know whether or not a permanent gap would be left if the clip was in place for a long period of time, but even if it was, the gap width is less than 1mm wide and 2cm long, and in a position where you’d not notice it even if it did deform the dash plastic.
ProClips make a great hands-free solution for your gadget, and I strongly recommend them for any device you want to keep securely mounted in your car. Your bracket will vary and I couldn’t test them all, unfortunately, but if they’re all made with the precision that mine was, you’ll be quite pleased with them.
Many vehicles even include multiple bracket locations for multiple devices. Brackets cost between $30 and $40 dollars, with gadget clips costing between $20 and $35 dollars depending on type. You’ll need one of each, for a complete solution costing between $50 and $75 dollars. Fairly expensive for a clip, but considering the fact that there’s no installation labor and it doesn’t damage your vehicle, it’s more than worth it in my opinion.
ProClip also makes a handlebar mount for people insane enough to use a gadget while motorcycling, a dual-gadget adapter to mount two devices on any bracket, a move clip kit that allows you to easily move your clip between two vehicles, tilt swivel mounts, and numerous other accessories that will allow you to get exactly what you’re looking for in a device mounting solution.
ProClips are available for nearly all cell phones, iPods, PDAs, and for some specialty devices such as GPS receivers and DVD players. Check their website for complete details.
I’m always in search of alternative transportation and here is another bicycle engine, the Golden Eagle Belt-Driven Bicycle Engine. If your commute is over twenty miles each way, this bike engine might be what you need.
Cool Tool has a review of the engine and the reason they even tried it in the first place.
“I tried bicycling the old fashioned way for a couple weeks, but 25 miles urban each way in a Phoenix summer is suicide no matter how good your physical condition. I began looking for an assist-motor for my bike. Most “whizzer†type bicycle engines are a hassle. Electrics don’t have the range for a 50 mile daily commute. Two-stroke motors are a pain and become expensive due to the necessity of pre-mixing oil and fuel. Friction-drive bicycle motors wear out tires rapidly and behave badly on rough surfaces & water.â€
“I eventually found a 4-stroke motor and belt drive kit from Golden Eagle Bike Engines that weighs very little, operates quietly, and gets me to work and back for about 45 cents a day in fuel. This engine comes as a 25cc Subaru-Robin 4-stroke kit for $549 including shipping. It was delivered 4 days after I ordered, and it took me just under 1/2 hour to install on my $200 department store mountain bike.â€
Instead of spending $7 a day in gasoline, he went down to 45 cents! Riding a bike to work might not be an option to a lot of people in the northern states this winter, but if you live in a more temperate climate, this just might be the best option for you to save money.
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