Ocean-bound shipping containers are an often-overlooked source of CO2 emissions — over 90% of all non-bulk cargo carried worldwide arrives in containers, and many of them are sent back empty. Enter the innovative Cargoshell collapsible shipping container, which can drastically cut emissions on return trips by collapsing to a quarter of its full size.
North America’s oldest and largest taxicab fleet recently announced that it is going green! Yellow Cab’s parent company, Yellow Group, runs about 3,000 taxis in the Chicago area, and they just unveiled plans to add 100 new compressed natural gas (CNG) taxis to the fleet, with plans to add more in the future.
Cork is a useful material for making a number of things — wine bottles, furniture, and cork boards, to name a few–but airplane parts? A group of Portuguese cork producers recently launched the Aerocork project, which is investigating the feasibility of replacing plastic PVC with cork in the fuselage, wings, and flaps of light aircraft. The cork-based parts could be coated in carbon fiber sheets to create a lightweight, fire-retardant material.
Hummer H2 Transformed Into Horse Cart
by Ariel Schwartz, 02/01/10
As oil supplies become more scarce and the Hummer looks more and more like an extravagant joke, it only makes sense that someone would decide to turn the jumbo car into the ultimate symbol of bygone times: the horse cart.
Florida to Receive First High Speed Rail System in the US?
Last year, $8 billion was set aside for high-speed rail lines in the US and then in December, Congress added another $2.5 billion to that total in hopes of spurring high-speed rail transportation. And money looks like it is already beginning to be distributed – the first lucky recipient? Florida. President Obama is set to travel to the sunshine state tomorrow to make the announcement awarding $2.5 billion for the first phase of their bullet train system from Orlando to Tampa that will eventually connect to Miami.
DIY Hyper-Modified Honda Motorcycle Hits 214 MPG
Fans of the hypermiling super-modded Aerocivic, meet its motorcycle counterpart! Designed and built by velomobile enthusiast Allert Jacobs, this streamlined recumbent motorcycle has been outfitted with an aerodynamic fairing that increases its top speed and enables it to get over 200mpg while cruising at 55mph!
Mark Clifford’s DIY Electric Porsche
Taking a well known fossil fuel based roadster into the electric age is a certainly a worthy undertaking for any car manufacturer. But doing it yourself? That really grabs our attention. Mark Clifford from the Utah EV Interest Group has slowly but surely been converting a Porsche 911 into an electric supervehicle. Why go through all the trouble? Because it’s a Porsche!
The ICARE Project: A Trip Around the World in a Solar and Wind-Powered Car
Forget biodiesel, hybrids, and electric vehicles–Swiss engineer Mark Muller has designed a car capable of taking a 40,000 km (24,855 mile) trip around the world using only wind and solar power. The car, built as part of the ICARE project gets its juice from solar panels during the day and a wind-powered generator at night.
NASA Unveils All-Electric Personal Flight Vehicle
NASA is currently working on a personal aircraft that will put jet packs to shame. The Puffin is an all-electric one-man aircraft that could be the start of some new and amazing air travel technology. With two prop electric engines, lithium phosphate batteries and a top speed of almost 300 mph, people will be trading in their iPhone for a chance to see one of these things in action. Originally designed for covert military insertions because it is quieter and has a lower heat signature than combustion engines, the Puffin could beat out traditional aircraft in terms of environmental impact as well.
Design your Own Electric Vehicle With the Trexa EV Platform!
What if designing your own electric vehicle was as simple as picking out the parts and plugging them together? Trexa is aiming to make that dream a reality as they unveil the world’s first fully-electric vehicle development platform. This svelte all-wheel drive platform includes everything you need to make a vehicle go – a battery, driveline, and power electronics. The design of everything else is up to you, and its modular nature means that it can be tailored to virtually any application – from futuristic connected tram systems for commercial fleets, to high-performance hot rods, to neighborhood-friendly EV’s perfect for a jaunt around town.
Top 5 Eco Vehicles From the Detroit Auto Show
The Detroit Auto Show kicked off this week with a slew of fantastic electric and hybrid vehicles ranging from the purely conceptual to the near production-ready. Electric vehicles were so prominently featured that they prompted the convention to open Electric Avenue, a 37,000-square-foot showcase where visitors could see and test-drive evs! Without further ado, check out this year’s Top 5 from the Detroit Auto Show.
San Francisco’s First Bike Box Gets Stenciled!
San Franciscans, if you were wondering what that green painted box on Scott St. is for, wonder no more. San Francisco’s first green bike box now has a user-friendly picture of a bicycle stenciled on it. Bike boxes, or waiting areas for bikers to pull into at traffic intersections have been used in New York City and Portland, Oregon since 2008 and now have a home in SF too!
Flying Bicycle Lane Lets You Soar Above Traffic
Bike commuting is a beautiful thing – it’s an efficient, quick way to get around an urban area and it’s great for your heart. Only problem is those pesky cars that are continually getting in the way! What if you could have your own bicycle traffic lane completely separate from the cars and safely out of their way? Martin Angelov, a Bulgarian architect, came up with this incredible concept for urban bicycle transportation – a bike lane in the sky that he calls “Kolelinia”. It looks a lot like a tightrope contraption, but this fairly sophisticated design is meant to handle commuting bikes on a steel wire high above traffic to connect popular destinations.
Toyota Unveils Cheap, Compact Hybrid Concept
Toyota recently unveiled the FT-CH, a hybrid concept car that stands to one-up the Prius in terms of price and performance. A full two feet shorter than its predecessor, the compact hybrid is lighter, nimbler, and more fuel-efficient, making it great for city driving. Although it isn’t officially going into production just yet, Toyota is hinting at a production version that will be priced lower then the current Prius and part of a new ‘Prius Family’ of cars.
Americans Ditch Over 4,000,000 Cars in 2009 for Alternative Transportation
We Americans love our cars, (or at least that’s what they’ve been telling us all these years) but this last year showed a remarkable drop in car ownership – down by 4,000,000 vehicles! Some may blame it on the recession, but analysts are linking the decline to other factors like increased urbanization, gas prices, traffic and congestion, automobile saturation and even concerns regarding climate change. This is welcome news to us and we hope this trend continues, with more people relying on public transportation, car sharing, bikes, and their own two feet.
Tobacco: The Next Big Biofuel?
We’ve seen biofuels made from some pretty strange substances — tuberculosis bacteria, watermelons, and chocolate, to name a few — but a new effort to gather biofuel from tobacco leaves might win the award for best use of a carcinogenic plant. Researchers at the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University recently discovered that tweaking the genes in tobacco plants can increase oil production up to 20 times, which means that much greater amounts of biofuel can be produced from the plants.
TOP 6 GREEN TRANSPORTATION STORIES OF 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines! Inhabitat presents our Top 6 Transportation Stories from this past year in a tried-and-true package of trains, planes and automobiles. Keeping in mind common motifs of speed and alternative power, get ready… get set… GO VOTE on the “sustainamobility” story that moves you!
China Unveils the World’s Fastest High Speed Train
China is speeding towards the future of public transportation with the launch of the fastest high-speed train on the planet! Averaging 217 mph (350 km/h), the new train is faster than a speeding bullet train, and will link Wuhan in central China to Guangzhou in the south, covering a total distance of 663 miles (1,068 km). The new rail service will cut the travel time between the cities from over 6 hours down to 2 hours and 45 minutes. Note to the US: we need one of these!
Recycled Christmas Tree Made of Bike Wheels!
Talk about re-cycling! This simple and elegant alternative Christmas tree in Bermondsey Square, London is made out of 35 wheels from old bikes, and has been delighting passers-by with its unconventional looks. Designed by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, the tree is a very fitting symbol of sustainability on a worldwide scale – especially since the wheels making up the design are borrowed from U.K. charity Re-Cycle which collects recyclable bike parts to restore old bicycles and ships them to Africa to be used for transportation by local people and health workers fighting the AIDS epidemic.
Sunday Streets Return to San Francisco!
San Francisco has just announced that it will be continuing its popular Sunday Streets program next year with new dates and locations for 2010! Running for the past two years, the event closes off a series of roads to vehicular traffic and and opens them to street parties, bike-riding, and uninhibited power-walking. Announced by Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the new series of Sunday Streets will expand into new neighborhoods, have longer hours, and will stop traffic on a total of nine days in 2010 as the program settles into a pleasant permanency.
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
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