More good news on the alternative fuels front. I was listening to GM’s Bob Lutz talking to a reporter yesterday and he spoke very highly of the process of making ethanol from most any carbon rich waste. Most of us probably associate ethanol production with corn, you know, moonshine, and more recently, some companies have [...]
From the category archives:
Science frontiers
If gasoline prices have you a little frustrated, there is a silver lining. As I said long ago, rising prices bring new technology. I came across this rather amazing article over the weekend about Craig Venter, the fellow who mapped the humane genome, and who is now working on reengineering simple life forms to consume [...]
G-Oil was introduced at the SEMA show last week. G-Oil is a green oil that is completely petroleum free, it’s made from “American grown base oils” which seems to be rendered beef tallow in this case. The American Petroleum Institute should be issuing certification within a month and it’s available for all automotive applications from [...]
What do you call a spark ignition engine that runs on JP8, the military’s standard fuel for jets and most everything else? You call it Patriot. Even better, in a pinch, this engine runs on gasoline, JP5 or regular highway diesel!
Polaris Industries produces ATVs for the military, specialized gasoline powered models for the troops [...]
Is there enough room for advancement in the motorcycle industry that an X Prize like competition would make sense? Envision the ultimate motorcycle, what would it be? Almost anything you can think of is a continuation of something already being done and progress would only be a matter of degree, higher speed, better mileage, lower [...]
After my question about the potential for an electric Gold Wing and all of the thoughtful comments it generated, I thought I would touch on this ultracapacitor patent by EEStor that’s getting a lot of attention. EEStor says it has developed “technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries.” A bold statement in the very least.
A capacitor [...]
What is the future for motorcycles and motorcycling? I imagine this question gets tossed around on occasion in the boardrooms and design studios of motorcycle companies around the world, but I wonder how they answer it.
Technology Life Cycles
Technology has a life cycle from invention to maturity and finally supersedence by something else. Motorcycles were [...]
We’ve talked about the ENV hydrogen powered fuel cell motorcycle many times here and there has been some discussion about what it might be like to ride and what it would sound like. Here’s a video of the bike in action which shows it to be a bit more responsive than you might first imagine. [...]
