Um cometa colidiu contra o Sol, ou desintegrou-se à sua passagem, a 1 de Outubro. Momentos depois, uma violenta explosão solar foi registada por três satélites. Discute-se agora se a colisão causou a erupção, se foi mera coincidência.
STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH! I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
SIC explica funcionamento dos veículos eléctricos e da rede Mobi.e, que até Junho disponibilizará em Portugal cerca de 1.300 postos de carregamento convencionais e cerca de 50 postos de carregamento rápido.
From KABC: Hybrid vehicles that use a gasoline engine and a battery electric motor save fuel, and keep getting more and more popular.
But they started out as a bit of an oddity. It was 12 years ago that Toyota began selling the original generation of the Prius. It didn't exactly fly out the door at first.
"When we launched this vehicle 12 years ago, a good year was 13-14-15,000, now a good month is about that volume," said Jim Lentz, president and COO of Toyota Motor Sales USA.
The Prius is a big success today and that name has almost become synonymous with the term "hybrid." So much so that Toyota will expand Prius into a sub-brand starting later this year with the Prius V, a kind of station wagon variation.
There will also be a Prius that plugs in and can go a dozen or so miles on battery power alone and a lower-priced entry model.
Since hybrids generally get much better gas mileage than a comparable conventional car, more and more buyers are looking at them, especially as we hear about gas prices going higher.
There's also the aspect of carbon output.
The Petersen Automotive Museum even has a permanent gallery on alternative fuel cars - things over the years that were supposed to replace gasoline, their last addition is an electric Ford Focus that was used in the Jay Leno TV show. And while it seems electric cars are the hot new thing, they're still niche players, hybrids will be with us for a long time.
In fact, if you attended the recent L.A. Auto Show, you probably noticed that hybrids were everywhere, either already in production or in development.
Toyota still leads the way, with about 70 percent of the hybrid market and they're promising more choices in the future.
"We think our core strategy now and into the future will still be hybrids. He think it's the best bang for the buck. You don't have range anxiety, you don't have to worry about infrastructure that you do with electrics," said Lentz.
From the lowest-priced economy models to full-on luxury cars, hybrids seem to be here to stay. We'll keep seeing more and more of them offered since they're no longer the automotive oddity they started out as.
Da BBC Brasil: A fabricante britânica de carros de luxo Rolls-Royce apresentou esta semana no Salão do Automóvel de Genebra, na Suíça, uma versão eléctrica do modelo Phantom.
O veículo recebe o nome de Phantom Experimental Electric. Por enquanto, o veículo não será produzido em larga escala, já que a companhia quer avaliar antes a opinião dos seus clientes.
Em entrevista à BBC, o presidente-executivo da Rolls-Royce, Torsten Muller Otvos, disse que é bastante caro investir num modelo completamente novo e que nenhuma decisão será tomada até que a empresa não esteja segura sobre como o veículo será recebido no mercado.
Carros eléctricos estão a tornar-se cada vez mais populares. Mas, no caso de automóveis de grande porte, o mais comum tem sido o uso de uma tecnologia híbrida, que combina baterias elétricas com motores movidos a diesel ou a gasolina.
From Reuters: Nissan Motor expects to start producing electric vehicle batteries at its new plant in Portugal by the end of next year, and aims for annual output of 50,000 by 2015.
"It's a big step in Nissan's global zero emission strategy," Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga said on Friday after the company broke ground on a plant in northern Portugal.
Nissan and its French partner Renault are the most aggressive proponents of battery-powered cars, aiming to become the first in the world to sell them in large numbers with a global rollout of eight models in 2012.
"We are investing 156 million euros to start production in December 2012 and produce 50,000 batteries per year by 2015," Shiga said of the Portugal plant.
The plant, set to employ 200 people, will be one of the main battery supply bases for both Nissan and Renault's EVs, starting with the Leaf model Nissan launched in December.
Nissan started building a plant in Sunderland in the United Kingdom last April with a projected production of 60,000 batteries per year, while Renault's factory in France's Flins targets a total capacity of 100,000 a year.
The company does not rule out selling batteries to other EV manufacturers.
"This plant will produce, for now, for the Renault-Nissan alliance, but given our business stance and environmental values, if other clients are interested, then we are open to selling the batteries," Nissan executive vice-president Carlos Tavares told reporters.
The plant is another step in Nissan's alliance with Portugal, following a deal that will see the Iberian country roll out the world's first nationwide EV charging network, with 1,300 charging points due to be installed by June.
"This is what the country needs -- new factories, new investments, more production and more jobs," Prime Minister Jose Socrates said at the ground-breaking ceremony.
A rede de mobilidade eléctrica Mobi.e e protótipo do primeiro veículo eléctrico de tecnologia portuguesa, o MobiCar, estão em destaque na World Future Energy Summit 2011, o maior evento mundial no sector da energia, que decorre por estes dias, entre 17 e 20 de Janeiro, em Abu Dhabi, nos Emirados Árabes Unidos.
Soluções portuguesas na 'montra' mundial de Abu Dhabi
Na maior feira internacional de energia, que decorre de 17 a 21 de Janeiro em Abu Dhabi (Emirados Árabes Unidos), a aposta de Portugal nas energias renováveis e na mobilidade eléctrica foi sublinhada pelo primeiro-ministro José Sócrates.
No discurso de abertura da World Future Energy Summit (WFES), o primeiro-ministro português lembrou que o país conta com"um dos maiores parques fotovoltaicos do mundo e um dos programas mais ambiciosos na área das energias renováveis". O investimento no sector atraiu para Portugal"as maiores empresas de energia solar, hidrica e eólica", afirmou José Sócrates, que considerou que a aposta é importante não só para o ambiente como para o crescimento económico.
"Portugal é reconhecido nesta área como líder, em resultado das reformas dos últimos seis anos nas energias renováveis, na eficiência energética, na mobilidade eléctrica, na construção sustentável e em smart grids", declarou o primeiro-ministro. "Somos exemplo de como é possível fazer reformas e ter resultados em pouco tempo", defendeu.
Sócrates falou ainda do futuro, afirmando que Portugal tenciona criar em Évora uma smart city semelhante a Masdar. A cidade no emirado de Abu Dhabi, em construção, é a primeira do mundo com zero emissões poluentes, através de projectos inovadores de eficiência energética e mobilidade eléctrica.
Após a cerimónia de abertura, o xeque Khalifa bin Zayed, anfitrião do evento, visitou em primeiro lugar o pavilhão de Portugal, onde estão presentes empresas nacionais como a EDP, Efacec, Eneida, Amorim Isolamentos, Solar Plus, Martifer Solar, Novabase, CEIIA,Tekever, a Janz e o Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade, entre outras entidades.
Em busca da internacionalização em Abu Dhabi
É o maior evento mundial do sector energético e uma oportunidade única para a internacionalização de empresas e soluções nacionais na área. Mobi.e, CEIIA, Efacec e Novabase estão na WFES de Abu Dhabi, nos Emirados Árabes Unidos, para celebrar novas parcerias além-fronteiras, numa altura em que um mundo em crise se reinventa e investe na sustentabilidade.
"A presença do Mobi.E no WFES representa essencialmente uma oportunidade para apresentar a nossa solução para a mobilidade eléctrica aos principais players da energia, uma vez que nesta feira estarão presentes milhares de CEO de grandes empresas deste sector", explica João Dias, responsável do Gabinente de Apoio à Mobilidade Eléctrica (GAMEP).
A organização do evento em Abu Dhabi não acontece por acaso. "Abu Dhabi está, de forma muito inteligente, a utilizar as receitas da exploração de petróleo para desenvolver uma economia energeticamente sustentável. Daí ser natural que as autoridades e empresas dos Emirados possam demonstrar interesse por projectos pioneiros a nível mundial como o Mobi.E", considera João Dias, que cita o exemplo de Masdar. As autoridades dos Emirados estão a construir naquele local a primeira cidade do mundo com zero emissões de carbono.
O responsável português afirma que o Mobi.e pode assumir um importante papel na estratégia dos Emirados: "Não existe a nível mundial nenhuma outra solução tão avançada como o Mobi.E que permita tornar a mobilidade eléctrica uma realidade no curto prazo. O Mobi.E encaixa perfeitamente na estratégia de Abu Dhabi de ter o state of the art das tecnologias da sustentabilidade".
O CEIIA (Centro para a Excelência e Inovação na Indústria Automóvel), por seu turno, leva a Abu Dhabi o Mobi.Car, o primeiro automóvel eléctrico de tecnologia portuguesa. O CEIIA está no Médio Oriente tanto para apresentar soluções nacionais como para "identificar projectos que estão a ser criados noutras partes do mundo e, eventualmente, desenvolvê-los em Portugal".
"Apesar de estarem a passar um momento difícil, a crise nos Emirados Árabes Unidos é muito mais suave do que a que se passa em Portugal. Além disso, o sector automóvel, uma das principais áreas de negócio do CEIIA, continua a ser uma indústria onde os EAU apostam fortemente, e nos últimos anos têm procurado novas soluções de mobilidade", aponta o director comercial Alexandre Teixeira. "É precisamente em Abu Dhabi que estão sediadas várias empresas de Fórmula 1", exemplifica o responsável.
A presença no emirado é, por isso, obrigatória. "Estamos a falar de uma das maiores feiras de energia do mundo, onde é possível ter uma grande exposição internacional e por onde, só no ano passado, passaram cerca de 4 mil CEO'S, com poder de decisão e selecção dos projectos onde querem apostar", recorda Alexandre Teixeira.
Para empresas como a Novabase, a presença em Abu Dhabi vai além de uma oportunidade de negócios no Médio Oriente. "A WFES é um evento à escala planetária. Nele estarão presentes os principais actores do mercado da energia e nele se discutem as problemáticas ligadas às diversas fontes de energia e tecnologias, numa perspectiva verdadeiramente global", descreve Luís Lobo.
A empresa tecnológica decidiu em anos recentes investir em força em campos de forte desenvolvimento como o das smart grids e da mobilidade eléctrica. "Estas duas áreas atingiram um patamar de desenvolvimento tal, que permite à Novabase considerar a exploração de mercados internacionais. Como resultado da presença neste evento, esperamos resultados em termos de novas parcerias e, possivelmente, o estabelecimento de contactos com potenciais novos clientes", afirma o responsável.
A Efacec aposta em Abu Dhabi no reforço da internacionalização, num momento em que os seus negócios externos "representam já mais do que actividade em Portugal".
"Esse facto, que deriva de uma aposta estratégica definida há alguns anos, leva a que tenhamos todo o interesse em estar presentes numa feira deste tipo, pois a energia é uma das nossas principais actividades", explica Pedro Silva, director da Efacec.
Em Abu Dhabi, a aposta vai para a inovação. "Seleccionamos algumas actividades da Efacec, ligadas aos novos paradigmas ao nível de sustentabilidade energética, que são a mobilidade eléctrica, as redes inteligentes e as renováveis, as quais daremos a conhecer aos visitantes, esperando desse modo detectar novas oportunidades em mercados externos. Em qualquer destas actividades estamos envolvidos em projectos dos mais avançados a nível mundial e esperamos que isso seja uma vantagem que daremos a conhecer", afirma Pedro Silva.
Tesla has just released a video of its Model S silently rolling on a countryside road. And it sure looks and sounds awesome.
From Tesla Motors' own blog: Model S, engineered from the ground as an EV, is meticulously designed for superior aerodynamics, stability and handling, crash safety, performance and range. Before Model S enters production it will have been thoroughly tested using both computer simulations and test vehicles. Tesla will complete two vehicle testing phases, Alpha and Beta. The Alpha phase began in 2010.
While test driving the first Alpha, Tesla Vehicle Dynamicist Graham Sutherland commented: "The first Alpha is amazingly agile for a car of its size. It has great handling balance and poised ride with communicative steering. Just goes to show what combining a low center of gravity with a very stiff body structure can achieve."
The Alphas will be tested extensively in the coming months in all climates. As each Alpha is built, the driving dynamics will evolve and improve.
From the Autoblog: The Focus Electric is powered by 100-kilowatt electric motor with a 23-kWh battery, capable of producing 123 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque at its peak.
Ford says its EV can reach a top speed of 84 miles per hour, and while the official range hasn't been disclosed just yet, we're told it should be able to travel up to 100 miles on a single charge (just like the Leaf).
Speaking of charging, Ford says the Focus Electric can be fully charged in just three hours from its 240-volt home-installed charging station, though the car will take up to 20 hours to charge via a standard 120-volt outlet.
Via EVPerspective / Los Angeles Times: Here's a video by LA Time's reporter Susan Carpenter on the equipment and costs involved with charging your electric car at home, using solar panels:
French carmaker Renault is telling everyone 'the next Christmas is going to be electric'. The Renault Fluence ZE, the Kangoo ZE and the three-seatter Twizy, all scheduled to go on sale in 2011, are briefly featured in this Renault's French television ad, along with the Zoe, expected to debut in 2012.
The three-seater Renault Twizy, expected to debut in late 2011, will cost around 16,000 euros, about 2,000 less than the Zoe, the french carmaker estimates.
Renault has revealed the estimated prices for the three electric models the French carmaker will launch in Portugal in 2011. According to Turbo, the Fluence ZE electric sedan will cost 22,000 euros, plus an 80 euros monthly fee for the electric battery. The price reflects a 5,000 euros discount by the Portuguese state, being awarded to the first 5,000 electric vehicle owners.
The Kangoo ZE will cost 24,000, plus a 90 euros monthly fee. The commercial vehicle is not eligible for the passenger car-only state grant.
The three-seater Renault Twizy, expected to debut in late 2011, will cost around 16,000 euros, about 2,000 less than the Zoe, the french carmaker estimates.
Portugal has a nationwide EV charging network. There are currently over one hundred plug-in stations across the territory, and the number will increase to 1.300 until June 2011. Mobi.e's network is the world's only user-focused, inter-operable smart grid to date open to every manufacturer, utility company and private operator, the project's website states.
A Renault divulgou os preços estimados para os veículos eléctricos que a marca francesa vai comercializar a partir de 2011 em Portugal. Segundo a Turbo, o Fluence ZE, familiar de quatro portas, chega ao mercado a partir dos 22 mil euros. O valor inclui o desconto de 5 mil euros concedido pelo Estado aos primeiros 5 mil proprietários de veículos eléctricos em Portugal. Ao preço junta-se uma mensalidade de 80 euros pelo aluguer da bateria de iões de lítio.
O comercial eléctrico Kangoo ZE será comercializado com um preço-base de 24 mil euros. Os compradores deste veículo não terão direito ao desconto de 5 mil euros, uma vez que este apenas abrange ligeiros de passageiros. A mensalidade do aluguer da bateria do Kangoo eléctrico é 10 euros mais elevada que a do Fluence ZE: 90 euros.
O mini-eléctrico de três lugares Renault Twizy, que deverá chegar ao mercado no final de 2011, tem um preço estimado de 16 mil euros. Já o futuro Zoe ficará por 18 mil euros.
Para além dos incentivos estatais à compra de veículos eléctricos, Portugal conta já com uma rede de abastecimento para estes automóveis. A rede Mobi.e é actualmente composta por cerca de uma centena de postos de recarregamento, número que deverá aumentar para 1300 até Junho de 2011.
Tweet this post From the New York Times: The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern. Crew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil rig’s shattered interior. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck.
It was no better there.
That same explosion had ignited a firestorm that enveloped the rig’s derrick. Searing heat baked the lifeboat deck. Crew members, certain they were about to be cooked alive, scrambled into enclosed lifeboats for shelter, only to find them like smoke-filled ovens.
Men admired for their toughness wept. Several said their prayers and jumped into the oily seas 60 feet below. An overwhelmed young crew member, Andrea Fleytas, finally screamed what so many were thinking:
“We’re going to die!”
It has been eight months since the Macondo well erupted below the Deepwater Horizon, creating one of the worst environmental catastrophes in United States history. With government inquiries under way and billions of dollars in environmental fines at stake, most of the attention has focused on what caused the blowout. Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem.
But this was a disaster with two distinct parts — first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout.
Tweet this post Toyota will unveil two new Prius models at the Detroit Auto Show on January 10: a hybrid MPV, or multi-purpose vehicle, and a smaller Prius, with its final name yet to be known, that Green Car Reports refers as something of a hybrid Toyota Yaris.
There's also some uncertainty surrounding when these two models will go on sale, possibly in 2013. More news are certainly likely to emerge from Detroit. Check this Prius MPV video with skateboarder, green enthusiast Bob Burnquist after the jump.
Tweet this post Honda has announced it is conducting real life tests on its network of solar powered plug-in charging stations in Japan's Saitama Prefecture.
The company is also developing smaller sized solar hydrogen stations for individual costumers that could fit in a garage.
After Tesla, it was just a matter of time before Mercedes supercars went electric. UK's Auto Express has tested the SLS AMG E-Cell, a car with not one, but four electric motors.
With an impressive estimated autonomy of 200 km (125 miles), the SLS AMG E-Cell promisses to deliver the same thrills of a V8 - almost, as it is 400kg heavier than the non-EV SLS.
And it will be probably twice as expensive, Auto Express states, although there's still a lot for Mercedes to reveal about the model. The SLS AMG E-Cell is expected to debut in the markets somewhen between late 2012 and early 2013.
Sex definitely sells. It hasn't been banned from the Italian airwaves, contrary to what the Daily Mail and the Huffington Post have reported, but Renault Twingo's 'lesbian' TV ad has caused a buzz in Italy and online.
The controversial commercial features two young women exchanging flirtatious glances at a cocktail party before trailing off to a bedroom. The brunette teasingly strips down to black lingerie while the blonde blindfolds her with a silk stocking before stealing the brunette's pink Twingo. 'New Twingo Miss Sixty, Competition is a Female Business', goes the tagline.
State TV RAI and Mediaset, headed by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, did air the ad, but latter drop it. Sky Italy keeps airing the commercial, which has been criticized by gay rights groups. Anyhow, the ad is a hit on YouTube, with the video bellow getting over 340,000 hits in a matter of days.
Da BBC Brasil: A fabricante britânica de carros de luxo Rolls-Royce apresentou esta semana no Salão do Automóvel de Genebra, na Suíça, uma versão eléctrica do modelo Phantom.
From Reuters: Nissan Motor expects to start producing electric vehicle batteries at its new plant in Portugal by the end of next year, and aims for annual output of 50,000 by 2015.
