Electric

If the horse is not humanity's favorite animal, it should be, as it has served us far better than any other domesticated animal. It has been the predominant form of personal transport for the last millennia, has done more work for us than any animal, and its mastery became the fundamental military technology which helped Genghis Khan build the biggest empire in history. The notion of using advanced technologies to replicate and extend the personality and functionality of the horse gave Honda a wonderful platform to explore in its latest design concept. Part sci-fi and part technology-crystal-ball-gazing, here's what a synthetic Horse V 2.0 might look like 200 years hence. Read More

Of the various water toys for big boys that were unveiled at last week’s Cannes Boat Show, one of the more intriguing was the EXO, from French company EXOCONCEPT. Perhaps the best way of describing it would be to say that it’s like an electric Jet Ski, but the rider lies down on top of it in a prone position, instead of sitting on it. Read More

Volkswagen has once more produced a minimalist and frugal commuter vehicle for its home auto show in Frankfurt, and this one has us quite excited. NILS is an F1-inspired single-seat electric concept with an aluminum space frame, gull-wing doors and thanks to its extreme light weight (460 kg), small frontal area, it offers sports car performance at speeds up to 130 km/h from a small 25kW electric motor. The electric motor's 130 Nm of torque offers rapid acceleration and although the range is limited to just 65 kilometers (40 miles), it recharges from empty in just two hours from a conventional 230-volt electrical outlet. Read More

To the continued annoyance of his father Pierce, twelve-year old Nash Hoover was forever leaving his bedroom light on when he wasn't in the house. Determined to teach him the real value of wasted energy, Nash's journalist father popped the young wastrel on an exercise bike that displayed the amount of energy being produced and told him to pedal away until he managed to produce enough watts to power a standard incandescent light bulb. Then the pair had the notion of spreading the now fully-learned lesson by traveling across America in a vehicle that uses no more energy than a light bulb left on each day. Read More

The Yikebike is a sensational product - I called it the first "transportation appliance" when I rode the miniature electric penny farthing last year. Funnily enough, when I wrote about the ingenious range-extender earlier this year, I wrote that the Yikebike ticked all the boxes but one - its range. Now that the company is to offer a slightly heavier version at roughly half the price, you can probably bury the last objection that could be aimed at the Yikebike. Read More

Clarkson University (New York) was the overall winner in the 2011 Clean Snowmobile Challenge, a collegiate design competition put on by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and hosted by Michigan Technological University. This year’s competition was billed as “the greenest yet,” with a record number of electric snowmobiles participating. The event was held March 7-12 at MTU’s Keweenaw Research Center in Houghton, Michigan. 17 student teams competed in the zero emissions and internal combustion categories. Read More

Call them tuk tuks, auto rickshaws, mototaxis or any one of several other names, but they’re one of the world’s most ubiquitous vehicles – three-wheeled motorized rickshaws. They’ve been a fixture on roads in Asia, South America, Africa and Italy for decades, and have more recently made their way into the Netherlands, the U.K. and other countries. Given that they typically have quite small engines and are used mostly as runabouts, Dutch company Tuk Tuk Factory (TTF) decided to start making electric tuk tuks a few years ago and has now introduced them to the European market. Read More

Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to create vehicles that operate on both land and water. It's fair to say that such designs have generally not caught on. Perhaps it's because of the fairly limited effectiveness of some of those offerings, or maybe it's because so many of them have been ugly monsters. Then again, it could be that society just hasn't found a niche for them yet. By the year 2050 though, we may need to give such craft some serious consideration. Juan Pablo Bernal P has come up with a concept design that certainly ticks all the right boxes for looks, and also takes the environment into consideration. Read More

If there’s an interesting aspect to the rise and rise of electric mobility devices, it’s the number of companies that were once associated with vastly different fields which are now investigating the arena of electric bicycles. At SinoCES in China last month we saw a white goods manufacturer proudly showing a new range of electric scooters alongside its new range of washing machines. At IFA today we spied yet another big name on two electric bicycles – 107 year-old German electronics company Telefunken. Read More