Transportation

Solar Impulse returns from 24 hour test flight 26 hours later

Rest easy, fans of solar-powered aeronautics. Captain Piccard’s Solar Impulse has safely returned after 26 hours in the air — powered by nothing but the sun. The four-engine aircraft, which features 12,000 solar cells arranged on its wingspan, reached a height of almost 29,000 feet before touching down at Payerne Airport near Berne, Switzerland today


Inhabitat’s Week in Green: street-legal Tron lightcycles, electronic eyeglasses, and the American Solar Challenge

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us. This week Inhabitat saw solar-powered vehicles blaze trails around the globe as the University of Michigan’s sleek pod car crossed the finish line to win the American Solar Challenge


Intel Connected Cars will record your bad driving for posterity, take over if you’re really screwing up

Intel’s latest Research Day has sprung up a new vision for ” smart ” vehicles; a vision that frankly chills us to our very geeky core. Cameras and sensors attached to an Intel Connected Car will record data about your speed, steering and braking, and upon the event of an accident, forward those bits and bytes along to the police and your insurance company. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn’t it


Prototype car with tactile feedback challenges the blind to drive (update)

We can already imagine just what you’re thinking — the blind have no place behind the wheel, right? As it turns out, though, cars can steer themselves these days , so there technically no reason why (save a few laws) a computer-assisted blind person couldn’t drive.


Inhabitat’s Week in Green: a US team wins the Solar Decathalon!

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us. This week Inhabitat reported live from the scene of the Solar Decathlon in Madrid as 17 stunning solar-powered houses competed for the title of the world’s most energy-efficient prefabricated house. The winner was just announced this evening and we’re thrilled to see that an American team won: Virginia Tech’s shape-shifting Lumenhaus


Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric cars, solar planes, and really sweet lights

This week several ultra-efficient transportation stories got Inhabitat’s engines running as we watched a custom built Daihatsu Mira EV travel a record-breaking 623 miles on a single charge.