Google pulls plug...

Posted on November 30, 2011 at 3:55 PM

Google has sadly decided to pull the plug on its internal efforts to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, dubbed “RE<C”. The search engine giant is currently undergoing a massive rationalisation programme where it is closing a number of pet projects and alas this green endeavour is part of the latest cuts.

Google’s effort focused on the efficiency of heliostat-based solar technology where focused sunshine is used to heat water to generate steam that then drives a turbine to generate electricity.

However, there are two pieces of good news as Google has published its findings so far at www.google.org/rec and has announced that it will continue to invest in renewable technology, mirroring the company’s assessment that there are organisations that are better placed to take on the development of renewables than Google themselves.

Whilst the continued interest is great news, it is a shame that an organisation that has a massive engineering resource such as Google has elected to move away from direct involvement in this critical sphere.

350mpg!

Posted on November 10, 2011 at 12:25 AM

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If you know your cars then you know who Gordon Murray is. He is now working on producing probably the greenest car in the world. His name is legendary in car design having been responsible for what many feel is the greatest car ever made - the McLaren F1. The F1 was capable of hitting 240mph, produced in very limited numbers and now sells for millions of pounds second-hand. Just don’t mention the carbon footprint...

Professor Murray has since turned his supreme design eye to the environmental end of the performance spectrum and his grand vision is the T.27, a small, electrically-powered, affordable and green urban car. The T.27 borrows from the F1 in several ways as it has a central driving position for the person behind the wheel and two passengers seats in the rear that flank the driver’s sides. It also has all its instrumentation mounted centrally, like a Formula 1 car. Its small scale would theoretically allow three T.27s to park in one regular UK parking space or two to use one lane of a UK motorway. Despite its small size it will still hit 60mph in under 15 seconds and has a top speed of 65mph.

However, its real eye-popping number is its fuel economy. The car recently swept the board at the annual Brighton to London RAC Future Car Challenge where a variety of green cars are pitted against each other in an effort to raise awareness of low carbon motoring.

The T.27 covered the 57.13 miles from Brighton to London carrying 2 occupants, inside the allocated time using less than 64 pence worth of energy – equivalent to a staggering 350 MPG (0.81 litres / 100 km) and only 37 gm CO2 / km. On a full charge, taking only 4 hours from a regular domestic power socket, the T.27 can do more than 100 miles.

These numbers are simply incredible and surely point towards it being a very popular seller when it does finally go in to production. The quicker the better in my opinion...