Hybrid Living

Geeky Gadgets has a small blurb on the new Phillips LED light bulb known as the EnduraLED.It uses 12W and is meant to replace a standard 60W bulb and is currently priced at $60. Carbon emissions savings? Up to 5.3 million metric tons… per year. techn…

Great news for Nissan and the electric car:  the company has received 19,000 preorders for the LEAF all-electric vehicle, making it sold out for this year.  The demand has exceeded expectations and the company may have to temporarily stop taking reservations.

Preorders for the LEAF began in April in the U.S. and Japan with the car not arriving at dealerships until the end of the year.  Nissan hopes to sell 500,000 EVs starting in 2013.

This enthusiastic response to the LEAF bodes well for other all-electrics that will make their debut within the next couple of years, though it’s not clear whether this signals a good market for the Chevy Volt when it comes out later this year.

From this ecogeek’s perspective, the LEAF has a winning combination of factors that will make it successful.  People are ready for an all-electric that meets their needs (it has a 100-mile range and can go up to 90 mph), is not super tiny (it’s no smart car) and they can afford (it’s about $25,000 after the federal tax credit and some states are taking even more off the top).

Because in a lot of ways this is the first truly consumer-ready EV, Nissan may get a lot of glory, but the company will also bear a lot of weight on their shoulders as a broader array of drivers get into EVs and go through the growing pains of this technology and the growing infrastructure to support it.  Here’s hoping there’s more glory than pain.

via NY Times

The Japan EV Club has broken their own record by converting an electric car to make the longest trip without recharging, covering a whopping 623.76 miles!

The Daihatsu Mira EV was outfitted with Sanyo batteries and converted from a gas car to an electric one.  The EV set the record on a track in Ibaraki, Japan, taking more than 22 hours to run out of juice and nearly doubling the club’s previous record of 345 miles last year.

How did they do it?  Well, the 8,320 Sanyo #18650 batteries that the club installed probably had something to do with it.  The conversion likely cost upwards of $55,000 for the batteries alone, so don’t expect this type of range to appear commercially until battery technology improves.

via Wired Autopia

It’s an exciting time in wind energy these days.  The U.S. will be getting its first offshore wind farm thanks to Cape Wind’s long-awaited approval, and now plans for the first freshwater offshore wind farm in the U.S. have been announced as well.  The Lake Erie Energy Development Corp has signed a deal with GE to purchase five offshore wind turbines destined for the Ohio waters of the lake.

The 4-MW turbines will be placed three to five miles offshore though their exact planned location isn’t known.  This is expected to be the first order of many from the development corp that has made a goal of having 1 GW of freshwater-based wind energy online by 2020.

That’s not a very long time to install that much energy capacity and this first order only takes care of 20 MW.  That means we’ll be hearing a lot more about this project soon.

via Earth & Industry

A recent Metaefficient post offered some ideas for reducing water consumption in your home – but why stop there? Read on to learn about some tips and products that will help you manage water use in outdoor spaces like lawns and gardens. Best of all, you’ll reduce both your environmental impact and utility bills in [...]

Related posts:

1. Efficient, Eco-Friendly Lawn Care April showers might bring May flowers – but they also…
2. Reduce Your Household Water Use Efficiently Reducing household water usage has big-time benefits for both homeowners…
3. The Rainwater Pillow – Rain Barrel Meets Cistern Utilizing rainwater runoff is a double bonus for homeowners, both…

The best computer speakers under $400 will fall somewhere in between bookshelf speaker quality and iPod speaker quality. They are specifically designed to boost a weak computer output without causing distortion, as well as providing a decent bit of headroom for volume overall. Good quality computer speakers often provide a good representation of the audio [...]

Related posts:

1. The Best Wireless Speakers The best wireless speakers on the market have been given…
2. Best Portable iPod & MP3 Speakers A few months ago, MetaEfficient profiled an energy efficient home…
3. The Best Bookshelf Speakers The best bookshelf speakers provide a full fidelity experience from…

A good chef’s knife is the workhorse of any kitchen – it will slice, chop and crush as well as a whole drawer of kitchen gadgets. A quality blade will last virtually forever, avoiding the hassle and expense of replacement, and a well-built knife will make preparing ingredients much more efficient. A traditional chef’s knife [...]

Related posts:

1. Updates From The MetaEfficient Kitchen Labs This summer I’ve been working on food-related optimization projects, here…
2. Efficient Summertime Room-Cooling Products When the summer sun starts beating down, homeowners need to…
3. The Best Slow Cookers The slow cooker might have been around since the ‘70s,…

Some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers have been working on climate change research and solutions, but their time is split among many of the globe’s major issues.  That is changing now that one supercomputer is dedicated solely to running algorithms and calculations in the name of climate change.

Computer-maker Cray has just been awarded $47 million from the DOE to build supercomputers that will be used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  The first computer will be a Cray model XT6 called the Climate Modeling and Research System and will be in the lab’s hands by the end of the year.

Cray will supply the lab with another, more powerful computer in 2011 called “Baker” and more high-performance computing gear in 2012.  With the budget assigned to this project, the computers will easily have a speed of a petraflop or greater.

via Earth2Tech

Toyota and Tesla Motors are embarking on a joint electric-car-building project, the companies announced yesterday.  The two automakers will form a specialist team that will concentrate on developing electric vehicles, parts, production systems and coordinate engineering support.

To really seal the deal, Toyota is purchasing $50 million of Tesla’s common stock directly after the close of Tesla’s planned IPO.  This partnership is obviously a boon to both companies.  Tesla is still a start-up company, so a large investment from an established automaker like Toyota will help them immensely.

Toyota will get the benefit of Tesla’s electric car expertise and so-called “venture business spirit.” With a commitment to have an all-electric vehicle on the market by 2012, this partnership could help Toyota do so with a splash.

Tesla is also taking over the NUMMI factory in Fremont, CA to build its Model S and other future vehicles.  Up until last month, the NUMMI factory was used by Toyota to build its Corolla and Tacoma models.

via Tesla Motors

Toyota and Tesla Motors are embarking on a joint electric-car-building project, the companies announced yesterday.  The two automakers will form a specialist team that will concentrate on developing electric vehicles, parts, production systems and coordinate engineering support.

To really seal the deal, Toyota is purchasing $50 million of Tesla’s common stock directly after the close of Tesla’s planned IPO.  This partnership is obviously a boon to both companies.  Tesla is still a start-up company, so a large investment from an established automaker like Toyota will help them immensely.

Toyota will get the benefit of Tesla’s electric car expertise and so-called “venture business spirit.” With a commitment to have an all-electric vehicle on the market by 2012, this partnership could help Toyota do so with a splash.

Tesla is also taking over the NUMMI factory in Fremont, CA to build its Model S and other future vehicles.  Up until last month, the NUMMI factory was used by Toyota to build its Corolla and Tacoma models.

via Tesla Motors