Michelin Says New Energy Saver Tire is 8% More Efficient

According to Michelin, its new Energy Saver A/S Tire will get your vehicle up to 8% better mileage than other tires in its class, as well as cut your vehicle’s CO2 emissions by as much as 2,000 pounds over the life of the tires.

The Energy Saver A/S combines low-rolling-resistance technology with wet braking and all-season performance. The tire’s composition also allows it to stay cooler, which improves fuel efficiency. As a reference point, the low-rolling-resistance tires that are standard on the 2010 Toyota Prius can manage about 5% better fuel economy than optional 17-inch tires that aren’t low-rolling-resistance. Michelin recommends the tires for drivers who travel under 10,000 miles per year.

Michelin will promote the tire through a digital and social media campaign that will begin — where else? — on Facebook. The tire-maker will launch the group Michelin Life Balance, where it will ask users to share unique car stories. Fifty lucky winners will get a $5 Starbucks gift card each day from now until July 4.

Building A Better Air Conditioner

It takes 7 billion gallons of gasoline annually to run all the air conditioners of passenger vehicles in the United States, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s 6% of total fuel consumption in the U.S. Meanwhile, simple refrigerant leaks from the units account for 50 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year.

Now, the NREL wants to put a dent in these numbers by improving the efficiency of conventional air conditioners by 33%. Its plan will focus on cars built between 2012 and 2016, with the goal of saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reducing greenhouse emissions by 900 million metric tons.

The NREL team will test a thermoelectric air-conditioning system. Basically, semiconductors that produce a hot and cold side when juiced with an electrical current would be placed throughout the car. Turn the current on, and the semiconductors would cool the car somewhat so the air conditioner’s inefficient pumps and condensers wouldn’t have to work so hard. It would also lower instances of refrigerant leaks.

The biggest obstacle will be the scarcity of the material used to make the modules; bismuth telluride isn’t just lying around on the ground. That’s why the team will look at other ways to reduce interior temperature, including the use of solar-reflective glass and paint, which can lower interior temperatures by 35%.

The NREL will partner with Ford on the project because the automaker won a $4.2 million grant from the Energy Department to improve A/C efficiency.

Now ,Send Your E-mail Just By Writiing In The Sky

Duke University engineering students have come up with a cell phone application that can enable users to remember things just by writing short notes in the air with their handsets, which will be automatically sent to their e-mail address.

The researchers say their Phone Point Pen application uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing.

Accelerometers are the devices in phones that not only keep track of the phone's movements, but make it possible for the display screens to rotate from landscape to portrait modes depending on how the phone is rotated.

These devices are always "on," so there is no additional burden on the phone to use this new application.

"We developed an application that uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing," said Sandip Agrawal, electrical and computer engineering senior at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, who with Duke graduate student Ionut Constandache developed the Phone Point Pen.

"By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air.

Constandache said: "The accelerometer converts the gestures to images, which can be sent to any e-mail address for future reference."

"Also, say you're in a class and there is an interesting slide on the screen. We foresee being able to take a photo of the slide and write a quick note on it for future reference. The potential uses are practically limitless. That this prototype works validates the feasibility of such a pen," Constandache added.

New Exotic Material Brings Highly Efficient Computer Chips Closer To Reality

U.S. scientists have confirmed that there exists a type of material that could one day provide dramatically faster, more efficient computer chips.

Physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have revealed that this material is called bismuth telluride.

Lead researchers Yulin Chen and Zhi-Xun Shen say that the material allows electrons on its surface to travel with no loss of energy at room temperatures and can be fabricated using existing semiconductor technologies.

They reckon that such material could provide a leap in microchip speeds, and even become the bedrock of an entirely new kind of computing industry based on spintronics, the next evolution of electronics.

During the study, the researchers tested the behaviour of electrons in the compound bismuth telluride.

In the online edition of the journal Science Express, they say that this study shows a clear signature of what is called a topological insulator, a material that enables the free flow of electrons across its surface with no loss of energy.

"The working style of SIMES is perfect. Theorists, experimentalists, and sample growers can collaborate in a broad sense," Chen said.

When Chen and his colleagues investigated the electrons' behavior, they saw the clear signature of a topological insulator. Not only that, the group discovered that the reality of bismuth telluride was even better than theory.

"The theorists were very close but there was a quantitative difference," Chen said.

The experiments showed that bismuth telluride could tolerate even higher temperatures than theorists had predicted.

"This means that the material is closer to application than we thought," Chen said.

Topological insulators aren't conventional superconductors nor fodder for super-efficient power lines, as they can only carry small currents, but they could pave the way for a paradigm shift in microchip development.

Chen said that for real-world applications, bismuth telluride is fairly simple to grow and work with.

"It's a three-dimensional material, so it's easy to fabricate with the current mature semiconductor technology. It's also easy to dope-you can tune the properties relatively easily," he said.

"This is already a very exciting thing," he said, adding that the material "could let us make a device with new operating principles."

Soon, Walking Is All You Will Need To Recharge Your Cellphones

The day may not be far when the batteries of your mobile phones will get automatically charged while you walk, thanks to a device being developed by Canadian researchers.

The Bionic Energy Harvester will attach to a knee brace, and capture energy with each step.

It is reckoned that one minute of walking will be enough to generate 10 minutes of talk time on a cellular phone.

"It would surprise a lot of people to know that there is a lot of power available from the knee joint during walking. We're taking advantage of energy that's already being produced and wasted," the Christian Science Monitor quoted Max Donelan, a professor of biomedical physiology and kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, as saying.

The researcher has revealed that the mechanism works much like the regenerative braking found in some hybrid cars, which capture kinetic energy that would otherwise dissipate as heat to drive a generator.

"Walking is a lot like stop-and-go driving," said Dr. Donelan.

While testing the device during a study, his team found that the subjects on a treadmill didn't notice using any extra exertion when it was turned on.

The researchers, however, were surprised to find that when the mechanism was turned off, the subjects did notice and in fact missed the assistance.

"For three or four strides they swung their legs a little faster (than normal)," Dr. Donelan said.

The researcher team at Bionic Power, a company he set up to develop and sell the device, expect to double the energy generated per step.

Mr. Donelan declined to say how much he thought the device would eventually cost.

And even though he knew that his device provided just a small fraction of the energy humans consume, he was upbeat that it might still be helpful.

"Human power won't replace other sources of energy, but we can use human power to cut down our use," he said.

Mitsubishi i-MiEV goes on sale in Japan in July

One of the first electric vehicles produced by a major automaker will start rolling off the assembly line in July -- but it won’t be sold in the U.S. just yet.

Mitsubishi will start selling its electric vehicle, dubbed the i-MiEV, to Japanese corporations and the Japanese government in July. After that, it will sell the vehicle in the Japanese market by April 2010. The suggested retail price for the i-MiEV is $45,000.

The i-MiEV will have an electric range of 100 miles using lithium-ion batteries, and it will take seven to 14 hours to charge.

In April, Mitsubishi confirmed its intention to sell the i-MiEV in the U.S. sometime before 2012.

Subaru has also announced plans to build an EV for around the same price as the i-MiEV, and the American firm Coda Automotive launched an electric vehicle with a similar price and range earlier this week.

With an average price of $45,000, would you be willing to buy an electric vehicle that only has a 100-mile range?

Volvo Lowers Price, Ups Mileage on Entry-Level XC60

Volvo’s compact luxury SUV receives a new model that gives shoppers a less expensive option for getting into an XC60. The new XC60 3.2 starts at $32,395 and forgoes the turbocharged six-cylinder engine and all-wheel drive of the current XC60 T6 ($37,200). The all-wheel-drive model is available with the new non-turbocharged engine and starts at $34,395.

Pricing for the new model is now in line with its competitors such as the Acura RDX ($33,895) and higher-end Volkswagen Tiguan (front-wheel-drive SEL, $30,990). The T6 is a better fit with cars like the BMW X3 ($39,700) and Land Rover LR2 ($35,375).

The 3.2’s six-cylinder makes 235 horsepower, and it uses the same engine as Volvo’s S80 sedan. When paired with front-wheel drive, the XC60 3.2’s mileage estimates are 18/27 mpg city/highway. This is a notable improvement over the current T6 with all-wheel drive, rated at 16/22 mpg. We evaluated the T6’s mileage on one of our mileage drives where it returned the lowest numbers between its competitors — the X3 (16/23 mpg) and LR2 (15/22) — on the same drive. Mileage estimates are not currently available for the all-wheel-drive 3.2.

XC60 3.2 models include 17-inch wheels instead of the T6’s 18s, otherwise the 3.2 is comparably equipped to the more expensive T6 model. Similar Premium, Climate, Convenience, Multimedia and Technology Packages are available.