American Oil Crisis News and Info
Legendary Italian carmaker, Pininfarina, may yet have some surprises up its sleeves. Even with recent financial difficulties, Pininfarina’s CEO, Silvio Pietro Angori, told Italian newspaper, Il Sole 24, that the company’s Bluecar electric car venture with french investor Vincent Bollore is not simply a concept car and still on track for a 2011 market debut.
French energy minister Jean-Louis Borloo will announce a plan on Thursday for the country to invest 1 billion Euros ($1.46 billion US) in the infrastructure needed to encourage the adoption of electric cars. That investment will buy 4.4 million charging stations, upgrade the power grid, purchase a government fleet of electric cars, and provide subsidies to EV buyers and auto manufacturers.
France hopes that this amount of investment will be enough to get 2 million electric cars on its roads within 10 years.
Call me crazy, but I think zeppelins have gotten a bad rap. Sure, the Hindenburg went up in flames rather spectacularly, and airplanes made slow-moving dirigibles all but obsolete after WWII. But I still love me some giant floating gas bags.
So this announcement that a team of French engineering and tech students have come up with solar-powered blimp that uses flexible solar cells gets me all giddy. Called Project Sol’R, the team hopes to cross the English Channel using their blimp, simply to prove that it can be done.