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Given the situation with Tesla Motors lately, you know, Ze'ev Drori getting the boot and Elon Musk taking the reigns as CEO , word of firings of "25-30% of their total staff of 300 employees and contractors" and the closing of the Detroit location (more accurately, the Metro Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills, MI) via blog post , it's no wonder an anonymous reader decided to head out to their Rochester Hills office and take a look. The Rochester Hills facility was opened at the end of January 2007, and was to be the development facility for the Tesla Model S electric sedan, so the closing is a foreboding indicator of the future direction Tesla is heading on that project. Let's take a look inside this essentially doomed location... galleryPost('teslainrochesterhills', 12, 'Tesla In Rochester Hills Is Quiet... Too Quiet'); To be fair, these pics were taken this past Sunday, so it's poor evidence the place is in fact a ghost town but let's just...
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If you've already stepped into the voting booth for Group One , Group Two and Group Three of our first round of voting in our GEM Peapod Photoshop Contest , you're ready to take a walk through these, the final 47 entries. We call them Group Four. Again, to remind everyone, voting in this first round — in all groups — ends at 11:59:59 PM tomorrow (Wednesday). The top five vote-getters from each group will move on to a final round of voting running from Thursday at noon to 11:59:59 PM Sunday. We'll announce the winner of the iPod Touch Monday morning (thanks to the good folks from GEM at Chrysler!). With that, here's group four, hit the jump for the poll. Remember to vote early — and come back in an hour for the last of the four groups! As always, standard contest rules apply . galleryPost('peapodgroup4', 47, 'Peapod Voting, Round 1, Group 4'); Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through...
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When you're done punching through the chads in Group One and Group Two of our first round of voting in our GEM Peapod Photoshop Contest , take a gander through these 47 entries in Group Three. Again, to remind everyone, voting in this first round ends at 11:59:59 PM tomorrow (Wednesday). The top five vote-getters from each group will move on to a final round of voting running from Thursday at noon to 11:59:59 PM Sunday. We'll announce the winner of the iPod Touch Monday morning (thanks to the good folks from GEM at Chrysler!). With that, here's group three, hit the jump for the poll. Remember to vote early — and come back in an hour for the last of the four groups! As always, standard contest rules apply . galleryPost('peapodvoting3', 47, 'Peapod Voting, Round 1, Group 3'); Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
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If you enjoyed voting in Group One of our first round of voting in our GEM Peapod Photoshop Contest , you're going to love the 47 entries in Group Two. What's that you say? You haven't yet voted for your top pick from Group One ? Well, maybe you should remember to do that! Just to remind everyone, voting in Round one ends at 11:59:59 PM tomorrow (Wednesday). The top five vote-getters from each group will move on to a final round of voting running from Thursday at noon to 11:59:59 PM Sunday. We'll announce the winner of the iPod Touch Monday morning (thanks to the good folks from GEM at Chrysler!). With that, here's group two, poll after the jump. Remember to vote early — and come back in an hour for the next group! As always, standard contest rules apply . galleryPost('peapodgroup2', 47, 'Peapod Voting, Round 1, Group 2'); Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript...
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OK, put down your pens, pencils and mice — time's up. Now comes the fun part — voting for the best of the best of the GEM Peapod photoshop contest entries and crowning a winner to receive the grand prize — an iPod Touch (courtesy of the folks with the GEM team at Chrysler)! And while fun, it's going to be a huge job. We received an amazing 188 p-chopped entries of the happy little electric car for "gated communities." That's way too many for our piddly-dink poll software to deal with, so we've gone and split them up into four groups, each with 47 entries. We'll run all four rounds today, an hour apart. This first round of voting will run until 11:59:59 PM tomorrow (Wednesday). The top five vote-getters from each group will move on to a final round of voting running from Thursday at noon to 11:59:59 PM Sunday. We'll announce the winner Monday morning. With that, here's group one, poll after the jump. Remember, vote early — and...
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It wasn’t until I crashed into a pile of boxes and luggage that I realized riding a motorcycle — even a completely silent electric one with no emissions — around my Brooklyn apartment was a bad idea. I’d been attempting to do a burnout, but the painted concrete floor didn’t have enough grip for the Quantya Strada ’s front tire and plenty for the rear, resulting in a wheelie. Compounding matters was the bar-mounted back brake that sits where the clutch lever normally does. When I went slip the clutch to bring the bike back in line, the brake just tossed me into the boxes. The nice thing about riding a bike in your apartment is that, while you might do irreparable damage to all of your and your friend’s worldly belongings, you probably won’t hurt yourself too badly. galleryPost('quantyastradadrive', 15, 'Quantya Strada Street-Legal Electric Motorcycle'); Never mind the Chevy Volt , never mind the Tesla Roadster , never mind the Dodge ev revealed in concept yesterday. None...
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It wasn’t until I crashed into a pile of boxes and luggage that I realized riding a motorcycle — even a completely silent electric one with no emissions — around my Brooklyn apartment was a bad idea. I’d been attempting to do a burnout, but the painted concrete floor didn’t have enough grip for the Quantya Strada ’s front tire and plenty for the rear, resulting in a wheelie. Compounding matters was the bar-mounted back brake that sits where the clutch lever normally does. When I went slip the clutch to bring the bike back in line, the brake just tossed me into the boxes. The nice thing about riding a bike in your apartment is that, while you might do irreparable damage to all of your and your friend’s worldly belongings, you probably won’t hurt yourself too badly. galleryPost('quantyastradadrive', 15, 'Quantya Strada Street-Legal Electric Motorcycle'); Never mind the Chevy Volt , never mind the Tesla Roadster , never mind the Dodge ev revealed in concept yesterday. None...
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When Chrysler dropped its bevy of extended-range electric vehicles in our laps today as part of the company's new ENVI program, we wondered how coincidental it was that Chrysler was claiming the same all-electric range as the much ballyhooed Chevy Volt . The Volt makes concessions to seating and obsessively maximizes aerodynamics to get its 40 mile range, but the Chrysler EV and the Jeep EV both claim 40 miles as well. No funny-shaped center consoles, no wacky aero-trickery, just batteries and electric motors. So what's the deal? Not surprisingly, it's mainly the batteries that make the difference here. Battery storage capacity is measured in watt-hours, more or less the total amount of energy used over time. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is simply a thousand watt-hours and this is what's used to measure big batteries, the kind used in modern hybrids.The Chevy Volt uses a 16 kWh battery and only really functions within a range of 50-80% charge in order to extend battery life. In...
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The hybrid version of the Toyota Camry is, behind the Toyota Prius, the best-selling hybrid in America, but there are at least ten other cars for sale this year that get better EPA-estimated mileage on the city, highway or combined cycles. Some are diesels, some are hybrids and some are just light-weight cars with smaller displacement motors. But all share one thing in common — they're more fuel efficient. So why's the Camry Hybrid selling so well? Your answer's as good as ours. But first some stats on the Toyota Camry Hybrid. For starters, it's a "dual-mode" hybrid utilizing the same Toyota-branded Hybrid Synergy Drive found in the Toyota Prius. The trim level of the Camry Hybrid is relatively up-featured, including LED taillights, a DVD-based navigational system and most of the features found on the top-of-the-line Camry XLE. Though the Camry was originally advertised with a higher mileage, new EPA standards bring the over-reaching hybrid down to a city...
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Yesterday's reveal of the production Chevy Volt got us thinking we should take a closer look at the design features, both inside and out, that make GM's plug-in hybrid unique. We've picked out what we think are the five exterior and an equal number of interior design elements we feel are most important, and taken a little deeper look at each. Without further ado, hit the jump for our top ten key design elements that make the Volt so...eclectically electric.
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As Toyota readies the new next-gen 2010 Prius , Honda has been working feverishly to bring its own dedicated hybrid model to market — at a price point lower than the Prius — after discontinuing the Insight nearly three years ago. We've gone to our sources and put together the best of the rumors, suspicions and ruminations to bring you this comprehensive guide of what we expect from the new Honda hybrid that has yet to receive a public name. Even more speculatively, we've spared no expense to commission a rendering from the good people at KORSdesign to show what they expect it to look like. So hit the jump to see what we expect to see first hand at the Paris Motor Show later this year. Click here for our rendering of the new Honda hybrid! As far as a name, the one thing we're told it won't be is "Insight." As far as a sales target and strategy Honda plans to bring to market four new gas-electric models over the next four years, as part of a broad global...
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One of the more interesting but overlooked facts from the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans was that the Audi R10 TDI cars not only ran, but won, on a mixture of Shell V-Power Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) racing diesel and a newly designed Biomass-to-Diesel (BTL) fuel. We've been fascinated with prospects of biomass diesel since taking a trip to the Sears Tower in the algae van , as BTL offers cleaner output, has no fossil-fuel base and doesn't interfere with the food chain. The version used in the race cars was also 90% cleaner than American low-sulfur diesel. We talked with Audi of America's Christian Bokich about his experience at Le Mans with the winning diesel team. galleryPost('08lemansaudi', 6, 'Audis Galore At Le Mans'); galleryPost('audir10lm08', 6, 'Audi R10 TDI Running At Le Mans'); Why biodiesel in a racing car? Christian Bokich: We're racing to show people what's coming in our future cars, and to show that we're leaders in diesel. It has...
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Those complaining about high gas prices and the lack of electric cars need look no further than the putting green, where electric golf carts are being converted to look like Hummers, hot rods and even fire trucks. Some carts are even capable of speeds in excess of 45 mph and will travel 25 miles on a single charge. Even Saleen has a Modded GEM Neighborhood Vehicle (NEV), which can legally drive on city streets. Which is where, if gas prices go up any higher, we'll be thinking about taking them. In case things come to that, we've put together seven of the most compelling converted carts below the jump. 7. The Hummer H2 Golf Cart This may be one of the most amazingly intricate golf cart conversions available and, with a 5.5 HP electric motor, it'll keep your gas prices down. In addition to looking just as tough as an actual Hummer H2, this raised chassis features a cooler, embroidered seats and burlwood touches. While you may blink at the $18,500 price, just remember how much...
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There may be no better indicator that many carmakers have been unable to adjust to the sudden increase in gas prices and the resulting shift in consumer demand than hybrid sales. Although there was an obvious run to more fuel-efficient cars — witness the Civic besting the Ford F-150 in overall sales for the first time ever — hybrid sales overall were down 11% from April to May, down 24.3% month-to-month from 2007 and even the market-leading Toyota Prius experienced a 31% drop in sales for the month. How did that happen? There are a few factors at work here, which we've helpfully outlined below the jump. First off, there was an overall drop in vehicle sales in the United States — that's obviously going to affect sales of the largest fuel-suckers first, but the current economic situation affects anyone looking to buy right now, even in the hybrid marketplace. But the biggest factor isn't the issue of demand, it's supply. Toyota decided to only create about...
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It was when the oil light came on that I started to run through the appropriate next steps in my head...and realized that there aren't any appropriate next steps when warning lights start going off in a 1982 VW Vanagon camper. Particularly one converted to run on a mixture of vegetable oil and algae biodiesel grown and refined by a group of Chicago high school students. As the Sears Tower , our goal, loomed in the distance, a question loomed in my mind: Was our shared belief in the future of petroleum alternatives and, more importantly, in the fuel processing abilities of public school students and their teachers, strong enough to convince us to push further into the knot of congestion forming around the city? galleryPost('algaevan', 6, 'The Algae Powered Westfalia Camper'); The Idea David Levine, a second-year teacher placed in Chicago through the Teach For America program, faced a common problem: how to get students to take the same interest in their studies as in...
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