Author: Serkadis

In the movie “What About Bob?” Bill Murray talked about taking “baby steps.” An ancient Chinese proverb says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” At the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, NV, Horizon will unveil its HydroFill home hydrogen fueling device which may mean we are a step away from hydrogen car commercialization.

The HydroFill, when it becomes commercial is expected to be able to refuel hydrogen cars in the privacy of one’s own home. Now, I’ve talked about home hydrogen fueling stations many times in the past and this product may be just what the industry needs to jumpstart the chicken-or-the-egg syndrome when it comes to which will be built first, the cars or the fueling stations.

The Horizon Hydrofill can run off AC at night when the electricity rates are the lowest, electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen and refill their metal hydride canisters. The next day the hydrogen fuel cell car or smaller device can be refueled from the canister.

The Hydrofill may not be introduced commercially in 2010, however as development is ongoing. Horizon is already selling, however, a 20-liter hydrogen storage tank made of aluminum alloy outside and metal hydride inside.

Now, while the HydroFill is a big idea that Horizon is still working on, this same company has decided to start a bit smaller and offer a commercial line of micro-fuel cell power packs for recharging small electronic devices such a lighting products, USB devices and cell phones.

In summer 2009, I had talked about how Horizon had created the fuel cell for the economical Riversimple fuel cell city car. An affordable Riversimple plus Hydrofill home fueling station may be the ticket to sooner rather than later introduction of hydrogen cars and infrastructure into the marketplace.

Filed under: Concept Cars, Detroit Auto Show, Hybrid, Hatchback, Hyundai, Electric

The Hyundai Blue-Will concept isn’t entirely new; it first appeared last April at the Seoul Motor Show. However, it is making its North American debut next week in Detroit. What makes the Blue-Will special is that it is Hyundai’s first ever plug-in hybrid (PHEV). The hybrid powertrain is based on the same Blue Drive architecture that Hyundai unveiled at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show. This is a strong parallel hybrid system, meaning it’s capable of driving the vehicle under electric power alone, use the internal combustion or a combination of both. The first production applications will find their way into the Korean market Elantra LPI hybrid and the Sonata hybrid that debuts late this year.

For the PHEV version, the electric motor/generator is increased in size from 30 kW on the Sonata to 100 kW, which should allow it to operate under electric power pretty much throughout its operating range. Hyundai doesn’t say how big the lithium ion polymer battery pack is, however, the automaker claims the Blue-Will can go 40 miles on an single electric charge.

In addition to the hybrid hardware, which can provide start-stop capability for the engine and regenerative braking, the concept also features a thermal electric generator. This is designed to convert the heat energy of the exhaust gases into electrical energy to be stored in the battery. The engine is a direct injected version of Hyundai’s 1.6-liter Gamma inline-four with 152 horsepower.

The concept has the same 106.3 inch wheelbase as the current Elantra Touring, but the overall length is seven inches shorter. According to Hyundai this concept “may” also provide a preview of a future dedicated hybrid to compete with the Toyota Prius, and if that happens, expect it to arrive sometime late next year.

[Source: Hyundai]

Continue reading Detroit 2010: Hyundai Blue-Will PHEV concept

Detroit 2010: Hyundai Blue-Will PHEV concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counter intuitive investing can be enormously profitable. Buying bonds when their companies declare bankruptcy (not merely buying risky companies that happen to avoid bankruptcy) earned 379% on average last year. Thanks to forced selling due to institutional investors’ peculiarities:

Distressed Debt Investing (DDI): I believe filing of bankruptcy causes certain lenders and investors in high yield and leveraged loans to sell their holdings for “uneconomic” reasons. In other words, forced selling. This may be anything from CLOs that need to empty some baskets to insurance companies that bought paper at par in the primary, and cannot own defaulted securities. In that, I would think that while the event of bankruptcy may not be the “low” on a particular security, many times it will be an event that forces some sellers out and provides a catalyst for future capital appreciation.

The returns calculated by DDI are below. Check out their full piece here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Junk Bond Rally Is Moral Hazard In All Its Glory, And Will Continue Next Year
• Investors Push Junk Bond ETF To Highs Of The Year
• The U.S. Junk Bond Bubble Is Accelerating

During the New Delhi AutoExpo 2010, French automaker Renault announced its serious intentions regarding the Indian auto market. The producer is set to launch several models in order to complete its line up for India.

Renault has always maintained that our commitment to India remains undiluted … and today, we extremely happy to confirm our commitment to India through the launch of a comprehensive line-up. This means that the investments that were earmarked for India, but were fro… (read more)

Bluewater Comics has announced the release of a free comic featuring Lady GaGa as a preview to its new Fame series. Bluewater is expanding on its successful collection of biographical comics — which includes the Female Force and Political Power lines — with a new series featuring pop trendsetter Lady Gaga. The “Just Dance” siren will kick off Bluewater’s 2010 Fame line, focusing on “culturally relevant celebrities and other pop culture icons.”

“Over the past year we saw an opportunity to broaden the scope of who reads comics,” says Bluewater president Darren G. Davis, “There were many who had never picked up a graphic novel or comic book buy our biography titles like Female Force and Political Power. Fame is the natural extension of that trend.”

The Lady Gaga Fame Comic will be available on Free Comic Book Day on May 5. Be on the lookout for animated serials starring Robert Pattinson, 50 Cent, David Beckham, and Taylor Swift!

In a couple of days, Chrysler and Fiat will take the wraps off of their Fiat 500 electric concept at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. The duo have said nothing about a production model but we wouldn’t discount the possibility.

According to AutoExpress, the Fiat 500 electric that we’ll see in Detroit will have a more than 5,000 lithium-ion battery cells. It will travel a total of 150 miles on a single charge thanks to a regenerative braking system and new aerodynamic updates. Recharging from a standard household socket should take up to 10 hours.

Since the batteries will increase the overall weight of the car, 0-60 mph will come in around 10 seconds with a top speed of 90 mph.

We’ll try to gather up more details at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show since Chrysler will not be holding a press conference.

Source: AutoExpress

– By: Omar Rana

The next generation Nissan Micra, or, if we are to trust rumors which say this will be the Japanese carmaker’s future "global compact car," has been caught testing, from a distance (and with a shaky hand, apparently), prior to its presumed unveiling in March this year.

The limited information available on the Micra hint to the car being built on a new platform, dubbed V, which will also be used as the basis for a small MPV and a compact sedan. According to a report by A… (read more)

Opera Software hasn’t exactly been flying high lately so the latest shakeup of the company’s management structure may prove to be just what it needed. Cofounder and CEO for the past 15 years at the Norwegian company, Jon von Tetzchner, is stepping down from his position and is being replaced by Lars Boilesen, the company’s chief commercial officer (CCO) so far, with quite a few years at Opera as well.

“Lars Boilesen brings both a very significant industry experience and a deep understanding of Opera to the role as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. In short, Opera’s spirit runs through his veins,” Jon von Tetzchner, the company’s former CEO said in a statement.

“My decision to assume a new role in Opera is based on a lengthy consideration process. As outgoing Chief Executive, I leave confident in the company’s continued leadership in key markets, our strong management team, our ongoing commitment to innovation, and our robust financial foundation,” he added.

Boilesen started working at Opera in 2000 and he served as the company’s Executive VP of Sales until 2005, when the company saw a great shift from being just a browser maker to a web browsing technology provider, offering tools and services to a big number of mobile devices, as well as consumer electronics devices.

He left Op… (read more)

Google has measures in place to ensure that legitimate blogs can’t get mistakenly taken offline as spam, but they’re apparently not enough to prevent certain Blogger sites from being caught in the crossfire. The recent plight of one blogger who had his blog unceremoniously removed after being reported for spam has brought this issue to light, though Google promises that further measures are about to be in place that will help mitigate it.

Blogger user John Hempton wrote an essay on January 2 about Astarra Strategic Fund, a fund management group that Hempton believes is fraudulent. In the post, he explained how Astarra fits into the Australian privatized social security system, noting that he sent a letter to authorities to voice his concerns that eventually got him into the newspapers. One day later, Hempton’s entire blog was no longer available on Blogger, with a note on his end from Google saying that the “spam prevention robots” had detected his blog as spam.

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I started my research career in what may have been the first and only age of science journalism. Newspapers were big and growing, and many had dedicated science sections; magazines like Scientific American and Science News appeared to be flourishing. But, even before I finished my PhD, our technician showed me a sign of things to come: a program called Mosaic that could let you go straight to weather satellite images without waiting for the five o’clock news. Fast-forward to the present day, and the newspaper business is collapsing, taking its science coverage with it, while scientists talk directly to the public through blogs and tweets. Despite all the changes, one thing has remained largely constant: the US public continues to suffer from serious scientific illiteracy.

Will the Web ultimately provide a killing blow or the resurrection of science journalism? I’ll be given the opportunity to pontificate on that topic at this year’s Science Online conference in North Carolina, where I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion with Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, and David Dobbs. All of them have experience with both traditional journalism and new media, and should do a better job of providing perspective on some of the changes than I can.

But from my outsider’s perspective, it looks like newspapers will struggle to find their footing and, even if they do, they’re unlikely to have the resources to return to the golden era of science coverage. What I do expect I’ll do is talk a bit about our experiences with science coverage, and the opportunities and limitations of how things work here, and what they might say about online science reporting in general. To make some of this concrete: providing science coverage at a technology site provides a function similar to coverage in a newspaper: it puts science in front of people who might not otherwise bother to hunt down a dedicated science blog. But we’re doing that without the sorts of resources that a newspaper might have. In their better years, newspapers could afford to ship someone to the Arctic to cover polar researchers in their natural habitat.

I certainly don’t want to be completely Ars-centric, though; I expect I may also wind up discussing some of the material we’ve covered at Ars, such as the role of press releases and press release aggregators, and the potential of open-access science. You might also want to visit the blogs of the other panelists, as they’ve been considering some issues they feel might be worth discussing, as well.

In any case, I’d also like to offer our readers the opportunity to have some say about the discussion: what questions do you think need to be discussed, or what issues do you feel should be highlighted during the panel? (The plan is to record the session and post video, so you should have the chance to actually see some of the answers if your pet issues get discussed).

What is a “Brief” post?”

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Former Renault boss Flavio Briatore has won his legal case against the International Automobile Federation (FIA), the Reuters news agency reported a few minutes ago. The Italian boss contested the definitive ban imposed by the ruling body for his alleged involvement in the greatest race-fixing scandal in the history of Formula One, also known as the crash-gate.

The 59-year old launched his legal case ahead of the Paris’ Tribunal de Grande Instance in late November. When appearing … (read more)

theodp writes “A few days ago, the Toronto Star reported that security experts point to ‘Israelification’ as a possible cure for what ails North America’s security-paralyzed airports. That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. ‘It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,’ said Rafi Sela, president of a transportation security consultancy. Unless a more sensible approach to security is adopted, Sela warned that North American airports could be crippled by needless airport evacuations. As if to prove his point, Newark Liberty International Airport — which is planning to unleash $160,000 high-tech full-body scanners on travelers to improve security — had to be evacuated Sunday night and flights were grounded after a man walked the wrong way through a screening checkpoint exit to enter the secured side of a terminal. Looks like we may owe Mr. Sela an I-told-you-so on this one.”

I had seen the Toronto Star article when it came out, and it’s definitely worth reading. It does appear that the Israelis are a lot more focused on security that works, rather than security theater — though I don’t think any security system is foolproof. I do think that there’s a lot to what Sela says at the end of the article as to why the TSA hasn’t followed Israel’s lead:

“We have a saying in Hebrew that it’s much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it’s dark over there. That’s exactly how (North American airport security officials) act,” Sela said. “You can easily do what we do. You don’t have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept.”

As for the question on “full body scans,” while not mentioned in the article, it’s worth noting that Israeli airport security apparently doesn’t use such machines either. I saw an interview recently with an Israeli security expert, who said that using such machines (the ones that allow screeners to effectively see travelers naked) would create a much bigger mess, as traditional and religious men would become incredibly offended at screeners seeing their wives naked.

The key difference in the two systems is that the US (and most others) seem intent on scanning what you’re bringing on the plane. The Israelis are a lot more interested in who you are and how you act.

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Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber is the latest celebrity to bite the Big One on the Interwebs. Teeners across the Globe rose Tuesday morning to find the World Wide Web atwitter with rumors that the “My World” star, 15, committed suicide at his home late Monday evening.

Could it be? Is Justin Bieber dead?

Don’t have a cow, ladies: MTV News snoops have done some investigating and assure us that the bright-eyed singing sensation is alive, well, and looking forward to having the cast taken off his fractured foot in the next few weeks.

You’re nobody ’till somebody kills you on the Internet!

Sony Europe has stated that the latest A-Series Walkman, the NWZ-A845, will be coming to the continent in February. The new A845 is part of a larger NW-A840 series, which initially had a Japan-only debut in late 2009 and has been available there in black and brown and up to 64GB. Unfortunately, it seems that Sony Europe is going to offer only the 16GB model in black, which is odd because I thought they would surely hit the market with a large capacity player – at least 32GB.

UPDATE: It appears that the Asia Pacific region is going to get the 16GB and 32GB Sony A840 series Walkman in February as well.

We have some doubt that the A-Series will show up at CES 2010, but then again the S745 is selling unannounced by Sony Canada so anything is possible.

The reason why I say this is according to one of my contacts, Sony had this set for a CES reveal but I think that the American MP3 player market is too volatile and Sony may not have wanted to make the gamble. This is why we might be seeing region-specific launches. The latest A-Series Walkman is absent from some more recent Sony CES documents I’ve witnessed. So my contact and I are literally betting a beer as to if it is going to launch at CES or not.

If you have forgotten, this simply is the most brilliant Walkman offering from Sony to date – it has all of the features people have been asking for in previous Walkmans while shedding what it needed to. In my opinion, this is the most stylish appearance I’ve seen in a personal media player – and it has a jaw-dropping 2.8 inch WQVGA OLED screen. This is also the thinnest Walkman ever created at only 7.2mm. Sony has also finally come to the table with a better assortment of capacities – with the NW-A845 (16GB, Y24,000), NW-A846 (32GB, Y30,000), and NW-A847 (64GB, Y40,000) all due on October 31st. What’s also new for the first time is a TV-out function, that can output at 720×480 (SD) quality.

We have further pictures and a video of the A840 series in our original exclusive, “Sony’s Gorgeous New A-Series Walkman Features OLED, Up To 64GB Capacity.”

Since 2007, the consensus of the economic establishment—bankers, policymakers, CEOs, stock analysts, pundits—has been catastrophically wrong. They didn’t see the economic storm clouds gathering. When the raindrops began to fall, they failed to forecast the deluge. As a result, throughout 2008, executives, investors, and consumers chased the economy down—cutting back after things unexpectedly got worse; cutting back again when the roof fell in.

The Great Panic of 2008 may have destroyed blind optimism. But if excessive optimism was the near-fatal pose in 2008, blind pessimism has emerged as the reflexive post-bust crouch…

Virtually all the market geniuses who hung on as the Dow was scythed in half between October 2007 and March 2009 failed to call the market turn. Most hedge-fund managers have chased the 60 percent rally since March, not led it. Economic forecasters similarly missed the dramatic turn in the overall economy this spring. Having failed to forecast that the economy would shrink at a 6 percent annual rate through the first quarter of 2009, economists also failed to project it would start growing again at a decent pace in June. And they’re still behind the curve. My bold prediction for 2010 is that the consensus of the forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, which projects the economy will grow only 2.4 percent in 2010, is too pessimistic, perhaps by half.

Read the whole thing at Slate >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Jim Grant: The Economy Will Surge Back, We Just Don’t Know How
• We’re About To Make The Same Mistake We Made In 1937

CME Group Inc. will announce earnings for the fourth quarter and full year of 2009 before the financial markets open on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010.

The company has scheduled an investor conference call that day at 7:30 a.m. Central time.

A live audio Webcast of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s Web site, cmegroup.com.

Following the conference call, an archived recording will be available at the same site.

Those wishing to listen to the live conference via telephone should dial (888) 791-4322 if calling from within the United States or (913) 227-1353 if calling from outside the United States, at least 10 minutes before the call begins.

As the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group (cmegroup.com) is where the world comes to manage risk.

CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate.

CME Group brings buyers and sellers together through its CME Globex® electronic trading platform and its trading facilities in New York and Chicago.

CME Group also operates CME Clearing, one of the largest central counterparty clearing services in the world, which provides clearing and settlement services for exchange-traded contracts, as well as for over-the-counter derivatives transactions through CME ClearPort®.

These products and services ensure that businesses everywhere can substantially mitigate counterparty credit risk in both listed and over-the-counter derivatives markets.

The Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, Globex, E-mini and CME ClearPort are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago. NYMEX and New York Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group (Nasdaq: CME) and its products can be found at cmegroup.com.

Filed under: Car Buying, China, GM

Needless to say, global auto sales were incredibly bad in 2009, with one extremely big exception. The Chinese market boomed thanks to an expanding economy and plenty of government subsidies to keep the country’s fledgling auto industry running strong. Few automakers saw more success in the land of the Great Wall than General Motors, with the automaker and its Chinese partner registered 1.8 million sales – a 67 percent increase over 2008 levels. Sales have been so good that GM China’s sales surpassed those in the US in nine of the first 11 months of the year. The General put an exclamation point on a splendid 2009 with December sales that were up 96.6 percent versus the same month in 2008. If only the General could see that kind of success in the U.S.

As impressive as GM’s Chinese sales were in 2009, the automaker sees bluer skies in 2010. GM China president Kevin Wale said in a statement that the company feels 2010 will be stronger than 2009, adding “the industry outlook is strong, and we expect more growth, albeit on a somewhat slower pace.” That’s great news for GM, especially given the company’s painful struggles in North America and Europe.

While GM is being very thrifty elsewhere in the world the General is spending money and expanding in China. The company opened a laboratory and safety facility in 2009 and it will also open a massive proving ground in the near future.

[Source: Detroit News]

Boom Time: GM reports 67% sales increase in China originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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