Earth Week is upon us, and NASA has prepared a very special gift for the blue planet: a planetary data-crunching tool that uses a 56,832-core, 128-screen supercomputer for helping scientists work together toward better climate change research. More »
Filed under: BMW, Beijing Motor Show, Electric
BMW has used the Beijing Motor Show to announce that it will have its much-talked-about Megacity electric car on the market by 2013. Previously, the German automaker had only hinted that it would produce the urban runabout in the first half of the decade.
Also of note is that the Megacity EV will be launched under a new sub-brand, much in the same way that the automaker has used its Mini branch to enter into lower market segments without taking the chance of tarnishing the well-earned reputation of its corporate roundel.
According to BMW, its upcoming electric vehicle will be the first mass-produced vehicle that relies heavily on the use of carbon fiber for its structure, which should help keep the vehicle lightweight, thereby improving its performance and range. BMW has indicated that it hopes to earn valuable information from its 600-plus vehicle fleet of Mini E electric vehicles, 50 of which will be delivered to Chinese customers before the end of 2010.
In related news, BMW has also said that it will show off an electric 5 Series sedan in Beijing. Called the Echo, the EV was assembled at BMW’s Shanyang plant in China with cooperation from the government-backed Tongji University. There are currently no plans to put the vehicle into production, but the automaker hopes to gauge how advanced China’s homegrown electric vehicle technology is at present.
*UPDATE: Autocar is reporting that the Megacity will have a range of roughly 160 miles per charge, and about 20 percent of that range will be due to an aggressive regenerative braking system. Further, BMW does not plan to lease its battery packs separately, as some automakers have hinted is a possibility. Instead, BMW believes that its packs will still have 85 percent of their stated capacity after the car’s lifespan is complete, making the power sources valuable on the used market to power companies. Interesting, no?
[Source: BMW, Autocar | Image: SnaPsi – CC 2.0]
Continue reading BMW confirms Megacity electric car for 2013 *UPDATE
BMW confirms Megacity electric car for 2013 *UPDATE originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
by Tom Laskawy
Burning industrial corn in your gas tank: just as dumb as it looks in this silly picture.It’s no mystery where Grist comes down on the food vs. fuel debate, aka the Great Ethanol Boondoggle. But it’s nice to see the science continuing to support our side of the argument (via Science Daily):
Using productive farmland to grow crops for food instead of fuel is more energy efficient, Michigan State University scientists concluded, after analyzing 17 years’ worth of data to help settle the food versus fuel debate.
“It’s 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel,” said Ilya Gelfand, an MSU postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. “The ideal is to grow corn for food, then leave half the leftover stalks and leaves on the field for soil conservation and produce cellulosic ethanol with the other half.”
Other studies have looked at energy efficiencies for crops over shorter time periods, but this MSU study is the first to consider energy balances of an entire cropping system over many years. The results are published in the April 19 online issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
“It comes down to what’s the most efficient use of the land,” said Phil Robertson, University Distinguished Professor of crop and soil sciences and one of the paper’s authors.
The researchers go on to observe that using some of the crop waste from, say, corn fields to make fuel (while reserving the rest to plow back into the soil) increases the efficiency of the process. But they also point out that that technique won’t provide nearly enough fuel for our gas tanks.
They also hold out hope, as do many in the biofuel industry, for cellulosic biofuels that can be grown on marginal land. But the fact is that a cash crop on marginal land is worth even more on prime farmland—once we go that route it will be very hard to keep biofuel crops from displacing food crops, especially in the developing world.
The conclusion I draw from this study is that it’s a terrible idea to put fuel in competition wtih food for productive farmland. The system is designed to favor fuel production at this point and now we know that’s actually a waste of energy, rather than a source. With any luck, this new data will be included in the EPA’s controversial review of its indirect land-use calculations for the climate impact of biofuels.
Ultimately, I do think biofuels have a role in our economy, but it will be through farmer cooperatives that grow and process biofuel for their own tractors and not for suburban warriors and their SUVs.
Related Links:
Ask Umbra’s Earth Day book giveaway
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From the Breaking News Center:
Blagojevich’s lawyers have
previously suggested they might try to
question the president.
"President Obama has direct knowledge to
allegations made in the indictment," the defense said in its filing. "In
addition, President Obama’s public statements contradict other witness
statements."
For more, please click here.
Zipper Interactive has set a date for the next MAG DLC pack, so get your calendars and draw a big fat circle on April 29th. That’s when the “Fast Attack” Gear Pack will hit the Store.
After two years of offering free streaming video to its users, a new report says that Hulu is ready to move forward with their plan for charging a subscription fee to access much of the site’s content.
According to the L.A. Times:
Under the proposal, Hulu would continue to provide for free the five most recent episodes of shows like Fox’s “Glee,” “ABC’s “Lost” or NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” But viewers who want to see additional episodes would pay $9.95 a month to access a more comprehensive selection, called Hulu Plus.
The owners of Hulu (a joint effort of NewsCorp, NBC Universal and Disney) haven’t exactly been starving, having made more than $100 million from advertisements that run during the videos. The site has also made an operating profit in the last two quarters.
But obviously Hulu thinks it can generate even more revenue with the subscriptions.
Question is, will you be willing to pay for it?
Hulu pushes forward with $9.95 subscription service [L.A. Times]
Honda has announced that it will sell a limited run of the 2010 Type R Euro in Japan this fall. The Euro version is built in the U.K. and was, until last fall, only sold to European buyers. Japanese customers had to make do with a four-door sedan until their clamoring convinced Honda to send about 2000 copies of the hatch to Honda’s homeland. Honda says 90 percent of the imported vehicles have been sold since November, which is why they’re sending more for the 2010 model year.
The Type R employs a 2.0-liter inline-four that wails up to 8400 rpm and makes 221 hp at 8000 rpm and 159 lb-ft of torque at 6100 rpm. The car comes only with a six-speed manual transmission and wears stiffer springs and anti-roll bars than more pedestrian Civics. When we drove one back in 2007, we thought the Type R did a pretty good S2000 impression. Y’know, for tin-topped econobox.
Once again, we’re disappointed we get nothing like this in America, where such a car would slot nicely above the Civic Si. You offer the Type R in Europe, Japan, Australia, and South Africa—so how about you create one for us, Honda? After all, with the death of the S2000, there’s a vacancy in the sporty halo department.
Related posts:
We reported earlier this week that HTC Desire customers were frustrated after finding many popular apps were not available to them in the Android Market. Apparently, Legend owners have the same gripe. For the Desire, it was quickly found that the reason behind this was that Google had yet to sign off on the ROM. What about the Legend?
HTC’s support page is now indicating that a firmware update is available for the Desire, but it strangely refers to the camera. Engadget Mobile believes this is the OTA firmware you are looking for. Keep an eye on your phone for the notification of an OTA update. Have you already received this download? Did it help?
Final arguments will continue — and probably will end — Thursday afternoon in the trial in Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz’s lawsuit to be declared eligible to run for state attorney general.
The four hours of final arguments made Tuesday in the week-old trial are already among the longest in Connecticut history for a civil case, experts say.
The final area of argument, scheduled Thursday at 2 p.m., is about whether Bysiewicz has established a need for Judge Michael Sheldon to even make a ruling about her eligibility. This question — about the question of what lawyers call the “ripeness” of the issue for a ruling — has been mentioned on and off for weeks. But Thursday will bring it to the forefront.
In search of a ruling to validate her candidacy, Bysiewicz has sued her own office and the Democratic Party that she wants to nominate her for attorney general at its May 21-22 convention. But now the state Republican Party, which has intervened in the case to challenge her legal qualifications, will argue that with the convention still a month off the whole question is speculative.
They say that she has not been denied the right to get on the ballot, and thus she has not been aggrieved legally — and, by extention from that, they say that has no real issue to sue over.
“Fear and speculation do not equate to jurisdiction,” lawyer Eliot Gersten said in a memorandum filed in advance of Thursday’s arguments. He wrote that Bysiewiecz, the plaintiff, has “failed to present any evidence from any member of the Democratic Party that there was a question or uncertainty as to her legal right to be a candidate for Attorney General.”
He added: “Indeed, the plaintiff offered no evidence, other than her baseless ‘fears,’ that someone, anyone, with the authority to do so, acted or even intended to act to stop her from having her name placed on the ballot in the state Democratic Convention. Indeed, the plaintiff’s own trial testimony supports an opposite conclusion. If there is any doubt, it resides as a matter of her concern within her mind.”
“Unfortunately, the plaintiff’s fear or speculation is not sufficient to invoke the legal remedy of a declaratory judgment,” Gersten wrote.
Bysiewicz’s lawyers have made assertions to the contrary — that the threat to her ability to run is very real — and they are expected to that again in court Thursday.
EverGreen Solar, the Marlboro, Mass.-based maker of silicon wafers for solar panels, raised $165 million in convertible secured senior notes this week. The company says it plans to use some of the cash to finance the expansion of its new manufacturing plant in Wuhan, China.
Plans are to expand capacity over the next two years to 500 megawatts by 2012. EverGreen is in talks with Chinese authorities to secure public funding to support the expansion, a company official tells us. It costs about $50 million to put the initial 100 megawatts online. Chinese provincial authorities funded about 2/3 (about $33 million) of the construction costs. EverGreen says it expects the government support to continue. ”We have a very strong working relationship with our Chinese partner and are committed to growing our capacity in China,” the EverGreen official explains.
The company official tells G.E.R. that EverGreen and partner Jiawei are on track to begin commercial operation with a 100-megawatt in production capacity in July.
EverGreen is not alone in relocating to cheaper manufacturing locales. BP, just three years after expanding its PV plant in Maryland, opted to shut it down and relocate production to India and China. It said that given the falling price of PV, it didn’t make any sense to operate a manufacturing plant in the U.S.
At a recent investor conference EverGreen said relocating to China would cut production costs by more than half to about $1 / watt by 2012, from about $2 / watt currently.
EverGreen is releasing its first quarter earnings in a couple of weeks. The company says it expects to post $78.5 million in Q1 revenues. Last Quarter the company posted a $21.1 million loss on revenues of $74.5 million.
Image: EverGreen Solar
The market’s early swoon is quickly disappearing.
For one thing, Europe is nearing supper time, which means that all of the Greek and Spanish and Portugal worries can be put off for another day. And when they’re not worrying about Greece, there’s no reason we need to be.
(Actually, the US market has never worried much about Greece.)
Meanwhile, headline risk for regulatory reform seems to be gone. Obama’s speech was a real softball, and didn’t suggest that anything violent would be done in terms of reforming the banking sector. This is a relief.
In the end, we think there might only be one headline that would seriously spook the market. It has the word “tightening” in it.
Join the conversation about this story »
Jobs is probably not psyched about what went down this week. It’s time for payback, sweet, vengeful payback. More »
You’ve now seen all the phones (that we know of) that Dell plans to bring your way in the coming year, but that’s not all that Dell has to offer. Below, we’ll give you a glimpse into Dell’s approach to tablets. Both devices will be running Android OS, but will be different sizes, and the features could be different as well. You’ll have to read on to find out more.
Streak
Also part of Dell’s line up is the Streak, an Android-bearing tablet which we have seen referred to as the Dell Mini 5 in recent weeks. You’ll remember that while this device is slated as a tablet that it also bears the necessary equipment to make and receive calls on the mobile network (putting a 5-inch phone up to your ear though, that’s your choice).
The spec sheet for the Streak claims Android Donut (1.6), though we hope it will come to market with a more appropriate variant or at least receive an update shortly after its release. Some of the other specs include a 5-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, both rear (5MP) and front-facing (VGA) cameras, 512MB ROM, 256MB SDRAM, 2GB microSD (non-user accessible) memory for system and app use, along with a user accessible microSD slot which looks to be capable of up to 32GB or memory. Additionally, though the spec sheet suggests Android 1.6, Engadget believes that it will be updated to 2.1 by September, with a vague launch date of “this summer.”
For more information about the Streak, go here.
Looking Glass
And finally, the last piece of the puzzle. If you’re name is Alice, there’s a good chance this device was made specifically for you. Just 2-inches bigger than the Streak, the Looking Glass weighs in at 7 inches of tablet love. Unlike its brother though, it should have Android 2.1 from the get-go. The device comes with a Tegra 2 processor, 7-inch (presumably capacitive touch) WVGA touchscreen with 800×480 resolution, 4GB DDR2 SDRAM and 4GB of NAND flash memory. There is also room for an SD card with capacity to 32GB.
The Looking Glass is slated for “PC Quality Web, Movies, & Gaming, Rich graphics with Flash and multitasking, Powerful performance with low power consumption [and its] Affordable.” According to Engadget, if you really like big phones, you’re welcome to hold up this 7 inch “bad boy” to your ear as well (though we can’t guarantee people won’t point and laugh – us included).
For more information about the Looking Glass, go here.
Thanks for joining us along for the ride. If you’re a fan of Dell and a fan of wireless gadgetry, it looks like there’s much in store for you over the coming year. Personally, I’m a fan of the Thunder and wouldn’t mind giving the Lightning a run for its money as well. This officially ends the three-part series, and since I haven’t asked it before, who the heck has any comments about all this??!! Sound off below!
Via Engadget
For more on Dell’s 2010 product roadmap:
Posted by Monique Garcia at 12:25 p.m.
Gov. Pat Quinn is backing off a proposal to tax music and video downloads in an effort to plug the state’s massive budget hole, saying he still believes raising the income tax is the best way to generate money for the state.
Quinn floated the idea of taxing downloads from online services such as iTunes in a meeting with legislative leaders earlier this week, but the proposal received a cold reception in Springfield. Today, Quinn said that he was simply offering suggestions on ways to solve the state’s budget crisis and does not support the plan, which would have generated $5 million to $10 million a year.
“We had a meeting with the legislative leaders the other day, we made a list of all the possible things that could happen,” Quinn said. “I didn’t advocate that. I’m not interested in doing that, frankly.”
Instead, Quinn is pushing to raise the state income tax from 3 percent to 4 percent — a 33 percent increase in the tax rate — though lawmakers have been skeptical of that idea as they prepare to face voters in the November election. Quinn has attempted to paint the tax increase as necessary to prevent massive cuts to education, and thousands rallied for his cause at the state Capitol on Wednesday.
“I’ve proposed a 1 percent surcharge for education off the income tax,” Quinn said. “That’s what I’m for. I think it should be very clear that we should focus on that because that’s where you can get significant resources to save our schools from radical cuts.”
Good news, for those of you with the T-Mobile version of the Google Nexus One: Google’s found the problem with spotty 3G coverage. And the problem is … you. In an update this week in the Google help forums, Googler Ry Guy drops a bit of a bombshell (and dispels a recent rumor about an over-the-air update that might or might not be on the way):
Hey guys,
I’ve seen some recent speculation on this thread about an OTA to improve 3G connectivity and I want to give you an update on the situation.
While we are continuing to monitor user feedback regarding the 3G performance on the Nexus One, we are no longer investigating further engineering improvements at this time.
If you are still experiencing 3G issues, we recommend that you try changing your location or even the orientation of your phone, as this may help in areas with weaker coverage.
-Ry Guy
So, it looks like it’s not something that could be fixed by another software update. If anybody has some creative tinfoil-antenna fixes, be sure to let us know. [Google] Thanks, everybody, for sending this in.
Investors who bought the security the SEC is suing Goldman Sachs over might not have been much better off even if hedge fund manager John Paulson hadn’t influenced the collateral pool he hoped to short. This statement sounds insane, but it’s supported by a new report from CNBC. According to experts that contacted CNBC, collateral manager ACA independently chose mortgage securities to make up the deal’s pool of assets that performed horribly. This doesn’t help the SEC’s case.
CNBC reports:
ACA actually threw out 68 of the 123 securities suggested by Paulson. Those 68 securities had higher delinquency rates than the remaining ones, according to documents reviewed by CNBC. However, those documents show that ACA added 14 securities with lower credit ratings than the overall portfolio.
Documents also show that ACA added other securities with a higher percentage of mortgages from California and interest-only loans–two favorites of the shorts because they were perceived as having a higher chance of failure.
The apparent reason for adding these securities was that they had lower delinquency percentages overall. But they also has the very characteristics that Paulson and other shorts at the time believed would lead to higher delinquencies in the future.
This is a striking point. It implies that, even if ACA had chosen the entire pool with no input whatsoever from Paulson, the deal wouldn’t necessarily have performed better. The SEC’s case assumes that Paulson’s involvement had an adverse effect on the performance of the deal. After all, if the deal had made investors a lot of money, no one would be angry about his influence.
But this report suggests that ACA may have quite effectively created an equally awful deal all by itself, even without any “help” from Paulson. The reality is that, in early 2007, nearly all subprime mortgage-backed securities were trading at prices higher than they would be a few years later. ACA suffered from holding the prevailing view that the housing market would be just fine. Paulson and some others bears were in a small minority, even then. Given that fact, the hedge fund manager’s involvement seems less significant. This realization could cast further doubt on whether his involvement in selecting collateral was material after all.
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some amazing announcements yesterday, during the f8 conference. Docs.com wasn’t one of them.
“You can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends,” according to the service’s Website. What Docs.com really does more is provide Microsoft a lifeline, as the company seeks to maintain the relevance of its Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack before the rising mobile device-to-cloud applications/services stack. Docs.com is a futile, short-sighted enterprise that acknowledges Microsoft has already lost the new century’s platform wars.
Facebook: Windows in the Clouds
For years, I’ve likened Facebook to Windows, blogging in July 2007 that: “Facebook has the potential to become a kind of operating system in the clouds that developers extend and plug into.” At the time, Facebook had 30 million users; the number is closer to 500 million today. In September 2007, I explained further: “Facebook is like Microsoft, only the social networking company’s platform is built on the Internet.”
More from the September 2007 post:
Windows is widely regarded as a platform, but that’s a misnomer. The PC is the platform. Windows is nothing without the PC. Windows is a platform, but secondary to the PC platform. Similarly, the Web is a platform (and, yes, arguably secondary to hundreds of thousands of servers). Web 2.0 platform companies like Google operate on the Internet platform.
But Facebook is different from Google. Facebook is not a Web 2.0 operation; rather it’s more like Desktop 1.0 than Web 2.0. Since May [2007], when Facebook opened up to outside developers, the service increasingly has morphed into an Internet operating system. Like Windows, Facebook is an enclosed platform, and one where people can install applications, post and share digital content and communicate with friends, families or others in ways they might do with Windows on PCs.
Facebook is also a lot more like Microsoft than it resembles Google, because it’s so-called openness is more of a one-way street. Information goes in, but it doesn’t easily come out. Developers write applications for the one platform, which is different from, say, tapping into Google APIs (application programming interfaces) for use elsewhere. Facebook and Google both take platform approaches, but Facebook’s way is more like Windows than Web 2.0.
Facebook’s cloud OS, with zillions of applications and more than 350 million subscribers, is now a vortex sucking in seemingly all Internet traffic. Many people who posted to blogs and photo sharing sites are moving their personal information and content to Facebook — like they did Windows a computing generation ago. Facebook has huge customer lock-in potential, because the data is so much more personal than that put into Office and Windows a decade ago.
Facebook ushers in Web 4.0
Yesterday, everything changed. Zuckerburg paraded like a young Bill Gates (only with better oration and presence). Facebook’s founder is cocky, arrogant, ruthless and visionary. He outlined a development strategy that would intertwine Facebook into the World Wide Web. It’s brilliant and frightening. Zuckerburg is making the leap from Desktop 1.0 to Web 4.0 — perhaps Platform 3.0 (Mainframe and PC being Nos 1 and 2). Nothing will be the same, if Facebook succeeds — and the company has momentum that’s shock waves should leave Google quaking in their wake.
According to IDC, there were 1.6 billion Internet users in 2009, with the number expected to reach 2.2 billion by 2013. Facebook will soon have 500 million active subscribers, or — assuming there are no duplicates (unlikely) — nearly one-third the whole population of Internet users. Facebook’s growth far exceeds that of Internet users. In less than three years, the number of Facebook users climbed from 30 million to nearly 500 million. By the way, that 500 million is about half the entire PC install base; many of those Facebook users access the service by mobile device, a market where Microsoft dropped the ball in the end zone.
Facebook has enormous momentum. Microsoft is aligning its old applications stack with the new one, trying to keep its aging platform on life support just a little longer. Death is inevitable. Deal with it. Yesterday I tweeted: “Docs.com: Old content stack (Office) meets the new one (Facebook). Dunno. There are reasons nature abhors interbreeding of species.” That Microsoft’s FUSE Labs developed Docs.com at all is admission there is a new platform in town.
Docs.com represents the old content model. Microsoft has good ideas about collaboration, but wrongly binds them to Office. As I asserted in January: “Office is obsolete, or soon will be.” Same can be said about Google Docs. The productivity suite model focuses on how people create content, when along the mobile device-to-cloud applications/services stack the priority is what and where. By aligning Docs.com with Facebook, Microsoft is at least partly dealing with the what and where. But the what still puts too much emphasis on how — meaning productivity suite. Are hundreds of millions of Facebook subscribers creating Word documents or Excel spreadsheets? Do they need to? No and no. They’re sharing photos, videos and messages — none of which requires Office or Docs.com to create. By contrast, Facebook’s Social plugins put the emphasize on the what people create, where they create it and with whom they share it.
The Facebook in the Mirror
Things could have been different. Facebook is doing with platforms what Microsoft should have been able to with its applications stack — become part of the very fabric of the Web platform. More startling, chunks of Facebook’s Open Graph vision come from Microsoft’s own HailStorm playbook, such as the single-sign-on concept. Microsoft pitched single-sign-on with Passport a decade ago.
Facebook also is looking to tie quantifiable information to real user identities, something neither Google nor Microsoft dared to do but were accused of trying. Advertising potential is simply staggering should Facebook successfully leap all the privacy hurdles. Zuckerburg is just arrogant and aggressive enough to try and succeed.
Docs.com demonstrates much about what is wrong with Microsoft today. The company focuses too much on preserving existing revenue streams when creating newer ones should be the priority. Microsoft’s self-preservation approach compels its developers to bind new technologies to Office or Windows, when they should be set free to embrace standards and help establish others. Microsoft is a follower in a market it once lead.
Three companies are now positioning for computing dominance — Apple, Facebook and Google. All have a stake in the mobile-to-device applications/services stack. Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun were the major players during the desktop-to-server stack’s heyday. Sun declined and Oracle acquired it. Adobe is in early stages of what I predict will later be a suddenly rapid decline. IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are locked in the enterprise, where their computing and informational relevance will slowly decline over the coming decade.
That Facebook’s Open Graph and other f8 announcements come ahead of Windows Live Wave 4 is foreshadowing. You tell me what Microsoft can launch that will trump what Facebook announced yesterday. Microsoft claims on order of 400 million Live users, a number that seemingly rivals Facebook. But Microsoft subscribers are scattered among disparate Web services. Facebook users are consolidated within a single platform framework, like Windows.
A few years back, I stood in the pharmacy line behind an old geezer; he complained about buying medicines for his wife. The clerk joked: “Well, you married her for better or worse.” He snarked: “I’ve had the better, now I’ve got the worse!” Microsoft has the worse now, too. Perhaps it’s time for the company to divorce Office and Windows. Sure Microsoft depends on their income, but that won’t last forever.
Filed under: Concept Cars, Coupe, Hatchback, Ford, Beijing Motor Show
Ford has jumped into the burgeoning urban car segment with both feet at the Beijing Motor Show with the Start concept. The design study was developed to look at ways of building a smaller, more affordable car using fewer raw materials. The structure is a combination of aluminum and high strength steels to keep weight down without sacrificing safety, while the body panels are made from recyclable composites that already have the color molded in, eliminating the need to paint.
The Start’s styling is clean and simple, but not as interesting as the “Kinetic” design of cars like the all-new 2011 Focus. The simpler shape is surely less expensive to manufacture than Ford’s current crop of vehicles and that simplification strategy extends to the interior where the Start introduces MyFord Mobile. This MyFord iteration relies on smartphones to provide much of the functionality provided by MyFord Touch without having to install all the extra hardware.
Ford emphasizes that, with one exception, the Start is purely a design study with no production plans for the time being. However, the Start’s powertrain – Ford’s newest EcoBoost engine – is sure to see production. In the past, Ford officials have hinted at a smaller three-cylinder Ecoboost, and this 1.0-liter turbocharged and direct-injected engine in the Start is what will be power future small Fords. The automaker isn’t giving specific numbers yet but says that the 1.0-liter will have output similar to a normally aspirated 1.6-liter inline-four. That should put it at approximately 105-110 horsepower. A small car with this engine should be able to get CO2 emissions under 100 grams per kilometer something reserved for diesel and hybrid vehicles up to now. All the details, including a thorough breakdown of the styling and new drivetrain, is available in the press release after the jump.
Gallery: Ford Start Concept
[Source: Ford]
Continue reading Ford Start Concept busts out of Beijing
Ford Start Concept busts out of Beijing originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It’s here: Gabourey Sidibe’s making her Saturday Night Live hosting debut this weekend, and fans can’t wait for the sure-to-be side-splitting sketches we’re in store for as the Oscar-nominated Precious star brings her vivacious zest for life to the small screen.
Check Gabby’s SNL Promo with series regular Andy Samberg. Who’s watching?
President Barack Obama just gave a speech on financial regulation, and the markets continue to adjust to what they heard. The tyranny of Greece still reigns on markets, as the country’s debt yields continue to spiral out of control after the Moody’s downgrade.
Update: Markets already coming back.
Today’s Big Movers
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