Aptera invited us down to the Palomar Airport in stunningly beautiful Carlsbad, CA to show off the latest iteration of their three-wheeled, high-mileage electric car, the 2010 2e. Before the fairly-close-to-production-ready car was driven into Hanger #11, CEO Paul Wilbur gave a state of the Aptera union address, explaining why the company has had its head down for the past several months. After all, a year ago you couldn’t causally glance at a magazine or newspaper without seeing the white three-wheeler. But lately? Not so much.
According to Wilbur, this has been intentional. The first reason is due to funding. “2009 was difficult,” Wilbur explained, especially for companies seeking start-up funding. The other reason is that Aptera has been, “Engineering.” Meaning that they wanted to have a more finished, production-ready vehicle to show off to the media and customers. “We have to get it right the first time,” Wilbur explained. Going further, he stressed the fact that Aptera doesn’t want to go down in history as the next Yugo, DeLorean or Tucker. The questions then are, does Aptera have the necessary funding and is the car they showed off today actually production ready? Well… make the jump to find out.
Gallery: 2010 Aptera 2e
Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.
Continue reading Aptera 2e moves forward, eyes set on X Prize
Aptera 2e moves forward, eyes set on X Prize originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Advanced Liquid Rocket Engine Stability Technology – High Fidelity Modeling (ALREST-HFM) – The Aerophysics Branch of the Space and Missiles Propulsion Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory is interested in the general area of advanced liquid rocket engine combustion stability technology. The interest is both in relevant technology as it impacts current programs as well as future technology as it will impact future programs. Particular interest is in projecting future technology as it will exist approximately six years from the date of this BAA, and to perform work preparatory to making use of this future technology. Experiments for the production of validation data or the development of sub-models which will be needed by then are also of interest. Preparing for longer term technology in such a way that technology of nearer term value is also produced is considered to be of great value. Finally, there is also considered to be a need for creative innovations in the combustion instability area, including but not limited to innovative approaches for suppressing combustion instabilities, and approaches for facilitating advanced designs. Total Funding: $1.35M. Eligibility: All. Proposal Due Date: June 1, 2010.
Between packing up to move apartments and keeping an eye on Twitter’s Chirp conference, I’ve been playing around with a new 15-inch Macbook Pro, one of the many new laptops introduced by Apple earlier this week. The 15-inch devices, which use Intel’s i5 and i7 processors while the 13-inch Macbook Pro uses the Intel Core 2 Duo chip, look virtually no different than they did before, with unibody styling and the same screen size, weight and number of ports. The only visible change is in the design of the mag-safe power connector, which is now clearly inspired by the MacBook Air charger.
So what’s the big deal about this? First, you get a smoother performance. But the big impact is on the battery life of these laptops. While the previous generation of MacBook Pros used Nvidia’s 9400M integrated graphics engine, the new line-up uses the new Nvidia 320M. The old chip had 16 cores while the new 320M has 48. And yet the 320M, despite being more muscular (it provides an 80 percent performance gain over the 9400M) is 40 percent more energy efficient. That boosts the battery life of the laptops by as much as three hours, which means Apple is offering total battery life of between 8 and 10 hours on the new MacBook Pros.
