…During the 2008-09 academic year, Campus Compact and the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund granted WMU American Humanics students $15,000 to re-grant to local nonprofits and $3,000 for administrative costs. Students studied community needs, set priorities, issued requests for proposals, analyzed 23 proposals, completed site visits and held a Students4Giving Grant Celebration. The WMU group has received another $15,000 to distribute to local nonprofits in spring 2010.
Most modern Macs, except for the MacBook Air and some MacBook models (such as my late 2008 unibody, alas), offer both FireWire and USB connections, so when shopping for an external hard drive you have plenty of options for something that will work with your Mac, notes Macworld’s James Galbraith. And these days, he adds, USB hard drives are more common and less expensive than FireWire or even FireWire/USB combo drives.
True, but even though USB 2.0 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 480 Mbps, vs. a nominal 400 Mbps for FireWire 400, via real-world experience I can attest that USB 2.0 lags well behind FireWire 400 — to say nothing of the FireWire 800 used on all Macs still sold today with FireWire support. And adding insult to injury, USB 2.0 doesn’t support incredibly useful Target Disk Mode. I’ve also found that while booting a Mac from a USB 2.0 drive is possible, it’s not nearly as satisfactory and low-hassle (or speedy) as booting from FireWire drives.
My gut-level impressions are borne out by Macworld’s lab testing, which found, for instance, that with a Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio drive connected to a MacBook Pro, copying a 1GB file took 23 percent less time over FireWire 400 than over USB 2.0, while duplicating that file using FireWire 400 on the WD drive took 10 percent less time than when run over USB 2.0, and that FireWire 800 proved 35-58 percent faster than USB 2.0 in various tests on the MacBook Pro with the My Book Studio. Similar comparative results were noted using a compact Verbatim portable drive with the MacBook Pro.
However, the report also notes that the imminent release of USB 3.0 products in early 2010 promises speeds greater than FireWire 800 or even eSATA, but suggests that it may be some time before Apple begins supporting USB 3.0 with compatible ports (which will be backwards-compatible for USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices on Mac systems).
In the meantime, even a USB 2.0 only external hard drive is the best choice for a backup medium for most of us, especially using Time Machine in OS X 10.5 and 10.6 But my recommendation is to spend a few more dollars if necessary and get an external drive with multiple I/O interface support. Quad interface drives are becoming quite popular, able to handle USB 2.0 (and hopefully soon USB 3.0) plus FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA interfaces.
What’s your favorite backup medium and I/O interface?
McMoRan Exploration Co. announced Tuesday that an oil discovery beneath 20 feet of water off the Louisiana coast could be the biggest find in decades, the Houston Chronicle reports.
Drillers found a “135-foot column of hydrocarbon-filled sands” and have estimated the discovery to be nearly 2 trillion cubic feet of resources, a figure that rivals previous discoveries in the Gulf’s deeper waters.
Energy XXI Chairman and CEO John Schiller said the discovery “verifies the ultra-deep potential of the Gulf of Mexico shelf and opens this horizon as a major exploration frontier.”
Jeffries Research, a major global securities and investment banking group, sent a note to investors stating the find “could boost McMoRan’s year-end proved reserve base by 150 percent and Energy XXI’s by 60 percent.”
McMoran and Energy XXI’s stock prices rose by more than 25 percent after the announcement Tuesday morning.
Ford’s 5.0L V8 – Click above for high-res image gallery
While Ford might not be pulling out all the stops here in Detroit to promote its updated Mustang like it did for the 2010 model year, the 2011 model’s improvements are just as significant, if not more. The new 305 horsepower, 30 mile per gallon V6 debuted at Los Angeles back in December, and the long-awaited 5.0L V8 made its official debut here at the NAIAS. Fortunately, there’s plenty more to the legendary 5.0 badge than an increase in displacement, and a cutaway motor on the show floor gave us a closer look at all the details.
For starters, the new V8 uses a different bore and stroke to give it an even five liters of displacement, last employed in the Mustang GT in 1995. A larger, single-blade throttle body that replaces the dual unit now works in conjunction with a composite intake manifold runner to provide for better breathing, as do the all-new aluminum cylinder heads that include an extra exhaust valve for a total of four valves per cylinder.
Additional upgraded components include a forged steel crankshaft, stronger forged powder metal connecting rods, high compression pistons, and a fantastic set of tubular stainless steel exhaust headers on each side. Perhaps most importantly, the 5.0-liter V8 receives Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing (Ti-VCT), a technology that allows for optimal power or fuel economy depending on throttle input. You can read our in-depth article for even more details on the Mustang’s new 5.0-liter V8, or you can see our live photos of the car and the cutaway engine in the galleries below.
San Diego’s Covario, a venture-backed startup in Web-based search engine optimization (SEO) and interactive marketing analytics for big companies, says it has acquired Netconcepts, a Madison, WI-based specialist in SEO for retailers and e-commerce websites. Financial terms were not disclosed. In a joint statement issued by the two companies, Covario CEO Russ Mann says by combining Covario’s Organic Search Insight software with NetConcepts’ GravityStream technology, “advertisers will be able to identify the SEO actions that drive better rankings, and also deploy those strategies quickly, and in a highly scalable way to achieve their ROI [return on investment] goals.” Covario investors include Dubilier & Co. FTV Capital and Voyager Capital.
Three years ago I went to CES in Las Vegas and had to search high and low for a compelling mobile tech story to cover. Sure, there were phones and all sorts of portable computers, but “mobile” – as in the wireless telcom industry – wasn’t really a focal point of the show. Mobile waited past January back then to unleash news at MWC in February and CTIA Spring in April. Not so anymore.
Palm broke the mold, to some extent, by unveiling WebOS and the Pre at last year’s CES. This year? Everyone and their uncle made mobile a part of their CES presence, it seemed. While we may not have seen a ton of US phone launches, there were a handful of ’em – and another pretty newsworthy one from Google the day before I headed out to Vegas. But more importantly, we saw launches and previews of many devices incorporating cellular connectivity into all sorts of form factors and headed to both the US and global markets.
So what caught my eye? Besides 3D TV, that is (I’m not sure if it’s “good” or not, but I couldn’t stop watching 3D polar bears swim through the water at Sony’s booth).
Here are my Top 5 mobile stories from CES 2010:
1. Android, Android Everywhere
Forget that Nexus One you just got in the mail, what you really want is a microwave oven running Android. Seriously, there was one at CES. Android was shoved into darn near everything, most notably catching my eye in E-Readers and tablet computer prototypes. A few products, like the Spring Design Alex shown in the video above, even morphed the E-Reader and tablet concepts together, with Android powering the whole thing. 2010 really, really should be the year that Google officially turns into “The Next Microsoft,” and it’ll all be thanks to Android.
12 January 2010, Berlin (Germany). The International Year of Biodiversity was launched yesterday by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany will hold the Presidency of the Convention on Biological Diversity until October when Japan will take over.
Chancellor Merkel urged the world to increase efforts for biodiversity and said “The question of preserving biological diversity is on the same scale as climate protection,” and “we need a sea change. Here, now, immediately — not some time in the future”.
Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director, underlined that nature is closer than what it seems to humans by stating that “The words biodiversity and ecosystems might seem abstract and remote to many people. But there is nothing abstract about their role in economies and in the lives of billions of people”.
For the occasion, Ban Ki-Moon stated that the General Assembly will hold a special high-level meeting on the subject next September. The event will give the international community an opportunity to demonstrate “much needed leadership” in advance of the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit, which will adopt a new strategic place for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Julia Marton-Lefévre, IUCN Director General, who will be present at the UNESCO launch of the International Year of Biodiversity in Paris, France on 21 January, commented on the event by stressing the importance of managing the environment well: “Well managed natural resources are crucial to sustainable development, supporting peaceful communities, encouraging well-balanced economic growth and helping reduce poverty. Protecting biodiversity protects valuable assets that are vital to the global economy.”
Just as the infamous ‘three-strikes’ law gets delayed further in France, the UK is working on its own controversial version. Dubbed the Digital Economy Bill, the law outlines government policies mostly relating to the Internet and has gotten a lot of flack for some of its provisions regarding copyright. The bill is still under review and a … (read more)
Dogs are lovely creatures, but they aren’t all that useful. Sure, they provide companionship, but any animal can do that. That’s why I love turning your dog into a cellphone charger using solar panels. [Recombu via Make]
DETROIT — Chinese auto maker BYD Co., which plans to sell an all-electric crossover vehicle in North America by year’s end, said it may expand its lineup in coming years.
Fred Ni, a general manager with BYD, said the China-built crossover dubbed the e6 will be “very affordable.” He declined to disclose the price, but said it would be comparable to gas-powered cars of similar size.
“We are considering other vehicles for introduction as well, but that has not been finalized,” Mr. Ni said following the company’s presentation at the North American International Auto Show.
Getty Images
Fred Ni of BYD shows off the new BYD E6 all-electric vehicle at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, has the backing of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. The company sold 450,000 vehicles in China last year and said it wants to raises sales to be 800,000 this year in its home market.
BYD said the five-seat e6 headed for the North American market has a top speed of 87 mph and can travel up to 205 miles on a single charge. BYD said it will take about one hour to fully charge at a dedicated station or longer at a standard home outlet.
Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst for IHS Global Insight in Troy, Mich., said BYD will have a difficult time selling cars in the U.S. because its designs look older than Americans are accustomed to, and the quality of body panel assembly and paint don’t measure up to U.S. standards.
But he said it won’t be long until BYD and other Chinese auto makers raise their games and will be competitive in the U.S. Mr. Bragman also said BYD had its hands full satisfying huge sales demand and high growth potential at home, and he doubts it will want to be distracted by selling cars in the U.S.
BYD plans to use partnerships to establish a dealer network in the U.S. to sell and service the e6, but locations and other details haven’t been finalized. BYD said the e6 also is expected to be sold soon in China.
BYD started out building conventional cars. In 2008, it became the first auto maker to launch mass production of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle — the F3DM — that’s sold in China and can be charged off a standard home outlet.
BYD started as a battery manufacturer and has top-notch battery chemistry that could interest other automakers or could give it an edge over U.S. manufacturers. On Tuesday, BYD said partnership was a possibility.
“We hope to join forces with manufacturers to promote electric vehicles,” said Henry Z. Li, general manager of BYD’s auto export division.
Donna Brazile, veteran political strategist, will speak about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as this year’s featured speaker for Case Western Reserve University’s Annual MLK Celebration Week, January 15-22.
Brazile will give the 2010 MLK Convocation, which begins at 12:30 p.m., on Friday, Jan. 22, in Amasa Stone Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.
The New Orleans native has risen to national prominence as an author of the bestselling memoir “Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics”; syndicated columnist for United Media; an on-air political contributor to CNN, National Public Radio and ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”; vice chair of voter registration at the Democratic National Committee; and former chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute.
At the age of nine, Brazile’s lifelong passion for political process and campaigns began with her first public battle to fight for a neighborhood playground. It fueled her involvement, including work on every presidential campaign from 1976 to 2000. She became the first African-American woman to manage a run for the White House as former Vice President Al Gore’s campaign manager.
She has taken that same campaign drive to return to her hometown to rebuild New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. She has served on the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
Last August, “O, The Oprah Magazine” hailed Brazile as one of its 20 “remarkable visionaries.” She also has made “Essence” magazine’s Top 50 Women in America list and has been honored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation with its highest award for political achievement.
The unconventional beauty and artistry of works by photographer William Eggleston will be showcased in a major exhibition opening at the Art Institute of Chicago this winter.
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008–on view from Feb. 27 through May 23, 2010, in the Modern Wing’s Abbott Galleries (G182, G184) and Carolyn S. and Matthew Bucksbaum Gallery (G188)–is the most comprehensive retrospective to date of the Memphis-based contemporary photographer.
The exhibition brings together more than 150 extraordinary images of familiar, everyday subjects with lesser-known, early black-and-white prints and provocative video recordings, all produced over a five-decade period.
Born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised on his family’s cotton plantation in Mississippi, William Eggleston held a casual interest in photography until 1959, when he came across photo books by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans.
Among his earliest pictures, made during stints at universities in Tennessee and Mississippi, were black-and-white scenes found in his native South, as well as portraits of friends and family members.
By the 1960s and early 1970s he had begun experimenting with color film, and he eventually produced rich, vivid prints through the dye transfer process-prints that are created through the alignment of three separate matrices (cyan, magenta, and yellow) generated from three separate negatives (red, green, and blue filters).
The resulting prints are known for the vividness and permanence of their colors. Hence, Eggleston is often credited for single-handedly ushering in the era of color art photography.
Eager to show his work to a broader audience, Eggleston traveled to New York with a suitcase of slides and prints to meet with Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curator John Szarkowski.
This visit eventually yielded a controversial but revolutionary exhibition in 1976–MoMA’s first solo show to feature color photographs–and a classic accompanying book, William Eggleston’s Guide.
At this point in his career, Eggleston had already distinguished himself by treating color as a means of discovery and expression, and as a way to highlight aspects of life hidden in plain sight.
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 demonstrates Eggleston’s “democratic” approach to his photographic subjects in both color and black-and-white.
Everything that happens in front of the camera is worthy of becoming a picture for the artist–no matter how seemingly circumstantial or trivial. Eggleston finds his motifs in everyday life, resulting in telling portrayals of American culture.
His iconic images such as Elvis’s Graceland, a supermarket clerk corralling grocery carts in the afternoon sunlight, and a freezer stuffed with food proves that the photographer points his “democratic camera” at everything.
Eggleston’s quiet, thoughtful pictures have profoundly impacted subsequent generations of photographers, filmmakers, and scholars.
The exhibition also includes Eggleston’s cult video work, Stranded in Canton. In the 1960s, Eggleston used film to document Fred McDowell, a well-known Delta blues musician, but ultimately abandoned the film project.
Eggleston later acquired a video camera and began using video to shoot in bars and in people’s homes; sometimes he shot monologues friends delivered for his video camera, most often at night. The result, Stranded in Canton , recently restored and re-edited, is a portrait of a woozy subculture that adds dimension and texture to the world of Eggleston’s color photographs.
Internationally acclaimed, Eggleston has spent the past four decades photographing around the world, responding intuitively to fleeting configurations of cultural signs and specific expressions of local color.
By not censoring, rarely editing, and always photographing even the seemingly banal, Eggleston convinces us completely of the idea of the democratic camera.
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated exhibition catalogue published by the Whitney Museum of American Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
Numbering 320 pages and including 240 color and black-and-white illustrations, the book is filled with new scholarship about the artist and proves to be the standard reference to Eggleston’s photographs for years to come. The catalogue is available at the Art Institute’s Museum Shop for $65.
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with Haus der Kunst in Munich.
The exhibition is co-curated by Elisabeth Sussman, curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Thomas Weski, former deputy director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, now professor of the study of curatorial cultures at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig.
The Chicago presentation of William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is curated by Katherine Bussard, associate curator of photography, the Art Institute of Chicago.
Generous support for William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is provided by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc., Norman and Melissa Selby, The John and Annamaria Phillips Foundation, Marcia Dunn & Jonathan Sobel, Diane and Tom Tuft, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is provided by the Stephen C. and Katherine D. Sherrill Foundation, Lauren and Louis DePalo, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and The Gage Fund.
The Chicago presentation is generously funded in part by Jay and Gretchen Jordan. Additional support is provided by Joyce Chelberg.
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shares in Chinese motorcycle maker Zongshen Power Machinery (001696.SZ) extended gains on Tuesday despite a denial by the company over media reports that U.S. investor Warren Buffett had shown interest in the company.
Zongshen had no contact with Buffett and had not held any discussions related to his possible investment in the company, the company said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange late on Monday.
“The company also guarantees that in the next six months, it will not have any cooperation with Buffett on investment in new energy motorcycles,” the statement said.
A rumor that Zongshen Chairman Zuo Zongshen will visit the United States to meet Buffett on January 25 saw the company’s shares climb by their 10 percent trading limit on Monday.
Zongshen did not deny a meeting between Buffett and Zuo but quoted company secretary Huang Peiguo’s reply to media queries that he was not responsible for Zuo’s overseas visits and was not sure who he would meet.
The stock hit a two-year high of 21.98 yuan on Tuesday before steadying at 21.18 yuan, up 5.4 percent at 0146 GMT.
Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N) previously bought a 10 percent stake in electric car and battery maker BYD Co (1211.HK), sending the stock up more than seven-fold over the last year.
Bring on the chuckles: Sarah Palin will make her debut as a FOX News Channel commentator on Tuesday night’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor.
The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate will “sit down with Bill to take on America’s top issues,” the FOX News Channel said this afternoon.
On Monday, the conservative network announced a multi-year deal with Palin that will see the former politican as the host of a recurring series. The New York Times Best-Selling author majored in journalism with an emphasis on broadcasting at the University of Idaho and worked as a sportscaster at an Anchorage, Alaska station in the late ’80s.
Crude may be taking a breather Tuesday, down about $1 a barrel, but some OPEC countries appear to be giving oil traders a-wink-and-a-nod for pushing crude prices higher.
Earlier Tuesday, Kuwait’s Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters that $82 oil was “fantastic” and said the Gulf state doesn’t think OPEC needs to change production in March at its next policy meeting based on current prices.
An official in Kuwait’s Supreme Petroleum Council then told Zawya-Dow Jones that OPEC “will not consider it an alarming event even if oil hits $100…” Last week, Libyas top oil official, Shokri Ghanem, said, “As long as (oil prices) are under $100 there is no need for (OPEC) action.”
For months, the 12-nation cartel has repeated like a mantra its comfort with crude oil prices between $70 and $80 a barrel. Thats a relatively tolerable level for consumers, and certainly cheery for OPEC states, whose drilling costs are a tiny fraction of today’s $81 oil price in New York.
Olivier Jakob, an analyst with Swiss-based Petromatrix, thinks the recent the recent OPEC chatter is basically talking up prices. “While OPEC will blame higher oil prices on speculators, they are trying to sponsor the same speculation by making the rounds saying that OPEC will not move a finger unless [West Texas Intermediate] rises above $100 a barrel,” Mr. Jakob said in a research note Tuesday, referring to the U.S. oil-price benchmark.
Moderate voices within OPEC–such as Saudi Arabia, which holds most of OPEC’s spare production capacity–recoil at suggestions that OPEC wants higher prices and say they’re genuinely pleased with prices hovering between $70 and $80.
At that level, OPEC crude is still the best game in town compared with many of the high-cost oil-drilling projects in non-OPEC states, like Canada, that usually require a sustained oil price of at least $75 to be profitable.
And consumers will still fill up their vehicles at $75 crude; when crude hits $100, that equation changes substantially, as seen in 2008, when high prices at the pump poleaxed demand for oil. Remember: OPEC worries about security of demand the same way Western countries worry about security of supplies.
The problem for OPEC: The group’s more moderate voices usually don’t talk down the more hawkish OPEC elements, at least publicly. That leaves the impression to most outside observers that OPEC as a group is bent on squeezing consumers.
The big unknown is at what point OPEC will formally start to use some of its substantial overhang in spare oil-production capacity after keeping its production target unchanged since Dec 2008.
Saudi Arabia has around 4.5 million barrels a day of idle capacity–more than the total pumping capacity of OPEC’s No 2. producer, Iran–and some oil analysts think the kingdom will be reluctant to see oil prices move far above $80 a barrel over a sustained period.
The 2010 North American International Auto Show press preview days have been full of announcements and unveilings. One of the more interesting ones however, has been the Toyota FT-CH dedicated hybrid concept.
Designed in Europe and engineered with cutting edge electric drive technology, the FT-CH is a concept that addresses Toyota’s mission to develop a ‘Prius family’ of vehicles that will grow to include plug-in hybrids, battery electrics, and a few years down the road, hydrogen fuel cells.
Toyota has long been on the forefront of automobile electrification, bringing to market the RAV4 EV in the late 90’s, and the Prius today being a symbol of the hybrid movement in general. That being said, there are no present plans to produce the FT-CH, but they do plan to launch eight all-new hybrid models over the next few years and to sell one million hybrid units per year globally in the early part of this decade. Read below for Toyota’s press release and images of the car at the 2010 North American International Auto Show.
Make the jump for the press release and the high-res gallery.
DETROIT, January 11, 2010—Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), U.S.A, Inc., today unveiled the FT-CH dedicated hybrid concept at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. The FT-CH is a concept that would address Toyota’s stated strategy to offer a wider variety of conventional hybrid choices to its customers, as it begins to introduce plug-in hybrids (PHVs) and battery electrics (BEVs) in model year 2012, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCHVs) in 2015 in global markets.
“Within the next 10 to 20 years, we will not only reach peak oil we will enter a period where demand for all liquid fuels will exceed supply,” said Jim Lentz, TMS president. “A century after the invention of the automobile, we must re-invent it with powertrains that significantly reduce or eliminate the use of conventional petroleum fuels. One of many alternatives is through what is commonly called the electrification of the automobile. By far, the single most successful example of this has been the gas-electric hybrid.”
The CH stands for compact hybrid as in compact class and it’s a concept that can best be defined by comparing it with the mid-size class Prius. The FT-CH captures the spirit and functionality of a car that thrives in the inner-city environment; sized right to be nimble, responsive and maneuverable.
“It’s a package Toyota dealers and customers have been asking for,” added Lentz.
The FT-CH was styled at Toyota’s European Design and Development (ED²) center in Nice, France. Compared to Prius, it is 22 inches shorter in overall length, yet loses less than an inch in overall width. In spite of its compact external dimensions, FT-CH was designed for maximum passenger comfort and interior roominess, with an imaginative sense of style.
ED² designers looked to capture the vivid, high-energy appeal of what has come to be called the 8-bit generation. Popularized in the early 80’s, 8-bit microprocessor technology dominated the budding home video game industry. Today, 8-bit is considered a specific retro-style that is embraced by such things as 8-bit genre music and 8-bit inspired art.
The direct reference to the 8-bit generation is meant to be fun and innovative, colorful and stylish, with strong appeal to young buyers. Lighter in weight and even more fuel efficient than Prius, the concept specifically targets a lower price point than Prius, thus appealing to a younger, less-affluent buyer demographic.
Pointing to how Prius has become a universal icon for hybrid technology, Lentz confirmed that TMS is developing a Prius family “marketing strategy” for North America that will take full advantage of the Prius brand equity.
“The strategy is still taking shape and obviously it will require additional models to qualify as a family,” said Lentz. “Among others, the FT-CH is a concept that we are considering.”
In the early 2010s, Toyota plans to sell a million hybrids per year globally, a majority of those in North America. To accomplish this, Toyota will launch eight all new hybrid models over the next few years. These will not include next generation versions of current hybrids; instead, they will be all new dedicated hybrid vehicles, or all new hybrid versions of existing gas engine models.
The heart of hybrid technology is its battery. Since the early 90’s, during the early stages of first-generation Prius development, Toyota has been committed to in-house R&D of advanced nickel-metal hydride batteries. Through three generations
of Prius and a total of seven full-hybrid models, it has systematically reduced size, weight and cost while improving energy density, quality and reliability.
Toyota’s joint venture partnership with Panasonic has been a key element of its success in the advancement of hybrid technology. Later this year, Panasonic EV Energy (PEVE) will have three separate, fully operational production facilities with a combined capacity of more than one million units per year.
Moving the promise of electrification one step further, Toyota recently kicked off its global demonstration program involving approximately 600 Prius plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Beginning early this year, 150 PHVs will begin to arrive in the U.S. where they will be placed in regional clusters with select partners for market/consumer analysis and technical demonstration.
The Prius PHV introduces Toyota’s first generation lithium-ion drive battery. When fully charged, the vehicle is targeted to achieve a maximum electric-only range of about 13 miles and capable of achieving highway speeds of more than 60 mph in electric-only mode. For longer distances, the Prius PHV reverts to “hybrid mode” and operates like a regular Prius. This ability to utilize all-electric power for short trips or hybrid power for longer drives alleviates the issue of limited cruising range encountered with pure-electric vehicles.
All program vehicles will be equipped with data retrieval/communication devices which will monitor activities such as: how often the vehicle is charged and when, whether the batteries are depleted or being topped-off during charging, trip duration and all-electric driving range, combined mpg and so on.
As it becomes available, data from the program vehicles will be posted to a dedicated Web site. This in use, readily available data will help consumers understand how the vehicles are being used and how they’re performing.
Toyota believes this demonstration program is a necessary next step in societal preparation in that it allows Toyota the unique opportunity to inform, educate and prepare customers for the electrification of the automobile in general and the introduction of plug-in hybrid technology.
Toyota is moving quickly with the development of PHV technology well beyond this demonstration program. Advanced battery R&D programs with nickel-metal, lithium-ion and “beyond lithium” are underway for a wide variety of applications in conventional hybrids, PHVs, BEVs and FCHVs.
In the early 1990s, Toyota began R&D on building a practical and affordable hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. FCHV technical advancements have moved at a rapid pace. Engineers have made great strides in cost reduction targets in both materials and manufacturing and Toyota is committed to bringing hydrogen fuel cells to global markets in 2015.
Toyota’s latest model, the Toyota FCHV-advanced began its own national demonstration program late last year. Over the course of the three year program, more than 100 vehicles will be placed in an effort to demonstrate the technology’s performance, reliability and practicality in everyday use.
Recently field tested in southern California by two national laboratories at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, the FCHV-advanced confirmed an estimated single-tank fuel range of 431 miles. In combined city and highway driving from Santa Monica to San Diego the FCHV-adv logged an estimated 68 miles per kilogram of hydrogen, the rough equivalent of 68 miles per gallon. That range is equivalent to a Highlander hybrid at more than double the MPG with zero emissions other than water vapor.
In 1997, Toyota introduced the RAV4 EV battery electric vehicle in California. 1,484 of these 100 mile range large-battery electric vehicles were either sold or leased over the course of the program. Nearly half are still on the road.
Shortly thereafter, Toyota started a modest demonstration program with a small- battery electric urban commuter vehicle, called the e-com. This concept addressed the idea of the “on-demand” city station car similar to the Zip-car business model that is becoming popular in large urban areas. Although shorter in range, the e-com program addressed a specific mobility niche at a much more affordable price than the RAV4 EV.
The RAV4 EV and e-com programs were short lived due to lack of commitment from the market; the consumer and the consumer’s environmental mind set were not ready to commit to battery electric vehicles at that time. Recent increased awareness of environmental issues and the benefits of advanced technology vehicles have reinvigorated an interest in the electric vehicle market. As a result, Toyota will bring a small, urban commuter lithium-ion BEV to market in model year 2012.
Battery technology has progressed significantly in the time since the RAV4 EV and e-com programs. But major challenges still remain. The cost of lithium-ion batteries needs to be reduced significantly, or a more affordable alternative developed.
Like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, battery electrics will require the creation of infrastructure for recharging on the go. This issue of range is also a challenge to overcome. Even at 100 miles, BEVs as a primary mode of transportation do not yet offer what most consumers see as true mobility.
Toyota believes these are hurdles that will be cleared. For the last decade its focus has been to concentrate on a comprehensive advanced technology strategy including BEVs, PHVs, and FCHVs. Common to all three is the move to electrification, the full commitment to advanced battery technology and how lessons learned from conventional hybrid R&D have given Toyota a leg-up on all three.
After contributing Thrift (scalable cross-language services development), Hive (data warehouse infrastructure built on top of Apache Hadoop) and Cassandra (inbox search, but now used more broadly) to the Apache Software Foundation, Facebook is today joining the foundation as a “Gold” sponsor.
That’s only a $40,000-a-year commitment, but it fits into a broader effort to open source Facebook’s infrastructure and developer tools, according to David Recordon, senior open programs manager at the social networking site (who also spends half his time on open standards efforts for the company).
Facebook owes a lot of its existence, from way back in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room development days, to open-source software such as Linux, Apache, memcached, MySQL and PHP, said Recordon. The company now has originated and contributed to more than 20 open-source projects, with companies such as CBS, Digg, hi5, last.fm, Rackspace and Twitter making use of them and/or continuing their development.
These technologies haven’t been cheap for Facebook to develop, and open sourcing them should make it easier for up-and-comers to scale up to the company’s size and compete with it. Recordon said Facebook asks itself when making the decision to open source, “Is it really core to business or something that really just helps Facebook scale, or helps us extend the site?”
Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) — BYD Co., the Chinese auto- and battery maker backed by Warren Buffett, may sell a rechargeable electric car in the U.S. as soon as this year to meet demand for fuel-efficient models, the company’s founder said.
“The U.S. is a very important market for BYD in the future, and the electric vehicle is our future,” Chairman Wang Chuanfu said yesterday in an interview at the Detroit auto show. “We will start toward the market in the second half.”
Starting U.S. sales in 2010 would accelerate the timetable BYD set last year, when the Shenzhen, China-based automaker targeted a 2011 debut. Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns a 10 percent stake in the company.
BYD sees a chance to reach U.S. buyers who want cars that use little or no gasoline and cut emissions of greenhouse gases, and it faces pressure in China to develop electric vehicles for energy security, Wang said.
China’s auto market grew to 13.6 million units in 2009, surpassing the U.S. for the first time, and “it’s possible over the next five years it will grow to 20 million,” Wang said. “We’ll consume a huge amount of oil that China doesn’t have and may not be able to buy.”
Wang, 43, is to discuss details of BYD’s plans for the U.S. later today at a press conference at the North American International Auto Show. While overall auto sales in China grew 53 percent last year, Wang said BYD’s deliveries jumped 160 percent to about 450,000.
Buffett, 79, has yet to visit BYD’s factories in China, Wang said.
“I hope he’ll come,” he said.
–With assistance from Tian Ying in Beijing. Editors: Ed Dufner, Jamie Butters
Apparently, the Obama administration wants to make up for losses in the TARP program by taxing banks. This seemed eminently fair until I read about where the losses were actually taking place:
U.S. taxpayer profits from bank bailout investments are being offset by estimated losses from American International Group and automakers and mortgage payment cuts for struggling homeowners, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Monday.
The Treasury estimated net losses on its $700 billion bailout program at $68.5 billion for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009.
The December report for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, showed that the fiscal 2009 net loss included estimated losses of $30.4 billion for AIG and $30.4 billion for automakers, with $27.1 billion in losses from the Home Affordable Modification Program.
These were much larger than a $15 billion profit registered from the Capital Purchase Program for banks and $4.4 billion in profits from other bank investments, asset guarantee and lending programs.
So we ought to tax bank profits because . . . GM is losing money just like everyone said it would.
I am all for regulation which prevents banks from taking on too much leverage–or encouraging others to do so by offering stupid loans. I would very much like to find a system of financial regulation which results in a financial structure that isn’t so utterly dominant (and bloated) as it has been for the last two decades. But I’m failing to see why the banks in particular–or rather the customers of the banks who will enjoy higher fees and lower interest rates–ought to bear the financial cost of the administration’s ill-advised bailout of the UAW.
One argument is that a financial transactions tax would actually shrink the sector. But it would actually shrink one very small piece of it, the high frequency traders, and that’s not the part that’s problematic. Indeed, most economists think that this sort of micro-arbitrage enhances price discovery, helping the market to more rapidly incorporate new information. It would do nothing to impact the part where banks spend increasing amounts of time dreaming up methods of regulatory arbitrage or ways to game the ratings agencies. Plus it doesn’t look like a financial transactions tax is really on the table, presumably because ordinary Americans do a surprising number of financial transactions.
If we want to shrink the banking sector, we should be looking for a regulatory regime which doesn’t offer quite so many rewards for financial innovation (this might mean a regulatory regime that did less in some ways, giving fewer bankers outsized incentives to game the system). But if we want to bail out GM, we should pony up out of the income tax, not cast about for the least popular group we can find. That’s no way to run a tax code, or an economy.
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit last week that Mississippi social-justice groups brought against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for allowing the diversion of $570 million in Hurricane Katrina housing funds to expand the state port at Gulfport, Miss.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson dismissed the case filed in December 2008 because the plaintiffs were not personally affected, WLOX News reports.
The suit was brought by the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo on behalf of the Mississippi NAACP, Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center and several individual residents. It charged HUD with violating the requirements of the Community Development Block Grant program, which provided the funds.
Responding to last week’s decision, Mississippi Center for Justice Attorney Reilly Morse says the plaintiffs may appeal or take other action in federal district court.
“We believe that the Judge failed to recognize the legally proper personal stake these plaintiffs — individuals whose homes are still in shambles and organizations who stand up for those individuals — have in the proper oversight of post-Katrina relief money appropriated by Congress,” Morse told WLOX.
The plaintiffs charged HUD with abdicating its oversight role by failing to prioritize the housing needs of low- and moderate-income families. HUD began releasing the housing funds to the port last year.
Katrina decimated the availability of affordable housing stock — particularly rentals — along the hard-hit Mississippi coast. Advocates argued that the diversion of funds would have a particularly detrimental effect on African Americans in the region, who are disproportionately more likely to live in poverty and to rent rather than own their homes.
The Mississippi Development Authority, a state agency charged with recruiting and retaining businesses, was behind the plan to divert the funds. MDA officials and Gov. Haley Barbour (R) argued that sending housing money to the port would create jobs and improve the quality of life for Mississippi Gulf Coast residents.
Just as the infamous ‘three-strikes’ law gets delayed further in France, the UK is working on its own controversial version. Dubbed the Digital Economy Bill, the law outlines government policies mostly relating to the Internet and has gotten a lot of flack for some of its provisions regarding copyright. The bill is still under review and a … (
The unconventional beauty and artistry of works by photographer William Eggleston will be showcased in a major exhibition opening at the Art Institute of Chicago this winter.
By the 1960s and early 1970s he had begun experimenting with color film, and he eventually produced rich, vivid prints through the dye transfer process-prints that are created through the alignment of three separate matrices (cyan, magenta, and yellow) generated from three separate negatives (red, green, and blue filters).
By not censoring, rarely editing, and always photographing even the seemingly banal, Eggleston convinces us completely of the idea of the democratic camera.
