Forced Green

PUT YOUR CAR KEYS BESIDE YOUR BED AT NIGHT

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, your Dr’s
office, the checkout girl at the market, everyone you run across.

Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside
your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic
button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue
to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies.

This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home Read more…

Did you turn your clocks back this morning?  It is that time of year where we
gain back that hour we lost last spring!  A true sign that winter is a coming.

Today is the change the clocks day on everything you have.  Fortunately, most
computers do it for you.  The clocks in cars, vcrs (should you still have one),
wall clocks, etc. have you visiting them for the change.  Replacing batteries.

The only states that do not participate in daylight savings time is Hawaii and Read more…

Afsaneh Rabiei, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at
North Carolina State University, has invented a space-age material so light and
strong that it could revolutionize everything from vehicle bumpers to armor to
biomedical devices.  A brand new material that can save energy and lives.

“Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei
Her invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of
existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells - tiny pockets Read more…

And we have lots to tell you about what Air Vehicle inventor Guy Negre and
his development team in Carros, France, are doing, including the October 9
announcement of a new Air Vehicle city transport solution called the AIRPod.
Also, all the Air Vehicles get new names!

When will the 4-door, six-seat US model be available? They expect it to be
manufactured in the US in 2010. They originally planned to take reservations for
the vehicle in 2008 but now plan do so in mid-2009 as we now anticipate demand
to far exceed the early production capability. Read more…

Bostonians might be the only ones who gained from the summer’s record high fuel prices.
In an effort to save fuel and lower emissions, the city piloted a program that shortened
red lights to reduce the amount of time cars sat idling. The test was such a success that
Boston is now considering expanding the program to the rest of the city.

The results, released last week, show that shorter red lights will help Boston’s drivers
regain 135,000 hours each year that would normally be wasted waiting for a light to turn.

Traffic delays during the 60-intersection trial decreased 29 percent, while vehicle Read more…

Okay, so I thought I would never be writing on a 60 minutes segment, but Leslie
Stahl had one last night that you might be a little interested in, it deals with
electric and electric/hybrids Forced Green has posted on before, so here we go:

One of the reasons electric cars have never taken off has been battery technology.
A few years ago, someone wondered: why not use the batteries they put in laptop
computers called lithium-ion batteries? That’s when the environmentally-conscious
hi-tech industry in California jumped in.

The first all-electric sports car is called the “Roadster” and is made by Tesla
Motors, a small start-up in Northern California. Read more…