World’s first flying car prepares for take-off

Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.

If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.

Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.

Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”

The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.

Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.

Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).

“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.

There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.

Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”

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China revs up hybrid war with first production plug-in car

The F3DM is a small four-door saloon equipped with an electric motor and a 1-litre petrol engine, both of which can drive the car.

With its batteries fully charged it can travel up to 60 miles on electricity alone. When the batteries become depleted the petrol engine takes over. And while the engine can charge the batteries, as in existing hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, the F3DM is intended to be recharged overnight by plugging into the domestic mains.

Initially, the F3DM will be sold in China's metropolitan areas starting in Shenzhen, the company’s home city. The price of 150,000 yuan (£14,400) is little more than half that of the Prius in the Chinese market. BYD expects to have several plug-in hybrid models on sale in Europe and America within three years.

The company says that the key to these products is its “iron battery”. This lithium iron-phosphate battery is related to the lithium-ion cells used in laptops and mobile phones (for which BYD is the world’s biggest supplier) but cheaper to produce, and smaller and lighter than those being adopted by other carmakers.

Toyota and Honda show their latest petrol-electric hybrids at the Detroit show this week but neither the new Prius (coming to the UK in the summer) nor the Honda Insight (on sale in March) are offered with the plug-in facility. The Japanese manufacturers remain uncertain about the safety and reliability of lithium batteries but Toyota expects to have a plug-in version of the Prius available next year.

Beleaguered General Motors will launch its plug-in electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, in 2010. Technically this is also a hybrid as it has a small auxiliary petrol engine, but that does not drive the car – it is there to charge the batteries to extend the car’s range.

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Traditional 100 watt light bulbs to be phased out

Retailers have stopped stocking the bulb, which has been illuminating British homes for more than 120 years, and anticipate that they will have run out within weeks.

The withdrawal is part of a Government campaign, launched by Gordon Brown in 2007, to push people into buying fluorescent bulbs.

It is hoped the switch will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by around five million tonnes a year.

Low energy lightbulbs are small versions of the fluorescent strip lights found in offices and public buildings.

They use just a quarter of the energy of a conventional bulb. Replacing just one ordinary 100 watt can knock £7 a year off a household energy bill.

Under the voluntary ban, retailers have already stopped stocking 150 watt bulbs and agreed to stop replenishing stocks of 100 watt and 75 watt bulbs at the start of 2009.

By 2010 60 watt bulbs will start to be phased out and all incandescent bulbs will be banned by 2012.

A spokesman for Tesco, Britain's largest light bulb retailer, said: "All the 100 watt and 75 watt incandescent lightbulbs will be gone in the next couple of weeks."

However, there is concern that compact fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, making them dangerous to dispose of, and give off a harsh light.

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Amazing discovery of green algae which could save the world

Melting icebergs, so long the iconic image of global warming, are triggering a natural process that could delay or even end climate change, British scientists have found.

A team working on board the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance off the coast of Antarctica have discovered tiny particles of iron are released into the sea as the ice melts.

The iron feeds algae, which blooms and sucks up damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), then sinks, locking away the harmful greenhouse gas for hundreds of years.

The team think the process could hold the key to staving off globally rising temperatures.

Lead researcher Professor Rob Raiswell, from Leeds University, said: ‘The Earth itself seems to want to save us.’

As a result of the findings, a ground-breaking experiment will be held this month off the British island of South Georgia, 800 miles south east of the Falklands. It will see if the phenomenon could be harnessed to contain rising
carbon emissions.

Researchers will use several tons of iron sulphate to create an artificial bloom of algae. The patch will be so large it
will be visible from space.

Scientists already knew that releasing iron into the sea stimulates the growth of algae. But environmentalists had warned that to do so artificially might damage the planet’s fragile ecosystem.

Last year, the UN banned iron fertilisation in the Great Southern Ocean.

However, the new findings show the mechanism has actually been operating naturally for millions of years within the isolated southern waters. And it has led to the researchers being granted permission by the UN to move ahead with the experiment.

The scientist who will lead the next stage of the study, Professor Victor Smetacek, said: ‘The gas is sure to
be out of the Earth’s atmosphere for several hundred years.’

The aim is to discover whether artificially fertilising the area will create more algae in the Great Southern Ocean. That ocean is an untapped resource for soaking up CO2 because it doesn’t have much iron, unlike other seas.

It covers 20million square miles, and scientists say that if this could all be treated with iron, the resulting algae would remove three-and-a-half gigatons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to one eighth of all emissions annually created by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

It would also be equal to removing all carbon dioxide emitted from every power plant, chimney and car exhaust in the rapidly expanding industries of India and Japan.
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