Filed under: Desktops, Transportation
Filed under: Transportation
If you've got the coin to roll deep enough to own a Tesla Roadster, we'd imagine that making sure the car gets its 8 (or fewer) hour charge from a 220v / 80A circuit (like what powers some larger home appliances) won't be a huge issue. But if not, think twice about your driving schedule with the all-electric sports car, because while you can technically power a Roadster from any standard wall outlet, the amount of draw a standard 110v / 15A plug delivers would mean a 30 hour wait to juice up your vehicle's thousand pound battery pack. Thankfully, Tesla owners have time to think over how to deal with these kinds of details, being that none of the customers who've pre-ordered a car have yet received theirs.Filed under: Robots
When Brian Hart's 20 year old son was killed in Iraq in 2003, the grief-stricken parent turned his anguish to engineering, founding Black-I Robotics to build unmanned ground vehicles for recon, explosives and hazard work, and most of the other stuff you see land-bots doing in dangerous situations. Of course, what makes Hart's story so powerful is also what gives it a certain irony -- after taking the government to task for leading the nation's under-equipped military into unnecessarily dangerous situations, he began taking on work as a defense contractor to develop a cheaper, more robust machine in the hopes of getting more soldiers out of harm's way. Last week Black-I secured another $800,000 contract from the gov's Technical Support Working Group, and has also been field-trialing their latest version of the Land Shark UGV for the past few months.Filed under: Transportation
In Dubai, they're doing things big these days. Big hotels, big palm tree islands, big wallets, and very soon, big $281 million fountains. The biggest one in the world, in fact, and it will be large enough to give the famed fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas an inferiority complex.
At 825 feet long, the unnamed fountain will be 25% larger than the Bellagio fountain. Powering the fountain will be pumps capable of shooting columns of water approximately 450 or so feet into the dry Middle Eastern air. A light and sound show produced by a network of 6,600 lights and 50 projectors will illuminate the burgeoning Dubai skyline at night. About 22,000 gallons of water are expected to cycle through the fountain at any given time when it is completed in 2009. Now, if you'll excuse me, nature calls. [Luxury Launches]
Careful what kind of digital camera you give your kids from the Disney Store these days, otherwise the spawn of your loins could end up putting a goatse right up against their chubby cherubic faces. Then, their virgin innocence robbed from them, they'll probably go around leaving this 8MB camera in the darker places of your house, hoping to catch a few nether region images of their own (of poor quality, btw, this is actually a pretty poor camera to begin with). You've been warned. — Thanks, Chris, we think? [The Disney Store]
In a Nikkei article set to publish Monday, it was revealed that Toyota has green lit plans to offer solar panels on its popular Prius hybrid vehicle. The solar panel option will be available on the high-end Prius model when it receives a redesign in 2009. Strangely, the Japanese business newspaper also reports that the power generated by the solar panels will be used for the air conditioning system. The solar panels are being manufactured by Kyocera Corp. Previously, Gizmodo has covered some DIY solar panel options for the Prius, but the news today confirms that an official offering is now forthcoming from Toyota. It's a start, right? [Reuters]