Daily Archives: September 21, 2012


Roger Ebert pays tribute today to one of the great film directors of all time, Chuck…

Roger Ebert pays tribute today to one of the great film directors of all time, Chuck Jones. I grew up watching the works of Jones and the Warner Bros. animation team on TV and ahead of movies and loved them all. 

Chuck Jones: Three Cartoons :: :: Great Movies
A film director, like an orchestra conductor, is the lord of his domain, and no director has more power than a director of animated films. He is set free from the rules of the physical universe and th…

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+Cali Lewis and +John Pozadzides drive the #2013FordFusion  and come away im… 8

+Cali Lewis and +John Pozadzides drive the #2013FordFusion  and come away impressed

Reshared post from +Cali Lewis

We took the 2013 Ford Fusion out for a drive.

2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid, Start/Stop, and EcoBoost – FIRST DRIVE!
Our friends from Ford took us out to Santa Monica this week to experience the whole line up of 2013 Ford Fusions, and I gotta tell you, every one’s a winner.

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As more and more plug-in vehicles hit the roads in the next few years, drivers may…

As more and more plug-in vehicles hit the roads in the next few years, drivers may find themselves in competition for available parking spaces with charging points. If you're driving a battery electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid in need of some extra electrons to get you home, you might ask yourself if it's OK to pull the plug on the car that's already using the charger. 

+Ford Motor Company offers some handy tips on how to decide including a card you can print and use if your plug-in vehicle doesn't have an obvious charging indicator. http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=37134 

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The old Soviet generals are probably leaning back and saying "I told you so… 2

The old Soviet generals are probably leaning back and saying "I told you so!"

Reshared post from +Arianna Huffington

"We've been in Afghanistan for 11 years…we can’t leave and we can’t stay: that’s the very definition of a quagmire" http://nyr.kr/R5lYgX 

In Afghanistan, the Definition of a Quagmire
We can’t win the war in Afghanistan, so what do we do? We’ll train the Afghans to do it for us, then claim victory and head for the exits. But what happens if we can’t train the Afghans?

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Otto Blopnik scoops the rest of the automotive press yet again with the news that… 8

Otto Blopnik scoops the rest of the automotive press yet again with the news that +Hyundai Worldwide plans to exceed the new 2025 CAFE standards by a fairly wide margin.

Hyundai vows to become world’s first 60,000 MPG automaker
Hyundai, which touts itself as “America’s most fuel-efficient car company,” announced that all of its vehicles will achieve 60,000 miles per gallon by 2025, exceeding the upcoming…

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Back in 2010, +Audi International introduced a concept extended range electric vehicle…

Back in 2010, +Audi International introduced a concept extended range electric vehicle based on its then-new A1 minicar, dubbed the A1 e-tron http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/01/audi-a1-e-tron-geneva-2010/.  

Like other ER-EVs such as the +Chevrolet Volt and +Fisker Automotive Karma, the A1 was designed to be driven electrically by a moderately sized battery that would provide about 30 miles of range. When the battery was nearly depleted, the a small gas engine would fire up to drive a generator to sustain the charge of the battery and keep it going.

Unlike most of the other ER-EVs we've seen, the Audi engineering team led at the time by Michael Dick took a pass on using a conventional piston engine for the range-extender. Instead they opted to use a tiny 254cc Wankel rotary mounted under the rear cargo floor. 

Unfortunately, earlier this year, top management at the Volkswagen Group decided that they no longer wanted Audi going off on engineering tangents. Instead, they would be homogenized with the work going on in the rest of the group. Mr. Dick was retired and replaced by former Porsche R&D chief and then Bentley CEO Wolfgang Durheimer. 

This week Audi revealed a revamped version of the A1 e-tron, with what is now dubbed a Dual-Mode Hybrid system. This is effectively the same system that was originally shown in the VW Golf Twin-Drive back in 2008. The main difference is that the four cylinder diesel used in the Golf has been replaced with a shorter 3-cylinder gasoline TFSI engine for the smaller A1. 

When I went to Germany for a media drive of the MK VI Golf in 2009, VW brought out one of its prototype Twin-Drive units and I had a chance to drive it. I published my report on that for GreenFuelsForecast.com. In my short drive of the car it worked well with relatively seamless mode transitions.  

As a longtime fan of the Wankel, I'm sorry to see it de-emphasized for this project. I still think it could make a great range extender and look forward to seeing further efforts with it. 

Green Fuels Forecast
Green Fuels Forecast, web-based coverage of the alternative fuel automotive sector including batteries, electric and hybrid drive, diesel, hydrogen and biofuels

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