Flying Car

If you secretly nurtured a dream of owning a flying car, the good news is your dream can be a reality by 2011. This month MIT students, from Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, have successfully flight tested the prototype of a winged car for the first time. This car took off from a runway in Plattsburgh, New York. It flew for 37 seconds. The engine used in this whole exercise was 100 hp Rotax engine that gets 30 mpg on the highway using regular unleaded gasoline.
Carl Dietrich is the Terrafugia CEO and co-founder. He is of the view that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) rule change and the Transition could help alter the way public travels round the country particularly in country areas. He says, “One of the biggest problems pilots have right now is that most of the 5,000 general aviation airports in the U.S. don’t have any car rental facilities, or even a cab stand.” He made his stand clear by saying that the Transition could open many of these underutilized airports to easier, more convenient use by private pilots.

The vehicle may also lead to better safety. If you are a piloting such flying car, you can withstand the bad weather too. If you can detect the conditions of bad weather a little in advance, just fold up the wings and land at the nearest airport and start driving on the roads. Once the storm has passed, take off again from another airport!

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Mercedes Benz 2011 model

Mercedes-Benz unveils today the new V8 model Mercedes S 63 AMG, the top of the range S Class, by releasing the official photos of the new AMG version. The car was created following the strategy AMG Performance 2015. ” The project includes a development of technologies that offer first-class performance, together with reduced both consumption and CO2 emissions.

Less capacity = more power: On this flagship car the AMG V8 engine capacity, as has happened for CL Coupe and announced just few days ago, is been reduced from 6,208 to “only” 5,461 liters, keeping unchanged the name “63″. The engine, wich now equip the sports version of the “Sonderklasse”, provides 544 hp and a torque of 800 Nm. It uses the new technology of direct injection gasoline combustion with driven jet and twin turbocharger, that, compared to the previous model, increased in maximum pressure from 1.0 to 1.3 bar. Thanks to improved thermodynamic efficiency, this technology allows a better use of fuel and produces less exhaust emissions. If then combines the “Performance Package AMG”, the power output from this engine goes up to 571 hp and 900 nm of torque. Consumption? Thanks in part to the latest fuel injection generation, the Stop & Start system and the gearbox SPEEDSHIFT MCT 7-speed AMG, fuel consumption has been reduced by more than 25% over the previous aspirated engine.
At this time no other engine in this class reaches the same performance of the new twin-turbo AMG. With these numbers, the new S63 AMG is shaking off the label from being a flagship car all quiet, comfort and luxury and begins to undermine closely the various Porsche Panamera and Maserati Quattroporte.

Read more: New 2011 V8 model Mercedes S 63 AMG http://www.friendsmania.net/forum/upcoming-cars-vehicle-motors-latest-cars-2010-2011/72015.htm#ixzz1A8jHtUj6

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World's Smallest Battery

World's Smallest Battery

A desire to understand batteries "from the bottom up" motivated Wang, fellow PNNL researcher Wu Xu, DOE Sandia National Laboratories nanotechnology scientist Jianyu Huang, and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pennsylvania to create the world's smallest lithium ion battery, a feat they reported in the Dec. 10 issue of the journal Science.

One seven-thousandth the thickness of a human hair, the battery's 100-nanometer-wide anode, through which electric charge flows in, is a single nanowire made of tin oxide, Xu explained. From the single-wire anode, the nanobattery's electric current flows through a liquid electrolyte to a lithium-cobalt oxide cathode.

It's a design that mimics the ubiquitous consumer electronics battery, albeit on a far smaller scale.

In a rechargeable lithium ion battery (LIB), positively charged lithium ions move from a negative electrode (the anode) to a positive electrode (the cathode) during electric discharge, and back again during recharge.

Lithium ions make great battery chargers because they strongly gravitate toward electrons, initially clustering around the cathode. As charging pumps free electrons into the anode, lithium ions make haste across an electrolyte fluid, flowing from the cathode to the anode.

Playing tunes on an iPod or downloading email on a notebook depletes the newly charged battery, causing electrons to flee the anode while leaving lithium ions behind. In time, those ions return to the cathode, back across the electrolyte fluid.

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