This Traveler IQ was calculated on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 12:15AM GMT by comparing this person's geographical knowledge against the Web's Original Travel journal's 4,891,786 travelers who've taken the challenge.
GM is not far from it, I think it will follow suit with its own bankruptcy plan within a month. I strongly deplore U.S government’s financial support for the U.S auto majors. We need to stop throwing good money after bad companies/plans.
While the American Car industry is on a verge of a major collapse (technically on life support thanks to American tax payers), some new innovative business models are taking roots in the automobile sector that will fundamentally redefine our driving experience in the future. I strongly feel that we will see hybrid and pure Electric cars (atleast in the developed countries) on our roads within the next decade. There is significant interest in the Venture capital community. There are many plans and ideas on how to build the Electric car infrastructure.
Among all the plans, Better Place, started by the former Israeli software entrepreneur Shai Agassi, offers the most promising solution because it addresses the root of the problem - building the core infrastructure to support electric cars. Agassi is leveraging his experience building software companies in the car industry as this Economist article describes
“his novel approach is to look at electric transport as a system in which cars, batteries, recharging points, electrical utilities and billing systems must all work together.”
As Japanese Auto makers are proving to be pioneers in this space by introducing the new generation hybrid/Electric cars, one also needs to consider the importance of building the necessary infrastructure to support these new Electric cars (if the solution needs to be realistic and scalable in the future).
Here is an excerpt from “The Economist” magazine on Better Place model.
“Better Place’s business model involves selling electric cars (provided by its partner, Renault-Nissan) using a scheme borrowed from the mobile-telecoms industry—charging not by the minute, but by the kilometre. Customers will be able to pay as they go or sign up for a contract that includes a certain number of kilometres. They will even get a subsidised car if they subscribe to big enough packages, just as mobile operators subsidise handsets for their highest-paying customers. Better Place will build networks of recharging points, plus battery-swapping stations along motorways that will, in effect, enable customers to recharge their cars in minutes in order to travel further than the 160km (100-mile) range of their cars’ battery packs.”
Understanding why there is so much buzz on Electric Cars is a no-brainer. We will eventually run out of oil sooner or later. Oil dependence on middle east and other less friendlier nations (Russia, Venezuela, Iran etc) has proven to be costlier and insecure for both America and other countries. Even Warren Buffet sees the opportunity. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bought a 10% equity stake in the Chinese battery maker BYD (short for Build Your Dream).
The U.S. space agency launches today a space probe that will keep an eye on the violence and turbulence at the very edge of the solar system.
NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is due to begin its mission at Kwajalein Atoll, the largest coral atoll on the planet, where it will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket that will be dropped from a jet.
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_NASA_Spacecraft_To_Study_Boundaries_Of_Solar_System_26943.html
The much anticipated Google Android phone will be released next week. T-Mobile will be the first company to announce a mobile phone with Android OS platform.
Read more on The Registrar http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/17/android_launch_next_week/
Update: 7:00 EDT The world’s largest particle collider has successfully completed its first major test.
The LHC, Large Hadron Collider, in the CERN’s labs in Switzerland will shoot its first beam of protons around a 17-mile, vacuum-sealed loop. The test run will allow scientiest to accelerate two particle beams toward each other at 99.9% of the speed of light.
ComputerWorld reports “Tomorrow’s test run is a critical milestone in getting to that ultimate undertaking. And a worldwide grid of servers and desktops will help the scientific team make sense of the information that they expect will come pouring in. The computer infrastructure is critical to the work being done in the particle collider, which is a tunnel buried 50 meters to 150 meters below the ground.”
News.com AU reports that British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet $110 that this experiment will not find an elusive particle. Despite the expected scientific benefits, some fear the experiment could create black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth. One German professor even led a last-ditch legal attempt to stop the experiment, while scientists working on the LHC said they had been sent death threats.
Zephyr, an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft that weighs less than 70lbs and is designed to launch by hand. The little aircraft flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft’s paper-thin wings. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power.
Zephyr built by UK defense firm Qinetiq, flew for 54 hours during tests conducted in the US Military Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is expensive and inefficient. MIT researchers today annouced that they have come up with a simple, inexpensive and highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
![Freakonomics[Revised and Expanded]](/images/21xRHBWYYML.jpg "Freakonomics[Revised and Expanded]")
